fibula of the kind commonly found in old grave-hills, the plate being formed of a circular piece of twisted metal, and the pin straight. It is not known in what part of the coffin it lay originally, as it was not seen at first. It is asserted that there was also found at the western end of the coffin, by the side of the locks of hair already mentioned, a comb, resembling in its general appearance those usually found in the northern grave-hills, but what is extremely unusual, it is of horn. It is ornamented with perforations and flame-like incisions. At the eastern end of the coffin a vessel of wood was discovered, which fell to pieces as it was being lifted out of the water with a spade, but in which nothing was found upon a subsequent examination except that there appeared something which looked like ashes on the bottom of it. This vessel was round, about a foot in diameter, and had two ears on the sides. It is somewhat remarkable that this oak trunk, which had been so hollowed out that it would readily have held the body of a full-grown man, should not, apparently, have contained any traces of a human skeleton. But looking to the parties by whom it was discovered, and the peculiar notions they have upon such matters, it is suspected the remains had been removed and secretly interred again, probably in some churchyard[1].
Nor is this Danish account of the discovery of an interment in a tree coffin, the only one which exists to illustrate the Gristhorpe find. For it appears by two passages in the recently published Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, by Jacob Grimm, that there has lately been a remarkable find at Lupfen near Oberflacht in Suabia, of the so-called Todten-
- ↑ Nordisk Tidskrift for Oldkyndighed udgivet af det Kongelike Nordiske Oldskrift-Selskab. Bd. III. o. 279.
