Fig. 106.—Form of the Bronze Plates found with the Mirror at Balmaclellan (26 inches in length).
At Mount Batten, near Plymouth, a series of graves were discovered in 1865,[[62]] which presented phenomena of a very peculiar character. They were pits 4 or 4½ feet in depth, one foot of which only was soil, the remaining three feet being sunk in the disintegrated surface of the underlying rock. They were very numerous, sometimes close together and irregular in form, and had mostly been refilled with the materials removed in making them. They contained fragments of pottery of black and yellow ware, and wheel-made. Some fragments of glass vessels, portions of iron implements, among which were a pair of shears, bronze rings and fibulæ, and jointed armlets of bronze, with a knife or dagger in a sheath of thin bronze, were also found. But the most interesting part of the discovery was the circular plate of a bronze mirror (Fig. [107]), 8 inches in diameter, which lay on its face at the bottom of one of the graves. It is a very thin plate of bronze, with a rolled edging. The back is ornamented with three circular engraved patterns of spirals formed of the same peculiar curves, converging and diverging, the spaces between the lines forming the curves being filled with hatching. So closely do the patterns resemble those on the collar-like object from Balmaclellan, and so similar is the style of the work, that the conclusion is unavoidable that the two objects belong to the same school of art, and cannot be very far apart in time.
Fig. 107.—Bronze Mirror found in a grave at Mount Batten, Plymouth (8 inches in diameter).
Another mirror, which is almost precisely similar in form and ornamentation, was found in 1833 at Trelan Bahow,[[63]] in the parish of St. Keverne, Cornwall. In the course of the construction of a new road a group of graves was discovered. Each grave was formed of six slabs set on edge, two forming each side of the grave, and one at each end. They were from two to three feet under the surface, and covered with large stones. In one of the cists, apparently with the remains of a female, there were found the bronze mirror almost perfect, some rings of bronze or brass, fragments of fibulæ, and other personal ornaments, and several beads of variegated glass. The mirror is circular, 6 inches in diameter, with a looped handle 2½ inches in length. The back of the mirror plate has a marginal ornament of triangular spaces alternately plain, and filled with short parallel lines struck by a punch. Across the central line of the mirror are two circles enclosing smaller circles and curvilinear spaces alternately plain, and filled with punched lines in a style similar to that of the ornament on the collar-like object from Balmaclellan.
Fig. 108.—Back of a Bronze Mirror found in a grave at Birdlip, near Gloucester (10⅝ inches in diameter).
Another mirror of the same character, found at Birdlip on the edge of the Cottiswold Hills, near Gloucester, in 1879,[[64]] exhibits the same style of ornamentation. Three cists were discovered in a group, containing skeletons placed with their feet to the south. The first and third were apparently adult males, and with them no manufactured objects were found. The second was apparently a female. On the face of the skeleton was placed a large bronze bowl, 9 inches in diameter, inverted; and among the other contents of the cist were a smaller bowl of bronze, 4 inches in diameter, a harp-shaped fibula of silver plated with gold, a bracelet and four rings of brass, a key-handle, a knife-handle terminating in the head of an animal, a string of large beads of jet and amber, and a mirror made of a massive bronze plate, weighing 38¼ ounces. The back of the mirror (Fig. [108]), which is of a slightly oval form, measures 10⅝ inches in its greatest, and 9¾ inches in its least, diameter, and is beautifully ornamented with a triple scroll-like pattern of flowing curvilinear spaces filled with hatchings of short lines in chequers, or groups disposed at right angles to each other. The pattern is so managed that the hatched spaces and the plain spaces alternate and form symmetrical arrangements, producing a pleasing effect. At the lower part, where the handle supports the mirror, is a triple arrangement of trumpet-shaped scrolls in relief, enclosing spaces which are similarly decorated. The handle is elegantly formed from a prolongation of the marginal beading of the mirror, which gradually thickens towards the lower margin to trumpet-shaped endings on either side of the handle, which takes the form of a double-loop, drawn out from the marginal bead, and terminating in a ring partly filled by an ornamented disc.
These mirrors all differ in their form and in the composition of the metal from Roman mirrors, and they differ in certain characteristics of their ornament still more widely from the Roman style. But the peculiar characteristics which form the special features of their decoration are identical with those of a large class of objects which we have now learned to recognise by the character of their art as distinctively Celtic.