Macalistek — Temair Brcg : Remains and Traditions of Tara. 387 



be peppered with objects of Late Minoan art bearing spirals. Even a few 

 painted potsherds would be sufficient. But there is no such thing. The 

 media through which the spiral patterns were ex liypothesi carried to the North 

 have totally disappeared. When this difficulty first occurred to me, 1 found 

 refuge in the idea that they might have been woven on textiles, which had 

 been bartered to the native tribes in exchange fur their tin or their umber. 

 But to this too easy way out of the difficulty 1 soon saw a fatal objection. 

 The curves of the spirals are not suitable for the ornamentation of textiles. 

 When they were applied thereto, they became rectilinear, and the "Creek 

 fret" pattern survives to show us what the influence of textile work on the 

 spiral pattern has been. Had woven garments carried the spiral patterns to 

 the north, we ought to have found the Greek fret at New Grange; but that 

 motive of decoration nowhere appears in Northern Europe before the La Tene 

 period. 



In short, the goods bartered with the northern barbarians in exchange 

 for their tin and their amber were not treasures of Aegean art, but cattle, 

 the one thing which the rude barbarians could appreciate, and the usual 

 medium of exchange before the invention of coinage. Therefore, if we are 

 to suppose that the barbarians acquired the spiral patterns from the Aegean 

 merchants, we must once more postulate the enthusiastic trading missionary, 

 who taught them how to draw spirals in the intervals of business. I for one 

 cannot believe in that engaging altruist. I prefer to believe that the spirals 

 at New Grange are not derived from the Aegean at all, but that they are an 

 independent growth. 



If so, they must have had a meaning. People in the cultural stage of 

 the builders of New Grange do not cultivate "art I'm art's sake." Some 

 simple religious or magical significance must lie hidden in these patterns. 

 And after what has been said in the preceding pages it is nut difficult to see 

 generally what that meaning is likely to be. The admirable photographs in 

 Mr. Coffey's book on New Grange shew us that the chief motives are lozenges, 

 spirals, zigzags, triangles, and an oval with two or three holes in a line along 

 its major axis (tig. 4 a). There are one or two other figures, such as the 

 well-known "palm-leaf," which occur once or twice only ; but those enume- 

 rated are the materials of which the greal majority of the patterns are 

 composed. We may see in the lozenges, tin' head of the bull-roarer; in the 

 spirals, an attempt to express the motion of the hand in keeping the bull- 

 roarer in motion, and thus a symbol of the rotating bull roarer; in the 

 zigzags, the lightnings of the thunder-god; in the triaugles, the axe or the 

 hammer of the thunder-god. The oval with dots I explain a- a variety of 

 the bull-roarer known as a "buzz" in America, where it is used 1>\ several 



