PRE-NORMAN CROSS-SHAFTS FOUND AT NORBURY. lOt 



of a similar kind, the head of the creature being on the lower 

 part of the panel, which is now defaced. 



The figure-of-eight knot is so common a stock-in-trade of 

 the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon decorative artist that it would be 

 tedious to enumerate the number of sculptured mounments 

 upon which it occurs. 



The interlaced pattern, composed of Stafford knots with an 

 extra cord interwoven through each on the back of shaft 

 No. 2, is a very effective bit of decoration. It occurs elsewhere 

 on sculptured monuments at Ham and Checkley* in Stafford- 

 shire, Glamis in Forfarshire, and Govan near Glasgow. On 

 the fragment of a cross-shaft at Alstonfield in Staffordshire, 

 a modification of this pattern may be seen, in which a pair 

 of twisted cords are introduced in the middle between the knots. 



The interlaced design on the back of shaft No. i belongs 

 to an entirely different kind from those hitherto described, 

 because it is not derived from a plait, but from a device 

 composed of a circular ring combined with a ring having four 

 pointed loops. This device, in its simplest form, is probably 

 of Scandinavian, rather than Celtic, origin. It occurs on the 

 walrus-ivory chessmen from the Island of Lewis,! now in the 

 British Museum, and on some of the Norman fonts of Norfolk, f 

 The pattern on the back of the Norbury cross-shaft No. i 

 is evolved from this device by increasing the number of 

 circular rings and joining the corners of the other rings, which 

 have four pointed loops, so as to make the design continuous 

 when the interlaced rings are repeated in a row one below 

 the other. It is possible that these devices composed of 

 interlaced rings may have had some symbolical meaning! 

 attached to them in the first instance. As far as I know, the 



* G. F. Browne " On Basketwork Figures of Men represented on 

 Sculptured Stones" in Archaologia, vol. 1., p. 287. See also Bishop 

 Browne's paper on the pre-Norman sculjitured stones of Derbyshire in the 

 Journal of the Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, 

 vol. viii., p. 164. 



t Archaologia, vol. xxiv., p. 214. 



X Reliquary for 1902, \\. 119. 



