"I shall devour their (my enemies') hearts, dry their flesh, drink their blood; I shall tear off their scalps, and make cups of their skulls." (Bossu's _Travels_.) "Those," says this traveller through Louisiana, "who think the Tartars have chiefly furnished America with inhabitants, seem to have hit the true opinion; you cannot believe how great the resemblance of the Indian manners is to those of the ancient Scythians; it is found in their religious ceremonies, their customs, and in their food. Hornius is full of characteristics that may satisfy your curiosity in this respect, and I desire you to read him."--Vol. i. p. 400.
But the subject of the "Origines Americanæ" is not what I now beg to propose for consideration; it is the tradition-falsifying assertion of Mr. Grenville Pigott, in his _Manual of Scandinavian Mythology_ (as quoted by D'Israeli in the _Amenities of English Literature_, vol. i. p. 51, 52.), that the custom with which the Scandinavians were long reproached, of drinking out of the skulls of their enemies, has no other foundation than a blunder of Olaus Wormius, who, translating a passage in the death-song of Regner Lodbrog,--
"Soon shall we drink out of the curved trees of the head,"
turned the trees of the head into a skull, and the skull into a hollow cup; whilst the Scald merely alluded to the branching horns, growing as trees from the heads of aninals, that is, the curved horns which formed their drinking cups.
_Cromwell's Estates.--Magor_ (Vol. ii., p. 126.).--I have at length procured the following information respecting _Magor_. It is a parish in the lower division of the hundred of Caldicot, Monmouthshire. Its church, which is dedicated to St. Mary, is in the patronage of the Duke of Beaufort.
_"Incidis in Scyllam," &c._ (Vol. ii., p. 85.).--MR. C. FORBES says he "should be sorry this fine old proverb should be passed over with no better notice than seems to have been assigned to it in Boswell's _Johnson_," and then he quotes some account of it from the _Gentleman's Magazine_. I beg leave to apprise MR. FORBES that there is no notice whatsoever of it in Boswell's _Johnson_, though it is introduced (_inter alia_) in a note of _Mr. Malone's_ in the later editions of Boswell; but that note contains in substance all that MR. FORBES'S communication repeats. See the later { 142} editions of Boswell, under the date of 30th March, 1783.