• ENGLAND
• Cumberland.
• Maughanby (Stone circle surrounding cist under tumulus).
• Old Parks, Kirkoswald (Upright slab under tumulus).
• Lancashire. Calderstones, near Liverpool (Stone Circle).
• Northumberland. Morwick (Rock-surface).
• Lilburn Hill Farm (Slabs of stone found in grave).
• WALES
• Merionethshire. Llanbedr (Slab of stone found near hut-circles,
• now in Llanbedr churchyard).
• SCOTLAND
• Orkney. Eday (Stone in Pict’s House, now in the Edinburgh Museum).
• Firth (Slab of stone, now in the Edinburgh Museum).
• Elginshire. Strypes (Standing stone).
• Elgin (Stone ball).
• Aberdeenshire. Towie (Stone ball, now in the Edinburgh Museum).
• Lumphanan (Stone ball, now in collection of Hugh W. Young, Esq., F.S.A., Scot.).
• Argyllshire. Achnabreac (Sculptured rock-surface).
• Ayrshire. Coilsfield (Cist-cover).
• Blackshaw (Rock-surface).
• Peeblesshire. La Mancha (Slab of stone, now in the Edinburgh Museum).
• Wigtonshire. Camerot Muir, Kirkdale (Standing stone).
• Dumfriesshire. Hollows Tower, Eskdale (Door-sill).
• IRELAND
• Co. Meath. Newgrange (Chambered Cairn).
• Dowth (Chambered Cairn).
• Loughcrew (Chambered Cairn).
• King’s Mountain (Chambered Cairn).
• Co. Louth. Killing Hill, Dundalk (Sepulchral Chamber).
• Co. Tyrone. Knockmany (Chambered Cairn).
• Co. Fermanagh. Castle Archdall (Sepulchral Chamber).
• Co. Donegal. Glencolumbkille (Sepulchral Chamber).

Spiral ornament is as conspicuously absent on the implements and objects of the Bronze Age in Gaul as in Britain. It is, then, to Scandinavia that we must look for the origin of the Bronze Age spirals found in this country.

In the museums at Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Christiania, may be seen splendid specimens of bronze axes, sword-hilts, and personal ornaments exhibiting spiral decoration in the greatest perfection. These are fully illustrated in A. P. Madsen’s monograph on the Bronze Age, in the works of O. Montelius and J. H. A. Worsaae, and in the Transactions of the various archæological societies in Sweden and Denmark.

The spirals with which the objects of the Bronze Age in Scandinavia are decorated are generally arranged with their centres at equal distances apart, and connected together by S or C-shaped curves, the former being the most common.

When spirals are arranged in a single row, the problem of how to connect the whole together so as to form a continuous running pattern does not present much difficulty, but if it is required to cover a large surface with spirals in groups of three or of four, all properly connected, the solution is not so easy as it appears at first sight. Both the metalworkers who made the Scandinavian bronze implements, and the artist who designed the sculptured decoration of the Newgrange tumulus, seem to have been unable to master the method of arranging the S- and C-shaped connections of the spirals in proper order,[73] so as to be capable of extension in every direction over a surface of any required size. The difficulty was got over by a most ingenious artifice, as Mr. George Coffey was the first to point out in his monograph on “Newgrange, Dowth, and Knowth” in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy (vol. xxx., p. 25).

When the spirals are not arranged and connected together in accordance with the requirements of geometry, some of the bands which compose the ornament have loose ends, i.e. run to nowhere. The question was how to dispose of the loose ends so as to deceive the eye and give the appearance of a continuous pattern. It was effected very simply by carrying the loose ends right round one or more of the other spirals so as to enclose them. Good instances of this occur on the sculptured slabs at Newgrange (p. 48), and on the carved stone ball from Towie, Aberdeenshire, now in the Edinburgh Museum of Antiquities.

Mr. G. Coffey’s theory, in which we feel inclined to agree, is that the spiral motive came to Ireland from Scandinavia across Scotland and the north of England. Both the geographical distribution of spirals sculptured on stone in Great Britain, and the fact that the same imperfect method of connecting the spirals together for all over surface treatment is found in Ireland, Scotland, and Scandinavia certainly lend support to this view.

It is now generally admitted by archæologists that the spiral decoration of the Bronze Age in Scandinavia is of Mycenæan origin; and the clearest possible proof is furnished by an associated spiral and lotus motive design upon a bronze celt from Aarhöj,[74] near Aalborg, Jutland, which finds an exact parallel in the ornament upon a gold pectoral from Mycenæ.[75]

The Mycenæan spiral decoration has furthermore been clearly proved by Mr. Goodyear in his Grammar of the Lotus to have been borrowed from ancient Egypt; the best instance of the transference of a spiral and lotus motive pattern from Egypt to the Ægean being the sculptured ceiling of the beehive tomb at Orchomenos. In Egypt, the spiral is found by itself forming a continuous running border on the scarabs of Usertesen I.[76] (Twelfth Dynasty, B.C. 2758-2714), and combined with the lotus on a scarab at Turin[77] of the same period. The best examples of the use of the spiral as continuous surface ornament are to be seen on the ceilings of Egyptian tombs of the Eighteenth Dynasty (B.C. 1633-1500).[78]

The spiral motive thus was most nourishing in Egypt from the Twelfth Dynasty to the Eighteenth, say from B.C. 2758-1700.[79] After that it found its way to the Ægean, perhaps as early as 1400 B.C.,[80] and thence to Hungary, Scandinavia, and Great Britain.

The chambered tumuli at Dowth, on the Boyne, and Loughcrew, near Oldcastle, Co. Meath, resemble the Newgrange tumulus in plan and construction, but the sculptures upon the stones of the chambers and passages are not so obviously of Bronze Age type as those at Newgrange. The designs seem to be more symbolical than ornamental, and from the frequent occurrence of star- and wheel-shaped designs may have to do with sun-worship. The Loughcrew tumuli and their sculptures have been very fully described by Mr. E. A. Conwell, in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (vol. ix., p. 355; and 2nd ser., vol. ii., p. 72); by Mr. George Coffey, in the Transactions of the same society (vol. xxxi., p. 23); and by Dr. W. Frazer, in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (vol. xxvi., p. 294).

A certain proportion of the sepulchral cists of the Bronze Age in Great Britain exhibit symbolical or decorative designs. The following is a list of the examples which have been recorded:—

The sculpture is usually on the cover-stone of the cist, but in the case of the examples at Kilmartin and at Carnbân it is on the vertical end slabs.

The sculptured designs consist of cups and rings, concentric circles, lozenges, triangles, axe-heads, curved meandering lines, and a few patterns composed of straight lines. The carvings show the same pick-marks that were observed at Newgrange.

The axe-heads on the end slab of the cist at Kilmartin[81] are of the wedge shape common in the early Bronze Age. Like the stone axes and axe-heads sculptured on the dolmens of Brittany, they probably have a symbolical meaning connected with the worship of some axe-bearing deity such as Zeus.

The designs, composed of triangles alternately covered with dots and left plain, which occur on the cist-cover from Carnwath,[82] we have already seen sculptured at Newgrange and engraved on bronze axes and jet necklaces. The grouped circles on the cist-cover from Craigie Wood[83] may also be compared with those on the slabs in the Newgrange tumulus, on the stone ball from Towie in the Edinburgh Museum, and on the chalk drums from Folkton in the British Museum.

In three cases (viz. at Coilsfield,[84] Carnwath, and Tillycoultry)[85] elaborately ornamented urns of the food-vessel type have been found in the sculptured cists, thus clearly proving the period to which the cists belong.

Sometimes slabs of stone sculptured with cup-marks, cups and rings, and spirals, have been found associated with Bronze Age burials, although not forming parts of a cist. One of the most remarkable discoveries of this kind was made at Old Parks,[86] near Kirk Oswald, Cumberland. In 1894 a barrow composed of loose stones, 80 feet in diameter and 4 feet high, was opened by the late Chancellor R. S. Ferguson, F.S.A., and when the mound was removed a row of five slabs fixed upright in the ground was disclosed. The stones were in a line pointing north and south, cutting the site of the mound into two halves, and three of them are sculptured with spirals. As many as thirty-two deposits of burnt bones were found in holes scooped out of the natural surface of the ground, together with two ornamented urns of incense-cup form, fragments of several other urns, and a necklace of cannel-coal beads.

A slab of stone sculptured with spirals and concentric circles was found in 1883 on Lilburn Hill[87] Farm near Wooler, Northumberland, associated with seven deposits of burnt bones buried in small circular pits.

Stones sculptured with cups, or cups and rings, have been found either as cover-stones of urns or associated with burials in round barrows at the following places:—

A link between the art of the Bronze Age in Britain and the art of Mycenæ is afforded by a rock-sculpture at Ilkley,[88] Yorkshire, which takes the form of a curved swastika. It belongs to a peculiar class of patterns composed of winding bands and small bosses or dots, of which there are numerous examples in the Scandinavian[89] and Mycenæan[90] metalwork. Perhaps some of the Late-Celtic designs, in which the arrangement of the long sweeping S- and C-shaped curves is governed by the position of circular bosses they connect, may be descended from the winding-band patterns of the Mycenæan period. For instance, the designs on the enamelled handles of the bowl found at Barlaston, Staffordshire, and on the Ilkley rock-sculpture have obvious points in common, both being founded on the curved swastika.

There are in different parts of Great Britain a great number of rocks and boulders sculptured with cups, generally surrounded by concentric rings, and often having a radial groove leading from the cup outwards.

The best-known instances are at Ilkley in Yorkshire, Wooler in Northumberland, the district on the east side of Kirkcudbright Bay between Kirkcudbright and the Solway Firth, and Lochgilphead and Kilmartin in Argyllshire. In a few cases the cup-and-ring sculptures are associated with the wheel-symbol, as at Mevagh, Co. Donegal, and at Cochno, Dumbartonshire. Such sculptures are more likely to be symbolical than decorative, but it would take us too far afield to discuss their meaning here. Those who wish to pursue the subject further may with advantage consult Sir James Simpson’s valuable paper on “Ancient Sculpturings of Cups and Concentric Rings,” forming the Appendix to vol. vi. of the Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot.

The sculptured rock-surfaces of Great Britain in some respects resemble the “Hällristningar” on the west coast of Sweden. The cup-and-ring, the wheel-symbol, and the curved swastika are common to both, but the Swedish sculptures are much more elaborate and include figure-subjects, ships, animals, etc. The age of some of the sculptures is indicated by the characteristic shape of the axes (evidently of bronze) held by the figures, and by the fact that the same set of symbols which occur on the rocks are also to be seen on the engraved knives of the Bronze Age found in Scandinavia. The Swedish rock-sculptures are fully described and illustrated in L. Baltzer’s Hällristningar från Bohuslän, A. Holmberg’s Skandinaviens Hällristningar, and the Mémoires of the International Congress of Prehistoric Archæology at Stockholm.

Summing up the results of our investigations, we find that the peculiarities in the Pagan Celtic art of the Bronze Age which were transmitted to the Pagan and Christian styles of the Early Iron Age are as follows:—

• (1) The use of the closely coiled spiral.
• (2) The use of rows of dots.
• (3) The use of diagonal lines in preference to those running
• horizontally or vertically.
• (4) The use of designs founded on the curved swastika.

Of all these the spiral decorative motive is by far the most important, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter.