[86]. Six of these bronze objects were found at Lisnacragher Bay, Parish of Braid, County Antrim, in 1868, along with a sword-sheath of bronze decorated in that peculiar style of Celtic Art of which examples have been given in Lecture III. They seem to have been mountings of the ends of spear-shafts, and two of them still retained part of the wood of the shaft.—Proc. Soc. Antiq. Lond., 1868, Second Series, vol. iv. p. 256.
[87]. I am indebted to Mr. James W. Cursiter, Kirkwall, for the extracts from the Orcadian newspaper in which the finding of these coins was recorded. A denarius of the reign of Antoninus (Pius ?), is noted in the issue of Nov. 26, 1870. On Dec. 10, one of Antoninus, and one of Vespasian, having a sow on the reverse. On Jan. 21, 1871, one of Hadrian, with Clementina on the reverse, and a female figure holding a paterá in the extended right hand, and a spear in the left. A jotting by Mr. Petrie on the rough plan of the Broch also mentions “two coins of Crispina and bone dice found here.”
[88]. Dice of this form have not been otherwise found in Scotland. They are occasionally found in Viking graves in Norway.
[89]. An Egyptian weaving-comb of wood from the tombs at Thebes is in the Museum. Its teeth are differently formed, but the principle of its use is evidently the same. Rich figures a long-handled weaving-comb from a tomb in Thebes, which is now in the British Museum.
[90]. Ovid (Met. vi. 55) gives a minute description of the process of weaving as follows—
“Tela jugo vincta est; stamen secernit arundo
Inseritur medium radiis subtemen acutis
Quod digiti expediunt, atque inter stamina ductum
Percusso feriunt insecti pectine dentes.”
Also (Fasti, iii. 820) he says that Pallas was the inventress of weaving, and adds—