By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 



123 



age, 1 and as they drank it from shells, it was called in Ossian, who 

 never tires of describing these incessant banquets and carousals, 

 " the joy and the strength of shells :" 1 but I do not know, that 

 like the northern tribes of Scandinavia of a much later date, or like 

 their contemporaries among certain barbarian races, they ever took 

 delight, (and a fiendish delight it must have been,) in using as 

 drinking cups the skulls of their enemies. 2 Neither am I willing 

 to give ready belief to the assertion of some authors that the ancient 

 Britons were cannibals. 3 Before we stamp them with so black a 

 crime, we ought to require undoubted evidence ; but the accusation 

 rests on very insufficient testimony, and is not touched upon by the 

 most reliable authorities. Moreover, such a practice, only adopted 

 by the most ferocious savages, seems scarcely in accordance with 

 their general character : for though fierce in war, there was yet 

 something gentle and mild in their ordinary demeanour, and the 

 mind recoils from fixing on them any such opprobrium, and refuses 

 credence to the tale. 



With regard to their habitations, 4 like those of the Ethiopian 

 Troglodytes, 5 they were frequently placed underground. At first, 

 they took possession of such natural caves, 6 as they found suited to 

 their use, or inhabited dens and thickets : but afterwards, (as we 

 learn from Tacitus) they used to dig deep pits 7 in the ground, and 



1 Henry's History of Great Britain, vol. ii., chap. 8. 

 2 Herodotus relates how the Scythians adopted this practice, (lib. iv., cap. 65,) 

 and Ammianus Marcellinus, speaking of the Scordisei, a Teutonic race, savs, 

 r humanum sanguinem in ossibus capitum cavis bibunt avidius" (xxvii., 4). 

 [See Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. iii., p. 56.] Livy too describes a similar cus- 

 tom amongst tlie Boii, a tribe of Gauls, (lib. xxiii., 24). And at this day some 

 of the tribes of the Southern Ocean pursue the same horrible custom. [Prichard's 

 Physical History of Mankind, vol. i., p. 394.] 

 3 Strabo, lib. iv., p. 201. 

 Diodorus Sic: lib. v., p. 235, cap. 32. 

 Henry's History of Great Britain, vol. ii., chap. 7. 

 4 Bateman's Ten years digging in Celtic and Saxon grave-hills, p. 194. 

 5 Herodotus, lib. iii., c. 97, iv., c. 183. 

 Pritchard's Physical History of Mankind, vol. i., p. 297. 



6 Ovid Metam: lib. i., 121. 

 Juvenal : Satir : vi., 3. 



Lingard's History of England, vol. i., p. 11. 



7 Tacitus Germania, cap. 16. 



