The _guige_ or strap by which the target was occasionally suspended from the combatant's neck, leaving the hands free to direct the steed or ply the weapon, appears (at least during the later days of Saxon rule) to have been in use among our countrymen, as well as with their Norman neighbours. Of Harold's nobles, Wace tells us:--
"Chescun out son haubert vestu, Espée ceinte, _el col l'escu_."--_Rom. de Rou_, ii. 213.
And in the Bayeux Tapestry, the kite-shield thus fixed may be seen on the English side.
The place occupied by the shield in the graves of the Frankish, Germanic, and Scandinavian heroes is by no means uniform. It has been found on the breast, on the right arm, upon the knees, and beneath the head. It is by the position of the umbo in the grave that this fact has been exactly ascertained. Examples will be found in the Ozingell Cemetery, in the explorations at Harnham Hill (_Archæologia_, vol. xxxv.), in the Selzen find, in the _Normandie Souterraine_, and in the account of the cemetery at Linton Heath (Archæol. Journ., vol. xi. p. 108).
The HORSE FURNITURE of the Northern cavalry appears to have been usually very simple. By referring to our engravings, Nos. 16 and 21, it will be seen that the saddle was provided with girth, breastplate, and crupper, the latter being fixed to the sides of the saddle: pendent ornaments are attached to the bridle, breastplate, and crupper. From the poem of "Beowulf" we learn that the war-horse was occasionally furnished with much costliness:--
"Then did the Refuge of warriors command eight horses, ornamented on the cheek, to be brought into the palace: ... on one of which stood a saddle variegated with work, made valuable with treasure: that was the war-seat of a lofty king when the son of Healfdene would perform the game of swords."--_Canto_ 15.
A donation of the Anglo-Saxon king Ethelbert affords another example:--"Missurum etiam argenteum, scapton aureum, item _sellam cum freno aureo gemmis exornatam_, speculum argenteum, armilaisia oloserica, camisiam ornatam prædicto monasterio gratanter obtuli[132]."
As it was an occasional practice to bury the horse of the hero in the same grave with his master, the metal portions of the fitments have been preserved to our time. Examples of stirrups may be seen in the _Annaler for Nordisk Oldkyndighed_, in Worsaae's Copenhagen Museum, and in _Die Gräber der Liven_: all these are of a single piece, having a loop for the attachment of the leather. The bits are of two kinds,--snaffles with rings at the sides, and snaffles with long cheeks. The example here given is from a Kentish barrow opened by the Earl of Londesborough. A similar one is in the Livonian collection of the British Museum. Compare also the York volume of the Archæological Institute, page 29; Worsaae's Copenhagen Museum, pp. 70, 95 and 96; and M. Troyon's paper in the _Archæologia_, vol. xxxv. p. 396, and Plate XVIII. The snaffle with cheeks was found among the Wilbraham relics[133], and occurs also in the Selzen Cemetery[134]. A very curious variety, in which the snaffle is of iron, while the cheeks are of bronze richly foliated, was discovered in an old fort at Lough Fea, in Ireland, and is engraved in the third volume of the Archæological Journal. In a tumulus opened in Denmark were found the remains of a bridle which had been covered with thin plates of silver.