Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/471

 

Survival of the Late Celtic Art into the Historic Period in Britain.

Fig. 166.—Bronze Brooch, Victoria Cave, Yorkshire, 1/1 The designs introduced into Britain in the Prehistoric Iron age still survive. The volutes and flamboyants on the metal-work of the Prehistoric inhabitants of Britain and Ireland are found on ornaments proved by the associated coins to belong to the fifth or sixth centuries after Christ. The example here figured (Fig. 166) is that of a bronze brooch, ornamented in repoussé, found in the Victoria Cave.^[1] The same designs are conspicuous in the illuminated Irish manuscripts,^[2] such as the Gospel of St. Patrick, the book of Kells, and others, on early Irish Christian chalices,^[3] and on caskets discovered in France and Scandinavia. They also occur in the ornamentation of many engraved stones and crosses found^[4] in Scotland, and ranging at least as late as, and probably later than, the twelfth century.

The silver ornaments discovered in the Norries Law^[5] tumulus, in Largo Bay on the Firth of Forth, are also to be classified with the late Celtic art, which survived into the Historic period. The flamboyant design of Fig. 166 is to be seen in a silver plate in combination with the

1. The relation of these designs to Irish art is treated in my work on Cave-hunting, p. 94 et seq.
2. Westwood, Palæographia.
3. Dunraven, The Earl of, Ancient Chalice and Brooches lately found at Ardagh, Limerick, Trans. R. I. Acad. xxiv. Antiquities.
4. Stuart, Sculptured Stones of Scotland, Spalding Club, 2 vols. 4to.
5. Wilson, Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, ii. pp. 220, 250, Figs. 144, 153.