[14] Mead was called Medo in Anglo-Saxon, in Lithuanian Middus, in Polish
Miod, in Russian Med, in German Meth, in old English Metheglin:
perhaps all these are from the Greek verb [Greek: methuo], to
intoxicate. Alfred naturally observes, that these drinking-bouts
produced many frays; and notices the reason of the Estum or Esthonians
brewing no ale, because they had abundance of mead. - Forst.
[15] In a treaty between the Teutonic knights, and the newly converted
Prussians, the latter engaged never to burn their dead, nor to bury
them with their horses, arms, clothes, and valuables. - Forst.
[16] This power of producing cold in summer, so much admired by Wulfstan
and Alfred, was probably the effect of a good ice-cellar, which every
Prussian of condition had in, or near his house. - Forst.
SECTION IV.
Voyage of Sighelm and Athelstan to India, in the reign of Alfred King of
England, in 883[1].
Though containing no important information, it were unpardonable in an
English collection of voyages and travels, to omit the scanty notice which
remains on record, respecting a voyage by two Englishmen to India, at so
early a period. All that is said of this singular incident in the Saxon
Chronicle, is[2], "In the year 883, Alfred sent Sighelm and Athelstan to
Rome, and likewise to the shrine of Saints Thomas and Bartholomew,
in India, with the alms which he had vowed." [Bartholomew was the messenger
of Christ in India, the extremity of the whole earth.] - The words printed
in Italics are added in translating, by the present editor, to
complete the obvious sense.
