56 



CELTIC ORNAMENT 



CELTS 



the death of Sertorius (72 B.C.) that they began to 

 adopt the Roman language, dress, and manners. 

 The chief cities were Legobriga, the capital ; 

 Bilbilis, the birthplace of Martial ; and Numantia, 

 destroyed by Scipio Africanus after a desperate ten 

 years' resistance, 133 B.C. 



Celtic Ornament, a peculiar development of 

 the system of iron-age decoration prevalent in the 

 British Isles. Its history is divided into two 

 periods by the introduction of Christianity, which 

 engrafted on the older style a number of new ele- 

 ments of decoration brought into the country with 

 the manuscripts of the gospels and psalters, and 

 supplied new forms for the display of these ele- 

 ments, such as churches and crosses, shrines, bells, 

 and crosiers. In its pre-Christian stages, ranging 

 approximately from two or three centuries before 

 the Christian era to about the end of the 6th 

 century A.D., it appears principally in connection 

 with the metal mountings of harness and horse- 

 trappings, and on shields, sword-sheaths, mirrors, 

 armlets, and other articles of personal use and 

 ornament. The material is usually bronze, but 

 occasionally silver or gold. The principal charac- 

 teristics of the pre-Christian style are its pre- 

 ference for elliptical curves and divergent spirals ; 

 its use of chased or engraved lines or dots as a 

 diaper in the spaces of the general design in 

 contrast witk other spaces left plain ; its use of 

 repousse work, sometimes in very high relief, at 

 other times in low relief on thin plates riveted 

 on in their places in the general design ; the 

 production of peculiar patterns often in excess- 

 ively high relief in the casting ; and the employ- 

 ment of champ-leve enamels of red, yellow, blue, 

 and green, and settings of coloured vitreous pastes. 

 One of the finest examples of such settings occurs 

 in the decoration of an oval shield of bronze, from 

 the bed of the Thames, ornamented with Celtic 

 patterns in relief, enriched by twenty-seven set- 

 tings of red enamel, kept in their places by small 

 cruciform ornaments of bronze riveted in the centre 

 of each. There are to be seen in the National 

 Museums of London, Edinburgh, and Dublin 

 enamelled shields, sword-sheaths, and ornaments 

 of horse-trappings in bronze, of great beauty 

 and excellence both of design and workmanship, 

 and other articles in bronze, silver, or gold, orna- 

 mented in repousse work or in relief, with or 

 without enamel as an enrichment, found in many 

 parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland, in pagan 

 grave-mounds, in crannogs or lake-dwellings, in 

 earth-houses, in the beds of lakes and rivers, or in 

 casual deposits under the soil for concealment. In 

 a work entitled Horce Ferales, Mr Franks of the 

 British Museum has figured in colours many of the 

 best of these remarkable products of the earliest 

 known process of champ-leve enamelling, and ad- 

 duced evidence to show that it and this peculiar 

 style of Celtic ornament which accompanies it 

 were of indigenous origin, and at this early 

 period peculiar to the British Isles. The re- 

 markable development of Celtic ornament which 

 succeeded the introduction of Christianity was 

 characterised by the association of interlaced 

 work and fretwork Avith the elliptical curves 

 and divergent spirals which up to that time 

 had been the principal elements of Celtic design. 

 To these were occasionally added a step-like 

 pattern, and diapers of the Z and I shaped patterns 

 sometimes seen in Chinese decoration. The inter- 

 laced work was elaborated with excessive care into 

 patterns, presenting an infinite variety of combina- 

 tions pleasing to the eye, and capable of being 

 harmoniously treated in colours. It was some- 

 times a simple ribbon-like band, which might be 

 plain, or divided in the middle, or divided into 

 three by lines close to the margin; or the inter- 



lacing band might be replaced by an elongated- 

 animal form with its feet, its tail, and its top-knot 

 drawn out to interlace with each other, and with 

 the corresponding parts of other lacertine forms, 

 the whole forming a diaper of quaintly expressed 

 and complicated construction. The fretwork was 

 also elaborated with much ingenuity into most 

 complicated patterns, a special feature of the style 

 being its partiality for diagonal frets and patterns 

 produced by combinations of oblique lines, in direct 

 contrast to the fretwork of Greek and Roman art, 

 which was essentially rectangular. The elliptical 

 curves and divergent spirals of the older style, 

 which had received their only expression in the 

 solid forms proper to metal- work, were found to be 

 equally capable of adaptation to the purposes of 

 the illuminator, and by a similar process of com- 

 bination and elaboration they also produced 

 patterns and diapers of inexhaustible variety and 

 beauty. A special feature of Celtic decoration 

 was its tendency to divide the surface to be 

 decorated into a series of panels, each of which 

 was treated as a separate whole. The finest 

 examples of Celtic ornament are unquestionably 

 to be found in the grandly illuminated pages of 

 manuscript copies of the Gospels, from the 7th 

 to the 9th century. Of these the most famous for 

 the elaborate nature of their ornament and the 

 beauty of their colouring are the Book of Kells 

 in Trinity College, Dublin, and the Lindisfarne 

 Gospels in the British Museum. Of enamelled 

 metal-work in this period there may be mentioned 

 the Ardagh Chalice, perhaps the most elaborate 

 and beautiful of all the products of Celtic art, the 

 Lismore Crosier, and the Monymusk Shrine. Ex- 

 amples of filigree-work, and chasing or engraving 

 in gold and silver of the highest excellence are 

 found in the Tara Brooch, the Ardagh Brooches, 

 the Rogart Brooches, and the Hunterston Brooch, 

 the Shrine of St Patrick's Bell, the Shrine of 

 St Manchan, and the Cross of Cong. The approx- 

 imate dates of the metal-work of the highest excel- 

 lence range from the 10th to the 12th century. 

 For sculpture in stone it is only necessary to refer 

 generally to the incised slabs and sculptured crosses 

 of Scotland and Ireland, ranging from the 9th to 

 the 12th centuries, the special characteristics of 

 their decoration being the same as those of the 

 manuscripts and metal-work already mentioned. 

 For illustrations, see BROOCH, CROSS, SCULP- 

 TURED STONES. See further Kemble's Horce 

 Ferales, edited by Latham and Franks (1863); 

 Anderson's Scotland in Early Christian and 

 Pagan Times (1881-83); Westwood's Palceo- 

 graphia Sacra Pictoria (1845), and Foe-similes of 

 the Miniatures and Ornaments of Anglo-Saxon and 

 Irish Manuscripts (1868); O'Neills Fine Arts 

 of Ancient Ireland (1863), and Sculptured Crosses 

 of Ancient Ireland (1857); Stuart's Sculptured 

 Stones of Scotland (Spalding Club, 1856 and 1867) ; 

 and Miss Stokes's Early Christian Art in Ireland 

 (1887), and Six Months in the Apennines (1892), 

 in which last work Celtic Christian art is largely 

 derived from the Byzantine art of Italy. 



Celts. The Celtic nations of antiquity had no 

 comprehensive name. Those of the Continent were 

 called Galli by the Romans, and less usually Celtce. 

 The Greek equivalents for these terms were Galatai 

 or Galatse, and Keltoi or Celti. But neither Greeks 

 nor Romans regarded the British Isles as belonging 

 to the Celtic world. They were situated outside 

 it, and lay over against it in the sea; still it 

 was known to men like Julius Caesar that certain 

 portions of Britain were inhabited by Celts in the 

 sense of Galli or Belgse. 



Celtic ethnology involves many difficult questions, 

 and we shall speak of them in this article mostly 

 according to the more palpable distinctions of speech j 



