REMAINS OF THE PRE-NORMAN PERIOD 
freestone, very loose in design, angular and disconnected, evidently 
belonging to the close of the period. Over the porch of the vicarage 
at Brigham is a head which bears a figure entangled in and grasping 
interlaced coils which are now too mutilated to show the dragon’s head 
if there was one, but this is the completed type of the dragonesque 
subject—Christ, the seed of the woman, wrestling with and overcoming 
the serpent. 
The idea is carried out in a shaft recovered in 1900 from the Nor- 
man foundations of Great Clifton church, where there is an echo of the 
Gosforth saint’s tomb in the two dragons surmounted by two small 
human figures, a resemblance so striking as to suggest imitation ; while 
at the foot of the shaft is a much ruder figure, with nimbus and long 
tobes, holding and held by the coils of a serpent. Above this is a great 
SocxeT Stone, Brigham Cuurcu. Cross-HEAD, BricHam VICARAGE. 
dragon with an unmistakable wolf’s head, and a little plaited snake with 
a human head, the tempter of Eve—another form of the symbolism in 
Dacre cross. 
The most perfect example of this conflict with the dragon is the 
lintel at St. Bees church, representing St. Michael with helmet, sword 
and shield fighting the dragon. Finely designed frets are on either side. 
This must belong to quite the end of the pre-Norman series, if not to 
the twelfth century, when however Cumberland was not yet really 
Normanized. There are many bits of twelfth century interlacing, as at 
Brigham and Great Salkeld, in the capitals and details of architecture 
which show a continuous tradition of these earlier types, and in some 
slabs and fonts there are similar survivals which ought not to be omitted 
in a review of early Cumberland art. 
The curious slab at Cross Canonby with the cable-stemmed cross, 
zigzag ornament as in some Welsh stones, and rude figure, is difficult to 
class. ‘The ‘ gridiron’ over the figure’s head has been thought to show 
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