620TH ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING, HELD IN COMMITTEE ROOM B, THE CENTRAL HALL GILBERT R. REDGRAVE, ESQ., Assoc. INST.C.E., IN THE CHAIR. The Minutes of the previous Meeting were read, confirmed and signed, and the HON. SECRETARY announced the following Elections: H. 0. Weller, Esq., and E. Luff Smith, Esq., as Members; and Miss Mary R. Fleming, M.D., Arthur J. S. Preece, Esq., Bernard S. M. Blythe, Esq., and Professor Addison Hogue, of Lee and Washington University, U.S.A., as Associates. 66 The CHAIRMAN then introduced the Right Rev. Bishop G. Forrest Browne, D.D., to deliver his lecture on Monumental Art in Early England, Caledonia and Ireland," illustrated by lantern slides. MONUMENTAL ART IN EARLY ENGLAND, CALEDONIA AND IRELAND. By the Right Rev. Bishop G. FORREST BROWNE, D.D. (With lantern illustrations.) THE NOTES OF THE LECTURE. HE early Anglian Monuments are graceful and aspiring in form. Their ornamentation is rich in the intricate patterns.of interlacement, and beautiful in the flowing scrolls of arabesques based on the idea of the tree of life; while scenes from Holy Scripture and the earliest Ecclesiastical History are remarkably well rendered. The inscriptions are general, and run to very considerable lengths. They are indicative of personal affection for deceased persons. They are made supremely interesting by being incised in Anglian Runes, in which script we have had preserved to us the earliest piece of English prose and the earliest piece of English verse, as they were originally produced. The origin of the beautiful vine-scrolls, with birds and other creatures feeding on the grapes, we trace to Byzantine or Near Eastern ornamentation, as set forth on the ivory chair of Maximianus, Archbishop of Ravenna, 546-556, who consecrated the Church of St. Vitale there, and whose name appears in the great mosaic of Justinian and his Court in that church. The chair is covered with examples of the vine-scroll, and its two front uprights may well have suggested the actual shape of the very graceful shaft at Bewcastle. Our earliest Christian art was no doubt brought to us by Benedict Biscop and by Wilfrith in the second generation of our Christian existence; and Wilfrith, who travelled his dioceses with a company of persons, including masons, no doubt set up altars and stone crosses at places where he preached the Gospel to our pagan ancestors, where the itinerant priests would come from time to time to celebrate the sacraments; and his masons ornamented them with patterns from Italy. The High Crosses of Ireland are less graceful in form and less early in date than the corresponding monuments in the northern parts of England. They are much more numerous, as are also the tombstones. This is mainly due to two far-reaching facts. Ireland has not been conquered, as Anglo-Saxon England was, by a dominant race which threw down the religious monuments as the work of a superstitious people, and built solid churches on the sites of unsubstantial places of worship, burying in their foundations the great crosses they had smashed. And Ireland has not suffered from the universal occupation of ancient sites for agricultural and residential purposes. Such vast collections of sculptured stones and tombstones as the Irish have at Clonmacnois have no parallel remaining in England. Another reason for the preservation of the High Crosses has been put forward-they are so massive that it would be a serious task to smash them. Ireland had one finely aspiring shaft, the Cross of Tuam. It is broken in pieces. The ornamentation of the Irish crosses has its panels of interlacements, as the English crosses have, but the main feature is the crowding into panels as many human figures as the artist can fit into the space (much as their manuscript treasure, the Book of Kells, is spoiled). There is no indication of a love like that of the Angles for the endless developments of the arabesques of the tree of life. Inscriptions on the High Crosses are no part of the purpose of their erection or their ornamentation. We have not the interesting details of the Anglian tombstones. The Ogam script, with which we deal in the Caledonian part of our consideration, exists in greater abundance in Ireland than in all other parts of these islands put together, and was no doubt borrowed from Ireland when it is used elsewhere. But we do not find it in connection with the Irish monuments we have considered, and we must attribute it to an earlier race than the crossbuilders, or to the time of an earlier basis of worship than theirs. We enter upon an entirely new series of questions when we enter upon the corresponding monumental remains of early Caledonia. We have there large numbers of standing stone slabs, with, on one side, crosses wrought with elaborate and intricate interlacements, accompanied by dragons and other creatures knotted up and fettered by the power of the Cross; and on the other side of the slab crowds of horsemen, hounds, various animals, and, constantly recurring, one or more of three unique symbols, called respectively the "elephant," the "crescent" and the "spectacles.' The "elephant," which, like the other two, is of very frequent recurrence, has all the appearance of being drawn originally by someone who had only glanced bastily at an elephant once, when its trunk happened to be thrown back. The "crescent," with the beautiful pins through it jointed at an angle, is like the golden ornament of the head of a king. The "spectacles," again, with beautiful jointed pins through the connecting links, are exactly like the great circular buttons on either side of the upper part of the royal robe, with fastenings made safe with the pins. These circular buttons and their ornamentation are exactly like golden buttons found by Schlieman in old Mycena. Some writers trace them all to sun worship. These were probably the "figures," "marked out with iron pricks," which the Roman soldiers gazed at on the bodies of the "dying Pict," as the poet Claudian tells, A.D. 400, transferred by stencil plates to memorial and boundary stones when the Christian preachers clothed the half-naked Pict. Unlike the Anglian and the Hibernian stones, the whole of these Pictish stones are silent, with one exception. On the other hand, there was for a short time an outburst of Ogam inscriptions in one part of Caledonia, probably due to the missionary work of a Scot, who went to Ireland to study and came back to work among his own countrymen as a bishop in Buchan, having, no doubt, in his train some attendant who knew and could cut the Ogam script, and did so cut his master's name. Accordingly, the Annals of Ulster tell us under the year 669 Itarnan died among the Picts." The monuments of the Scots in Argyleshire are of an Irish order. Lantern slides shown by the Right Rev. Bishop G. Forrest Browne in illustration of the Early Monumental Art of England, Ireland, and Caledonia. EARLY ENGLAND. The Bewcastle Cross, Cumberland, A.D. 670.-Three faces; interlacement; figure of Our Lord; the Runic alphabet (Futhork). The Ruthwell Cross, Dumfries, ? A.D. 685.-The Cross; washing the Feet; Latin inscription; Runic inscription. Jedburgh sculpture. The crosses at Sandbach, Cheshire. Tombstones with Runes.-Thornhill, Yorks, two; Hartlepool, two. IRELAND. High Crosses.-Castle Dermot; Monasterboíce, two, a.d. 924; Kells (street). Tombstones.-Odran, Clonmacnois, A.D. 994; Colgen, Lismore, A.D. 850; Martin, Lismore, A.D. 875. CALEDONIA. Monumental Slabs.-Aberlemno, Forfar, four; Meigle, Perth; Rossie, Dundee. Inscriptions. St. Vigean's, Forfar; the Ogam alphabet (bethluisnion); St. Dogmael's, Cardigan (Wales); Brandsbutt, Inverurie Newton, Aberdeen. DISCUSSION. The CHAIRMAN said he thought he was voicing the opinion of the meeting when he expressed the great pleasure with which he had listened to the valuable lecture they had just heard, with the excellent illustrations of the interesting monuments described by Bishop Forrest Browne. He had often been impressed with the wonderful resemblance between the interlacing ornaments so freely used in Lombardic architecture and the sculptured work of the early British crosses, and they had heard how this resemblance was accounted for by the Lecturer. The fact was new to him that there was such a great difference in age between the Northumbrian crosses and the stone crosses of Ireland and Scotland. It would seem from the dates, historically fixed by the learned Bishop, that the English crosses ante-dated the others by upwards of 200 years. The ingenuity shown by Bishop Browne in deciphering the Runes and Ogam inscriptions was very remarkable, and his explanations gave great interest to the beautiful photographs they had seen. He understood that there were gentlemen present who had devoted much attention to the study of these monuments, and he would therefore request them to take part in the discussion which was to follow. Mr. ROUSE said :-The Ogam characters are at least as old as the Roman domination of Britain, for at the Reading Museum you may see them, as I have done, inscribed on a monument that was dug up from Silchester, an entirely Roman city, which bears not a trace of Saxon occupation. The monument is a cone with a rough base, in all about a yard high, up which, across and on either side of a long upright line, runs the inscription; and this was clearly read by Professor Rhys as the name of a chieftain, mic, or son of, another chieftain. If the Druids, as Bishop Browne says, used the Ogam characters as signs with their hands before they wrote them, we can understand how Julius Caesar imagined that they did not write at all, but imparted all their knowledge to their disciples by word of mouth lest it should leak out to the mass of the people. In Cornwall one meets with still older monuments of Christianity than the beautiful Runic crosses reproduced, described and deciphered for us by Bishop Browne. At St. Colombs, a village called after Columba, beside its old parish church I have seen the head of a stone completely cut out in the form of the Greek letter X, the first in the name Christos, surrounded with a circle, and again a broad stone post, about 8 feet high, stated to be more ancient, with a broad X near the top of it; and I learnt in the neighbourhood that there are a good number of stones so carved in Cornwall, and that they are believed to have been set up as rallying marks for listeners to the Gospel of Christ and the Word of God preached |