REMAINS OF THE PRE-NORMAN PERIOD 
The great standing cross at Gosforth is of red sandstone, a monolith 
14§ feet high from the pedestal, which is a rectangular block of three 
steps. The lower part of the shaft is cylindrical and measures 40 inches 
round the bottom ; for about 4 feet up it is plain and then breaks into 
a peculiar interlaced pattern, seen elsewhere on Scandinavian monuments, 
and thought by Mr. Calverley to be in- 
tended for a conventional representation 
of the intertwined branches of a tree, as 
if the whole pillar were meant for a great 
Tree of Life or the Yggdrasil Tree of 
northern mythology. Higher up, as at 
Penrith, the round shaft is cut away 
into four faces containing figure-subjects 
which with all the study that has been 
given to them are only partly inter- 
preted. 
We can see at any rate that dis- 
tinctly Christian emblems are curiously 
mixed up with emblems as distinctly 
heathen. The wheel-cross at the summit 
of the monument is a Christian symbol, 
and each of its four arms contains the 
Triquetra, often used in Irish art to sig- 
nify the Trinity. On three sides out of 
four great dragons attack this emblem ; 
on the fourth the dragon, winged but 
bound with many ring-fetters, appears 
to be flying from the cross-head, as if 
the artist meant to suggest the conflict 
of good and evil. On this last side, to 
the north, there is nothing more but 
two horsemen with spears, the lower 
one upside down. In such conven- § 
tional art the group should mean a & 
fight, with the fall of the one who is 
reversed; it may represent some phase 
of the conflict of good and evil, or the 
actual fight in which the person com- 
memorated lost his life or won his 
renown, though the warriors of the 
pre-Norman time did not usually fight on horseback—they were a 
mounted infantry ; and the rest of the figures on the cross are evidently 
not portraits but symbols. 
The eastern side shows a crucifix of a somewhat Irish type—the 
Christ dwarfed like the figures on the Monasterboice cross and elsewhere 
in Irish art, and standing in a frame of cable-moulding. Beneath are 
Longinus the soldier, piercing His side with the spear, and Mary Magda- 
267 
CruciFixion, GosrortH Cross, 
