510 Riide Stone Antiquities of Brittany. By Miss Russell. 



than those found on hard rocks, having been apparently scooped 

 or scratched out. Those of Selkirkshire, which are far too 

 shallow to have anything to do with splitting the stone, the work- 

 men say must have been made by a single blow. The scattered 

 holes are generally deeper, and round. Whatever these may 

 mean, I observe a specimen of North American Indian picture- 

 writing, a circle followed by a line of four dots, the whole mean- 

 ing four days, which is so very like some Scotch rock-cuttings, as 

 to suggest that the lines may have been dials or calendars, even 

 if sometimes sham ones, as people have sun-dials for ornament. 

 The concentric circles mean the sun in the picture-writing of the 

 Ojibbeway Indians, as they do in the rock-cutting of the East 

 Indies. However, neither the Circle nor the Cup-and-King 

 cutting, whether the latter means the Sun-Eye or not, seems to 

 occur in Brittany. We saw the mark which may or may not be 

 the horns of Kneph, or Amnion, on the large water jars in the 

 shops at two different places ; the horns were upside down in 

 both cases, unlike those known to Mr Miln ; but that does not 

 seem to matter. The lines round the jars,however,were plain, and 

 probably only marked a junction in the pottery. That spiral cut- 

 tings are found on rocks or stones in Brittany seems to be altogether 

 a mistake as far as I could learn. The chief pattern on the Gavr 

 Innis slabs — the whole internal surface of the dolmen is sculp- 

 tured — is the horse shoe indefinitely multiplied. It is only of 

 late years that a sort of window has been excavated through the 

 overlying mound, so that the carving can be seen by daylight. 



I do not consider the horns of Kneph necessarily very old, 

 either in Brittany or Britain, that is, not as left by a primeval 

 emigration from the east. 



The devotion which led certain Egyptian monks to the far 

 west — for they are recorded not only in the Lerins Islands of the 

 Mediterranean, but in Ireland — does not imply that they were 

 free from the strange beliefs, or at anyrate symbolism, of the 

 Gnostics, of whom there are known to have been more than fifty 

 sects ; and in fact there are at least two queer statues represent- 

 ing an Ammon-Christ on British Celtic ground. Also, the 

 division of the day and night into twenty-four hours is as old as 

 ancient Egypt, and a wall-painting engraved by Sir Gardiner 

 Wilkinson, of the personified Heavens, represents the Hours by 

 a line of twelve white and twelve black circles. And it is possible 

 the lines of holes may be of later introduction than the symbols 



