Manchester Memoirs, Vol. Ixvi. (1922), No. 3 13 



writes Sir Hercules Read, " that some, like that of Guilden 

 Morden, were crests of helmets. The boar frequently occurs 

 on British and Gaulish coins of the period and examples have 

 been found as far off as Gurina and Transylvania. In the 

 same field at Hounslow was found the bronze wheel with four 

 spokes and a diameter of i^ inches like another from Col- 

 chester. A wheel of the same character belongs to the Stan- 

 wick find, but has a rectangular loop at the back ; and all may 

 have been connected with sun-worship. It was more probably 

 as a religious symbol than as a survival of the chariot wheel 

 or a form of currency, that the wheel occurs on the coinage of 

 Gaul and Britain " (3, 87 et seq.+ 135-6). 



CuchuUin rolls a wheel and throws an apple when crossing 

 the Plain of Ill-luck on his way to the dun of Scathach (14, 74). 

 The Gauls had a pig-god called Moccus (Scottish muc, a pig, 

 Irish mucc, Welsh moch). ''The wild boar, too," says Anwyl, 

 '' was a favourite emblem of Gaul, and there is extant a bronze 

 figure of a Celtic Diana riding on a boar's back " (1, 30). 



Of special interest is Tacitus's reference to the pig-worship- 

 ping Baltic amber-traders, the ^^styans. In his work on the 

 Germans he writes of this people (chap, xlv.) : — 



'' In their dress and manners they resemble the Suevians 

 (Swedes), but their language has more affinity to the dialect 

 of Britain. They worship the mother of the gods. The 

 figure of a wild boar is the symbol of their superstition ; and 

 he, who has that emblem about him, thinks himself secure 

 even in the thickest ranks of the enemy, without any need 

 of arms, or any other mode of defence." 



Evidently the boar was the son of the Sow mother goddess 

 who was connected with amber as the British boar god of the 

 Witham shield was with coral. Freyja, the northern goddess, 

 gave origin to amber, gold, etc., by weeping tears that coagu- 

 lated. The Swedes made in February, the month sacred to 

 her, boars of paste which they ate. 



Louis Siret has shown (17, 290) that the Easterners who 

 settled in Spain before the introduction of bronze working and 

 extracted ores from its mines imported amber from the Baltic 

 and jet from Britain. They worshipped the mother goddess 

 as did the ^styans. Among the peoples who acquired the 

 art of navigation from them were those known later as the 

 Pictones. These seafarers and traders colonized Orkney and 

 Shetland and passed thence to the mainland of Scotland. They 

 were known as the Picts. Professor W. J. Watson has shown 



