380 Notes on British and other Coins. By Miss Kussell. 



tacle Ornament, that the Z must be the lightning ; it is always weighted at 

 one end, sometimes with something very like a stone axe. Taking this view 

 the serpent would be a natural symbol of earth, and the fish of water. And 

 since then I have been confirmed in this interpretation, by the rather im- 

 portant passages which Mr Skene quotes in *' Celtic Scotland" about Celtic 

 paganism in Ireland. 



C. S. vol. ii. page 112. <' Besides the objects of nature — the clouds of 

 heaven, the water of the earth, the trees and fountains — in which these gods 

 were supposed to dwell, they seem also to have been adored in the shape of 

 idols. The word in Fiace's Hymn translated ' darkness ' is glossed by ' the 

 worship of idols ;' and the few notices we have of them indicate that they 

 were usually pillar stones. Thus in the Dinnsenchus Magh-Sleacht is said 

 to have been thus called ' because there was the principal idol of Erin, that 

 is the Cromcruach and twelve idols of stone round it, and himself of gold; 

 and he was the god of all the people that possessed Erin till the coming of 

 Padric ' (O'Connor, Script. Hist. Prolegomena, vol. i. p. 22.') and in Cormac's 

 Glossary the word Indelba is glossed as ' the names of the altars of these 

 idols, because they were wont to carve on them the forms of the elements 

 they adored there.' (Cormac's Gloss., Ir. Ar. Soc, p. 94). The gloss adds 

 * verbi gratia, figura solis.' Is it possible this can refer to the cup-markings 

 on stones and rocks.' " 



I see even more in those statements than Mr Skene does ; at least it looks 

 to me as if the latter part of the gloss had been added by a third writer, who 

 did not fully understand what he explained ; that when he says " the meaning 

 of these words is, the image of the sun " he was thinking of the cup and ring 

 cuttings, which are found over great part of the world, while the first com- 

 mentator referred to the symbols, which are almost peculiar to one district of 

 Scotland, and there are found chiefly or entirely on monuments of the early 

 Christian period. 



The representation of the Elements is not necessarily pagan, but if in 

 Ireland it was restricted to the idol-altars, they would naturally enough be 

 destroyed by the early missionaries. 



And here is something very like the Symbols, presumably from the south 

 of England. "Within the border of pearls, .the coin in question has a zig-zag 

 band across the centre, resembling, as the Z often does, the line of the real 

 lightning ; a detached arrow-head of the form of a metal one ; and a cres- 

 cent. With these is an object more like a smaU pair of ram's horns than any- 

 thing else. This again confirms another supposition which had occurred to 

 me, that the spirals of the rock-cuttings, &c., &c., at least the pairs of 

 *' opposed volutes," are the old emblem of divinity, best known from the coins 

 on which Alexander appears as Jupiter Ammon. 



Dr Schlieman was puzzled and interested about them, finding them on one 

 of the stones so curiously like Celtic art which he turned up at Mycenae — he 

 remarks they are the device on the shields of the Amazons. They appear in 

 Egypt, long before the name of Ammon was used, not only as the sign of the 

 ram-headed Kneph, the god of the inundation to which Egypt owes its 

 existence as a nation, but on the sacred boats of the other gods ; and are an 

 intelligible enough rude symbol of power ; though not so happy artistically 

 as the grand human-headed buUs of Assyria, which express the same idea. 



