Fig. 215.
SCULPTURED STONE.
Greek cross in circle, normal Swastika in
square, and ogee Swastika in quatrefoil.
Ireland.
Fig. 216.
FRAGMENT OF THIN
BRONZE REPOUSSÉ.
Ogee Swastika. Ireland.
Munro, “Lake Dwellings
of Europe,” pl. 124,
figs. 20-22.
Fig. 217.
FRAGMENT OF THIN BRONZE.
Triskelion. Ireland. Munro,
“Lake Dwellings of Europe,”
p. 384, pl. 124, figs. 20-22.
In Scotland, the Newton stone, in the grounds of the Newton House, bears an Ogam inscription, the meaning of which has no bearing upon the subject. But on the upper part of one of its faces appears an inscription, boldly and deeply incised, of forty-four characters arranged horizontally in six lines. These are of so remarkable a type as to have puzzled every philologist and paleographer who has attempted their decipherment. The late Alexander Thomson, esq., of Banchory, Scotland, circulated a photograph and description of this monument among antiquarians with a request for their decipherment of it. Various readings have been given by the learned gentlemen, who have reported it to be Hebrew, Phenician, Greek, Latin, Aryan, Irish, and Anglo-Saxon respectively. Brash[212] gives his opinion that the inscription is in debased Roman letters of a type frequently found in ancient inscriptions, its peculiarities being much influenced by the hardness of the stone at the time of cutting and of the subsequent weather wear of ages. The interest of this monument to us is that the third character in the fourth line is a Swastika. It is indifferently made, the lines do not cross at right angles, two of the ends are curved, and the two others bent at a wider than right angle. There are four characters in the line closely following each other, (see [p. 797].)
The Logie stone, in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, bearing Ogam characters, contains a figure or mark reported by George M. Atkinson as a Swastika.[213]