Britain ... - Blue-Lite

NOTES TO THE DEVOTED ONE.
255
cups of their skulls." Indian War Song. Bossus Travels through
Louisiana.
As the most glorious of all ornaments, the Huns fastened the
scalps of their enemies, who had fallen by their hands, to the
trappings of their horses. Vide Amme. Marcell. They are
also said to have drank of the blood of the slain.
The body of Oswald, King of Northumberland, who was
slain fighting at Oswestree against Penda of Mercia, being
found among the dead, the inhuman conqueror cut it into seve-
ral pieces, and fixing them on stakes, erected them on the field
of battle as trophies of his victory. Wonders were performed
by his right hand, which Bede says was preserved in his time
uncorrupted in the church of Peterborough.
" Once in twelve it
years, is said, the Zajah offers a solemn
sacrifice of various living animals in pairs, and two men, the
skulls of the latter being used as drinking-cups at the shrine."
Asiatic Journal, 1826, p. 509.
In the reign of Ethelred, Uhtred, Earl of Northumberland,
defeated Malcolm, King of Scotland, at the siege of Durham.
" After the victory he selected the most handsome of the slain,
whose heads by his orders were cut off, washed in the river,
and, with their long braided hair, fixed on stakes round the walls
of the city. To reward this service, Ethelred appointed him
Earl, and gave him his daughter in
Elfgiva marriage." Lingard's
Hist, of Eng.
So late as the reign of Henry VIII., during the administration
of the Duke of Albany in Scotland, Sir David Hume of Wedderburn,
struck off the head of the Sieur de la Beaute, Warden of
the Borders, and wore his hair, which was remarkably long and
beautiful, as a trophy at his saddle-bow. What a modern Hun !
( 32 ) Where no mortal step intrudes.
. .
p. 214.
The sacred woods which overshadow the sources of the Gambia
and the Rio Grande, are supposed by the African tribes to be
inhabited by spirits : no axe is ever heard amid their solitudes,
and death v/ould be the consequence should any one dare to
penetrate them.
33
( )
Turn to the north while thus I wave my wand,
And breathe the Runic spell. . . p. 216.
During many ceremonies of Northern witchcraft,
deemed necessary to look toward the north.
Hialmar and Ulpho, in the year 100O, contended for the
daughter of the Ki ng of "
Norway ; who, unwilling to lose either
of those brave warriors, decided their rivalry by giving his
it was