Stockton Herald, South Durham and Cleveland Advertiser. — 1890-04-26 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

COCOS. nuts. "In all probability," says one writer on this subject, "the spacious skull of a fellow man whose bones he had just picked at his ease for his cannibal supper" formed the drinking bowl of the European savage. The practice existed among our Scandinavian ancestors. Then there is recalled the fate of Postumiss, as recorded by Livy, whose heroic death was not sufficient to prevent his enemies from lining his skull with gold and wring the vessel as a drinking cup. Alboin, a King of the Lombards, forced his wife to drink from her father's skull. Touching the ghastly goblet with her lips she swore to be avenged, and she was, for at her instigation the king was murdered. On this story several tragedies have been founded. The Italian poet Marino, to whom it is said Milton owes not-it few of the flnest situationsiii "Paradise Lost," makes the conclave of fiends in Pandemonium quaff wine from the peri-1 cranium of Minerva. An old legend of York Castle relates that a faithless wife, who wee doomed by her wronged husband to perpetual imprisonment, as a terrible remembrance of her crimes was served at table with drink out of the skull of her destroyer. The veracious Mandeville mentions that the old Gnebres exposed the dead bodies of their parents 1 to the fowls of the air, reserving only their skulls, ' of which, he says, "the sun naakoth a euppe, and therefrom drynketh be with great devotion." In the eider dramatists are to be found frequent /illusions to the custom of converting skulls into drinking cups. In Middleton's "Witch," when the Duke takes a bowl and is told it is a skull, he answers:—  Call it a soldier's eup ; Our Duchess, I know, will pledge us, the' the sup Was once her father's head.  Matisinger also makes mention 0 the custom, and one of the chars, ters in a play of Thomas Dekker says :  Would I had ton thousand soldiers' head, Theft stalls set all in nicer, to drink health To his coulaaion first invented war. There is preserved a tradition of the stage to the effect that an actress who had poisoned her husband in a certain piece was required to swallow a potion. It was brought in • enriottslv-s_Lived vessel, and on learning that eht I.:4ia drink from the skull of the man all• Murdered, it is said she went mad. '.V.e.lamons skull cup belonging to Lord r,iron was long an object of much interest. It wee at Newstead that he found a human skull of large dimensions and peculiar whiteness. Hs concluded that it belonged to some jolly old soul of a friar, and thought it no sin to convert the cranium into a drinking vessel. It was elegantly mounted, and in the carnivals at Nowsteed it played a conspicious part. The whim liar bean immortalised in the well-known lines. For a lest word on this subject, however, nothing could be mere Ili than I the opinion of old Sir Themes Browne. Quoth that philosophic writes: "To be knayed out of our grave, to have our skulls made drinking bowls and our bones turned into pipes to delight and sport our enemies, are tragical abominations."  RAVI You Tutu BCDDEN's BALSta• or HOniniouND aarD 001.TSPOoT ?—IIS is the tisitknewn remedy for Coughs. Colds, Asthma, Bronchia& HoenickeSs, Or any affection of the Chest sad Lungs For any of these complaints it stands unrivalled. One dose relieves: one bolas cares. Don't be pee' eusided to take baythina else. 13ottles, ls led and 2s 91. Bold by all Chemists. Special Agents for Stockton : Wm. Clarke; William Hardeastie and Ben, High-street ; Graham, 4, Mill-lane. West HartlepoolcsruoLurunewisreet,—/IDTT,  ' "