CEMETERY AT FEILFORD. 595 



as great affection to bury or throw on to the funeral pile an earthen 

 vessel as it was in after ages to burn his gorgeous insignia with 

 Pompey^. I take this opportunity of quoting a passage from a 

 curious work, the only one ^ of very many old books which I have 

 looked through in the Bodleian and elsewhere for some passage 

 parallel to the one quoted so often from 'Hamlet' in which I have 

 found one. This book is entitled ' Funus Parasiticum, sive L. 

 Biberii Curculionis Parasiti Mortualium, Ad ritum prisci Funeris, 

 Auctore Nicolao Regultio, Lubeccae/ mdcxxxvii. In describing the 

 imaginary funeral of the parasite whom he is satirising, the author 

 uses the following words : ' Cum quisque certatim in rogum dona 

 cumulat, et partim truUas, cantharos, lances, alii struices patinarias, 

 cyathos, ciboria coquinaria, omnia flammae committunt.' It is 

 obvious, of course, that the author may be representing the throw- 

 ing in of these articles as being the most natural thing to do at 

 the funeral of a glutton, as they had been his instrumenta artis ; and 

 Peniculus, it may be recollected, in the 'Menaechmi' of Plautus, 

 i. 1. r?5, speaks in terms of unctuous affection of his hosts' struices 

 patinarias — the very words employed by Regultius. Still, I am 

 inclined to think that Kegultius may have had some recollection, 

 or at least some tradition, of the custom considered as so dis- 

 tinctively heathen by the priest in ' Hamlet ' when he introduced 

 this particular feature with so much iteration into his burlesque 

 ad ritum prisci funeris. Writing at Liibeck, he may well have been 

 familiar with the Baltic provinces further eastward, which the 

 Teutonic knights had so much difficulty in civilising and Chris- 

 tianising. 



Boots of plants had twined themselves about and around the 

 bones contained in these graves, and the minute mollusc * Acliatina 

 acicula was found inside the skulls in such abundance as to make it 



^ See Lucan, ix. 175. x J 



2 Since writing as above I have met with the following passage inKeysler's ' Anti- 

 quitates Selectae,' p. 173 : 'Inde Nimischae, in pago uno railiari a Gubena distante 

 universus adparatus culinarius erutus, cacabi, oUae, oatini, phialae, patinae, urceoli, 

 lagenulae, testante D. Christinni Stieffii Epistola.' This Epistola was published 

 in 4to. in 1704, and treats of 'Lignicenses atque Pilgramsdorficenses umas.' See 

 Keysler, loc. cit. p. 113. 



^ See Wylie, ' Archaeologia,' xxxvii. 467. 



* See Schaaffhausen, ' Die Germanische Grabstatten am Rhein,' p. 125 j and * Col- 

 lectanea Antiqua' (vi. 201), a work with which I was not acquainted when I wrote, as 

 above, for an account of a cemetery at Kempston. 



