A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 
execution is generally poor, as sculpture ; but its feeling often makes it 
picturesque, and the quaint conceits which the artists tried to embody 
make it often highly interesting. 
ScuLPTURED STONES: CELTIC PERIOD 
The sculpture of the Britons before the time when Christianity 
brought new life to art from Italian sources, through the converted 
Anglo-Saxons, is thought to have been mainly or altogether incised— 
that is to say, not carved in relief, but 
sketched in grooves and scratches on the 
stone. It would not be safe to say that all 
incised stones are pre-Saxon, or we should 
be able to point to one slab as an evidence 
of a Christian church at Aspatria before 
680 a.p. Still this Aspatria slab, now in 
two fragments walled into the vestry of the 
church, bears some resemblance to early 
Welsh monuments, such as the well-known 
stone of Macutrenus in the British Museum; 
but it is more like a series of incised monu- 
ments of which the age is doubtful, such 
as the shaft at Ecclesfield near Leeds, the 
stones at Adel near Leeds, the cross at 
Lanivet (Cornwall), and especially a slab 
from Gillespie (Glenluce) now in the 
Edinburgh Antiquarian Museum. Incised 
stones of much later than our pre-Saxon 
date are found in Scandinavia, and the 
svastika or fylfot on the Aspatria slab 
might be thought to connect it with 
eleventh century Scandinavian influence ; 
but the svastika was used in Britain at all 
periods, and the Scandinavian stone, for 
WAS example, at Rosas, Njudingen, Sweden, 
Tcrsrp Suan, AcpaTRIA. figured by Stephens in O/d-Northern Runic 
Monuments, resembles this only in rudeness. 
The group of British incised stones just mentioned seems to be con- 
nected with a type which is certainly pre-Saxon, though the date must 
be left undecided. We have no other stones at present known in 
Cumberland of this type, and no other sculpture which can be safely 
pointed out as a relic of the church of St. Kentigern and the indepen- 
dent Cumbri. 
ANGLIAN 
The Bewcastle cross is our finest pre-Norman monument in Cum- 
berland, and judging by its art and inscription it is the oldest, The 
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