148 The Soverane Herbe 



These primitive pipes of England are from time 

 to time brought to light in excavations. Their 

 extreme smallness led to the belief among the rustics 

 that they are the pipes of fairies. They are so called 

 in England, and the Scots similarly christen them 

 Celtic or elfin pipes. They are regarded as mascots, 

 and preserved as lucky charms in both countries ; but 

 the Irish, believing they belong to the cluricaunes 

 (mischievous elves), and are unlucky, destroy them. 

 To the pretensions of antiquaries, founded upon the 

 discovery of these pipes among ancient relics, that 

 smoking was practised in Britain before the sixteenth 

 century, attention has already been paid. However 

 great the temptation, it is impossible for the smoker 

 to believe that the soldiers guarding the farthest 

 fortress of Imperial Rome in bleak Northumbria 

 consoled themselves on their long, cold watches with 

 a whiff from a blackened cutty, or that the ancient 

 Milesians forgot their quarrels under the fume of a 

 dudeen. The oldest pipes discovered, in whatever 

 company in Britain, have been of the Elizabethan 

 stamp and pattern. 



Broseley in Staffordshire has been noted for its clay 

 pipes from the time of Elizabeth to the present day. 

 Vauxhall, Derby, and Bath were other centres of the 

 pipe manufacture, and Ben Jonson testifies that in 

 his day Winchester pipes were accounted superior to 

 all others. 



So rapidly did smoking gain ground and the 

 demand for pipes created so flourishing a trade, that 

 in 1619 — less than forty years after the introduction 

 of tobacco — the pipe-makers received their charter 



