taking all his victims’ heads back to the king as proof of his kills. Greek heroes
do not drink their enemies’ blood, but it is a recurrent motif in the Indian
epics.^131 Cobthach the Slender killed Labraid’s father and grandfather in one
night and gave Labraid a piece of the heart of each and a goblet of their blood,
and he consumed them (Dillon (1946), 7). Gwyn the son of Nudd killed
Nwython and took out his heart, which he then forced Nwython’s son
Cyledur to eat (Culhwch and Olwen 993–6). Regin killed Fáfnir, drank of his
blood, and roasted his heart. Then Sigurd cut off Regin’s head, ate Fáfnir’s
heart, and drank the blood of both of them (Fáfnismál 26–39).
Herodotus goes on to say that in the case of their worst enemies the
Scythians make their skulls into goblets, covering the outside with rawhide
and the inside with gold (4. 65). The Celtic Scordisci are said to have drunk
their enemies’ blood from their skulls.^132 There is archaeological evidence for
making skulls into cups from central Europe,^133 besides historical instances.
The Cisalpine Boii famously did it with the skull of the consul designate
L. Postumius in 216 , and the Lombard king Alboin did it to the Gepid
Cunimund in 567.^134 Further east, Chinese annalists record that in the second
century the king of the nomadic Yueji, who were perhaps Iranian or
Tocharian-speakers, was killed and his skull made into a drinking vessel by
Modun, ruler of the Xiongnu, probably a Turkic people.^135
The evidence does not allow us to treat this as a distinctively or originally
Indo-European practice; nor was it widely taken up in poetic tradition.
It does make an appearance in the heroic mythology of the north. It was
prophesied to the Ulstermen that they would gain strength from using Conall
Cernach’s huge skull to drink from (M. Green (1986), 31). Volund, the
legendary smith of Nordic tradition, maimed and enslaved by the Swedish
king Nidud, takes his revenge by killing Nidud’s two sons, making their skulls
into cups, chased with silver, and sending these to the king as gifts. The motif
is borrowed for Gudrun’s revenge on Atli.^136
(^131) MBh. 2. 61. 45, 68. 21, 29; 8. App. I 31, cf. 29. 13; 9. 60. 12; 10. 16. 30; Rm. 3. 2. 13, 18. 15; 6.
(^132) Festus, Breviarium 9. 1; Amm. Marc. 27. 4. 4; Oros. Hist. adv. paganos 5. 23. 18; more in
Zwicker (1934–6), 259. 5. Florus 1. 39. 2 ascribes the practice to Thracians but at once goes on to
talk about the Scordisci. For drinking blood from skulls cf. M. Höfer, Archiv für Anthropologie
12 (1913), 63.
(^133) A skull cup in a cave burial at Býcˇí Skála, north of Brno (Celtic, Hallstatt culture, c. sixth
century ): J. V. S. Megaw, Art of the European Iron Age (New York 1970), 58 no. 35.
(^134) Cn. Gellius fr. 26 Peters, Livy 23. 24. 12, cf. Sil. Ital. 13. 482 f.; Paul. Diac. Hist. Langobard.
- 27, cf. 2. 28.
(^135) Simaa Qian, Shiji 123, and Ban Gu, Qian Han Shu 96 , cited in Koch–Carey (2000), 37.
(^136) Vo ̨lundarkviða 24; Atlamál 82; Gering–Sijmons (1927–31), ii. 19. For further material on
skull cups, including Czech, Russian, Greek, and Italian folk-tales and historical Slavonic
instances from 811 and 972, see Krek (1887), 759–71.
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