Byron had his skull romance at Newstead, but in this case the skull was more orderly, and not given to those unpleasant pranks of which other skulls have seemingly been guilty. Whilst living at Newstead, a skull was one day found of large dimensions and peculiar whiteness. Concluding that it belonged to some friar who had been domesticated at Newstead--prior to the confiscation of the monasteries by Henry VIII.--Byron determined to convert it into a drinking vessel, and for this purpose dispatched it to London, where it was elegantly mounted. On its return to Newstead, he instituted a new order at the Abbey, constituting himself grand master, or abbot, of the skull. The members, twelve in number, were provided with black gowns--that of Byron, as head of the fraternity, being distinguished from the rest. A chapter was held at certain times, when the skull drinking goblet was filled with claret, and handed about amongst the gods of this consistory, whilst many a grim joke was cracked at the expense of this relic of the dead. The following lines were inscribed upon it by Byron:
Start not, nor deem my spirit fled; In me behold the only skull From which, unlike a living head, Whatever flows is never dull.
I lived, I loved, I quaff'd, like thee; I died: let earth my bones resign. Fill up, thou canst not injure me; The worm hath fouler lips than mine.
Where once my wit, perchance, hath shone, In aid of others, let me shine, And when, alas! our brains are gone, What nobler substitute than wine.
Quaff while thou canst. Another race, When thou and thine, like me, are sped, May rescue thee from earth's embrace, And rhyme and revel with the dead.
Why not? since through life's little day Our heads such sad effects produce; Redeem'd from worms and wasting clay, This chance is theirs, to be of use.
The skull, it is said, is buried beneath the floor of the chapel at Newstead Abbey.
[6] Sussex Archæological Collections xiii. 162-3.
[7] See _Notes and Queries_, 4th S., XI. 64.
[8] Told by Mr. Moncure Conway in _Harper's Magazine_.
[9] "Tales and Legends of the English Lakes," 96-7.
[10] "Harland's Lancashire Legends," 1882, 65-70.
No man takes or keeps a vow, But just as he sees others do; Nor are they 'bliged to be so brittle As not to yield and bow a little: For as best tempered blades are found Before they break, to bend quite round, So truest oaths are still more tough, And, tho' they bow, are breaking-proof. BUTLER'S "Hudibras," Ep. to his Lady, 75.