Gloucester a hunting forest very well stocked
with wild boar, stags, and all manner of
game, according to the custom of England.
In this woodland there was a little hill rising
to about a man's height, which knights and
other huntsmen were accustomed to ascend
when, fatigued with heat and thirst, they
desired rest from their exertions. This hill a
man ascended one day with that motive when
he was left far behind by his companions,
and being there alone, he said as if to a
companion: I am very thirsty. Suddenly there
stood by his side a cup-filler handsomely
dressed, with joyous face, lifting up in one
hand a great drinking horn, adorned with
gold and jewels, as was the custom with
the most ancient English. But in the cup
there was a nectar offered to him of unknown
but of the sweetest savour, the drinking of
which put to flight all the heat and weariness
of his glowing body, so that one would
think he had not been working, but was a
person setting out to work. And when the
nectar had been taken, the servant produced
a cloth for the wiping of the mouth; then
having performed his office he disappeared
and awaited neither any reward nor any
questioning. This service had, in the course of
ancient times, been much praised, and daily
use was made of it, until, one day, a hunting
knight who belonged to the town of Gloucester,
having asked for the draught and received
the drinking horn, did not, as custom and courtesy
required, give it back when empty, but
took it away for his own use. But the lord and
illustrious Count of Gloucester when he had
discovered the truth of the affair, condemned
the robber to death, and gave that horn to
your most excellent great grandfather, King
Henry the First, in order that he might not
be regarded as the favourer of so great a crime,
as he would be if he added stolen goods to his
own private treasure."

I have begun with the most jovial spirit I
could find. Let me stop at the word jovial, to
remind the reader that we owe even that
word, and the good word jolly, to the days of
superstition. It is astrological. Jovial,
mercurial, martial, saturnine people are men
influenced respectively by the planets
Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, and Saturn, just as a
lunatic is a man influenced by the moon.
Disasters are ill-starred events, and the
statesman who tells us that he introduces
some measure at a favourable juncture, says,
though he does not mean, that he has got a
horoscope which justifies his rising to address
the house. Those days of superstition cut their
mark into our language pretty deeply. But
since Astrology is not our business just now
I return to the earth spirits, and pair the
courteous Ganymede of Gloucester with a
Hebe from the Osenberg. At the end of the
sixteenth century Superintendent Hamelmann
published in folio the Chronicles of
Oldenburg. Among other things he tells the
tale that follows:—

"In the year nine hundred and ninety
Count Otto was lord of Oldenburg. And as
he being a good huntsman took much pleasure
in the chace, he went hunting on the
twentieth of July in the said year, with many
of his nobles and servants, meaning to look
for his game first in the forest called the
Bernefeuer wood as far as the Osenberg,
leaving his whole suite out of sight and out
of hearing. Then he stood still on his white
horse half-way up the hill, and looked about
him for his company, but could not so much
as hear one of his dogs bark. Upon that he
said to himself, for he was very hot: 'By the
lord, if I only had now a cool drink of water!'
As soon as he had spoken the word the
Osenberg opened and a beautiful girl came
out of the cleft, handsomely attired in fine
clothes, with beautiful hair parted over her
shoulders and a little coronet upon it, and she
had a costly silver goblet that was gilded,
shaped like a hunter's horn, well and
cunningly made, worked over with figures of
many weapons now little known, and with
strange unknown inscriptions and admirable
pictures; this she had in her hand filled, and
she gave it to the count, begging that he
would drink from it to refresh himself. Then
when the count took the silver-gilt horn, and
lifted the lid, he looked at the liquor within
and shook it, and it did not give him
satisfaction. He therefore begged of the maiden
that he might be excused, upon which the
maiden said, 'My dear lord, drink and trust
me, it will do no harm to you. but only good.'
She further explained to him that if he
drank, it should go well always with the
house of Oldenburg, but that if he would not
trust her and drink from her cup, there
would be no mutual trust, but always
contention among his descendants. The count
was, however, so much dissatisfied at the
appearance of the liquor that he took the
silver-gilt horn, and, seeming to drink from it,
threw the contents behind him. Some of it
fell upon his horse and wetted him, and
wherever it fell the horse's hair dropped off.
When the damsel saw what had been done,
she asked for her horn again, but the count
hurried down hill, taking it with him, and
when he looked round he saw that the damsel
had gone back into the mountain. With all
his speed he spurred back to his servants, and
telling them what had happened, showed
them the drinking horn, which became a
costly treasure in his family, and is to this
day preserved at Oldenburg, where," says
Hamelmann, "I have myself often seen it,
and it is admired by many for its workmanship
and its antiquity."

What a grand set of stories might in this
way be told and believed if one were attached
to every specimen of art in Marlborough
House, or to every bone, mummy, or old
vessel in the British Museum. A handbook
to the antiquities of the Museum, written by
Superintendent Hamelmann, in the manner