Latin; some are with a figure on them, some plain,
others richly ornamented. But what is remarkable
about them is, in the first place, they are nearly
all in granite, a material in which nothing was done
from the seventh century down to the fifteenth, as
though the capability of working such a hard
intractable stone had been lost. And, in the second
place, the ornamentation is in the lost art of plaiting,
of the beauty and difficulty of which we can hardly
conceive till we attempt it. There is first the four-
string plait, then that with six, and lastly that with
eight. Then three strings are combined together
in each plait, then split, forming the so-called Stafford
knot; the knot and the plait are worked together;
now a loop is dropped, forming a bold and pleasing
interruption in the pattern. Then a ring is introduced and plaited into the pattern; then chain-work is introduced; in fact, an endless variety is formed, exercising the ingenuity of the artist to the uttermost. It would be an excellent amusement
and occupation for a rainy day in an hotel for the
tourist to set to work upon and unravel the mysteries
of these Celtic knots.
The old interlaced work, or the tradition of it, seems to have lingered on in the glazing of windows, and some very beautiful examples remain in England and in France. Mr. Romilly Allen points out:—
"In Egyptian, Greek, and Roman decorative art the only kind of interlaced work is the plait, without any modification whatever; and the man who discovered how to devise new patterns from a simple plait, by making what I term breaks, laid the foundation of all the wonderfully
