Drinking Blood

James Bonwick

1894

There is no account of the people, as recorded of some Celts, worshipping a bloody spear, or one placed in a vase upon the altar, as with the Scythians; but Spenser, in Queen Elizabeth's time, observed the Irish drink blood in a certain ceremony, and swear by the right hand of their chiefs.

Solinus, in the early Christian centuries, must have heard strange tales of Erin, when he left this record—"It is a surly, savage race. The soldier in the moment of victory takes a draught of his enemy's blood, and smears his face with the gore. The mother puts her boy's first food, for luck, on the end of her husband's sword, and lightly pushes it into the infant's mouth, with a prayer to the gods of her tribe that her son may have a soldier's death."

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