Mr. Tate on the Celtic Town at Greaves Ash. 307 



together ; Saxon beads were mostly made of terra cotta, or 

 of earthenware, encrusted with vitreous material. Professor 

 Buckman has shown,* by analysis, that lead is absent from 

 ancient British but present in Roman beads, and that the 

 latter are therefore more decomposed than the former. Tried 

 by this test, the Ghesters bead is ancient British, for it is not 

 in any degree decomposed, but is in remarkable preservation. 

 It is a valuable addition to the Celtic antiquities of North- 

 umberland, for, few beads have been noticed in the county. 

 One was found in the railway cutting near Chathill, of a light 

 green colour, ornamented with a wavy line of yellow paste ; 

 another was taken from a cist at North Charlton, which 

 contained also a contracted skeleton of a man, a bronze 

 dagger, and a Celtic urn ; and a third, similar to that from 

 Chathill, has recently been picked up in a field near to 

 Reaveley. Occurring for the most part, singly, these beads 

 seem to have been used as amulets rather than as personal or- 

 naments. Indeed the ordinary material for such ornaments, 

 among the Celts of Northumberland Avas gagates — jet or 

 cannel coal.f Traditions of the ancient use of the glass beads 

 may be embodied in their popular names of adder, serpent, 

 and Druid beads. Pliny tells us, that magical arts were 

 cultivated in Britain and that obligations were due to Tiberius 

 for putting down the Druids and ending their monstrous 

 rites. The glass bead appears to have been the charm called 

 by the Druids the Ovum Anguijium, which they represented 

 as ejected by serpents into the air by their hissing.J 



Glass Armlet. — The fragment of translucent glass — Plate 

 8, Jig. 7 — found in a hut at Greaves Ash, is a portion of an 

 armlet ; and it is an interesting addition to our earlier antiqui- 

 ties. Such relics are said to occur in Ireland, but they have 

 not before been noticed in England. Two perfejst specimens, 

 however, formed of the same material — a kind of white opal- 

 ised glass, are in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries in 

 Scotland, and help us to determine the character and fix the 

 age of our relic. One of these armlets was found in 1799 in 

 Flanders Moss, Perthshire, and it is 2| inches in diameter ; 

 the other, which is 3 inches in diameter, was in 1789 taken 

 out of a cairn at Boghead, Kintore in Aberdeenshire, and, it 



* Archaeological Journal, vol. vii. p. 337- 



t Fibulje, or large buttons made of cannel coal, and polished, were found in 

 a Celtic sepulchre at Tosson, near Rothbury, and necklaces of the same 

 material in a Celtic cist, at Humbleton, near Wooler. 



1 Pliny, lib. xxix. c. 12, and lib. xxx. c. 4. 



Uu 



