constant
motive), we also find in all their decorations compartments containing
involved patterns of cords or strings knitted or plaited, suggesting
the entrails of animals, which by these hunting people were consulted
as being mysteriously prophetic of approaching events, especially
success or failure in the chase, and impending warlike raids.[102]
There is no other way of accounting for these designs, which are
peculiar to the race, unless we believe they always represent snakes.
(Pl. 15.)

In England much that was characteristic of the style was lost as soon
as the Saxons drove out the Celts, who carried it to Ireland, as may
be seen in the Book of Kells, and the carving of the Harp of Tara, and
the Celtic jewels in the Irish museums; but the interlacing patterns
survived throughout Anglo-Saxon art, and were marvellously ingenious
and beautiful; witness the Durham Book of St. Cuthbert.

We have no Celtic textiles remaining to us, unless some embroidery in
the Marien-Kirche collection at Dantzic may be of that style and time.
This is suggested by its altogether Indo-Chinese and very barbarous
character;[103] and one of the coronation mantles in Bock's
"Kleinodien" is Runic in its peculiar serpent design.

[Illustration: Illumination from the Lindisfarne Gospels, about A.D.
700]

[Illustration: Pl. 16.
Demeter. From a Greek Vase in the British Museum.]

"Judging from their illuminated MSS.," it is said, "the elements
borrowed from textile art by the Celts are plaits, bows, zigzags,
knots, geometrical figures in various symmetrically developed
combinations, crosses, whorls, and lattice-work; next, those taken from
metal work, such as spirals and nail-heads let into borders; thirdly,
simple or composite zoomorphic forms, such as bodies of snakes, birds'
heads on long necks, lizards, dogs, dragons, and the like."[104] They
well understood how to make a pattern by the repetition of objects of
any class.

[Illustration: Pl. 17.
1. Embroidery on a Greek Mantle, third century B.C., from the Tomb
of the Seven Brothers, Crimea.
2. Egyptian Painted and Embroidered Linen. The cone, the bead, the
daisy, the wave, the lotus under water, are all shown on this
fragment.]

[Illustration: Pl. 18.
EGYPTIAN TAPESTRY.
1. Woven and embroidered on a Sleeve. 2. Woven and embroidered. 3.
Painted and embroidered.]

Representations of human figures in embroideries p