

By W. J. BEBNHARD SMITH, Esq. 

 Barrister-at-Law . 



HAT distinguislied antiquary and Anglo-Saxon scholar, 

 tlie late J. M. Kemble, once told me tliat he con- 

 sidered tobacco pipes as " the opprohrinm of 

 Archaeologists." He meant that we knew so little about 

 them. It was in reply to a remark of mine that I did not 

 believe in the great antiquity of the so-called " Fairy 

 Pipes " of Ireland, and that I thought such specimens as were 

 said to have been found in tumuli in that country might easily 

 have dropped out of the pocket of some labourer employed in 

 the excavation. All such pipes from the sister island that I have 

 seen are exactly like those found by thousands in the Thames, 

 and wherever old ground is broken in London. I mean those 

 with a very small bowl, much contracted at its orifice, and usually 

 with a "milled" ring around it, and a pointed heel. Most of 

 these pipes are, no doubt, of the 1 7th century. I have myself 

 picked \\]) scores of them at odd times whilst shooting over 

 stubble and fallow in Berkshire and Oxfordshire, in places where 

 fighting had been in the days of the great Eebellion. Still, my 

 friend Mr. Kemble assured me that he himself had found pipe- 

 bowls of exactly the same tj^pe in sepulchral cysts, where crema- 

 tion had been practised in Pagan times. These cysts were found 

 in the course of his diggings in the heather-covered moors of 

 Hanover ; they contained burnt bones, bronze objects, and he 



