REMAINS OF THE PRE-NORMAN PERIOD 
only with plaits of three strands. This is a step towards what we 
must next visit, the Giant’s Grave at Penrith and the Gosforth cross. 
The Giant’s Grave at Penrith as arranged 
at present has four hogbacks, and two crosses 
which are highly developed types of this 
second St. Bridget’s monument. Both are of 
light grey sandstone. The western pillar 
stands 135 inches in height from the ground 
and measures a little over 5 feet in girth at 
about 3 feet from the bottom. For the 
height of 814 inches it is 
cylindrical; above that it has 
a band of interlacing, and 
higher up it is cut away into 
four flat panels with round 
bottoms filled with interlac- 
ing ; the head is small and 
broken but never had any 
wheel. The eastern pillar 
is 126 inches high, for 
61 inches cylindrical, above 
which are similar panels 28 
inches in height, like those 
on the western pillar, and 
filled with similar ring-plaits ; Wh 
but a cast of the western Tue Seconp Suart, Sr. Brivcer’s, BrcKERMET. 
panel seen in a side light 
(necessary on account of the weathering which has nearly effaced 
the pattern) shows figures of a man intertwined with the plaits, another 
figure bending over him, and a beast above with head turned over 
its back. On the northern panel can be traced a stag. The head 
is free-armed, with a cross whose arms project through or from a 
ring with a boss in the middle of it, all carved in relief on the 
face; and the lower limb of the bas-relief cross seems to have a 
boss in it, and to be in fact another example of the ‘lorgnette.’ So 
that as we have a survival of the Cumbrian school in the spirals of 
the Giant’s Thumb with its wheel-head, we have a different survival 
of the same school in the Giant’s Grave with its free-armed head, in 
spite of later characteristics in the interlacing and figures (of which more 
presently). This gives us a clue to the place of the Penrith group, 
which stands on the brink of the fully developed Irish-Norse as seen at 
Gosforth. 
The hogbacks or recumbent coped shrine-tombs are, like so many 
elsewhere, houses of the dead, with roofs carved to look like tiles and 
walls ornamented to represent ideas attaching to death and resurrection 
or life beyond the grave. One has spirals and plaits, another a fretted 
interlacing, all suggesting the dragonesque ‘ worm-twists ’ of which the 
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