next form, with terminal cups, a fine specimen was brought to light in the parish of Masham, North Riding of Yorkshire, and most kindly communicated from the Swinton Park Museum, by desire of Mrs. Danby Harcourt, through Mr. Charles Tucker, (No. 18.) This curious gold ornament, weighing 5 oz. 7 dwts. 22 grs., was found near the entrance lodge at Swinton Park, about 1815, scarcely two feet below the surface. Two objects, of analogous description, had been found near Ripon, in 1780, as stated by Gough.[1] Another was discovered in 1773 near the Lizard Point, Cornwall, and similar ornaments have occurred in North Britain; one, found in 1731, stated to have been deposited in an urn, is figured in the Archaeologia, Vol. ii., p. 40, and Reliquiæ Galeanæ, Bibl. Top. Brit. No. 11, part 1, Pl. VI. In the following year two gold ornaments of the same type were found in the mud of a lake in Galloway, drained by order of the Earl of Stair, as also a "bracelet of gold consisting of two circles, very artificially folding or twisting into one another."[2]
It has been conjectured that these ornaments of gold, of which no specimen, I believe, has been discovered in any foreign country, might have served the purpose of a fastening for the mantle or other garment. Some antiquaries have been disposed to assign to them a mystic or sacred import.
Having thus endeavoured to record the discovery of some antiquities, of a very remarkable class, in Britain, generally regarded as almost peculiar to Ireland, I must reserve to a future occasion some notices of certain gold ornaments of other types, equally deserving of careful investigation.
- ↑ Additions to Camden's Brit., vol. iv., p. 231. One of these weighed as much as 9 oz. 10. dwts. Another was exhibited to the Soc. of Antiquaries in 1740, from Sir Hans Sloane's Collection.
- ↑ They were in the possession of the Countess of Stair. See Sir John Clerk's Letters to Gale, May, 1732. Bibl. Topog. Vol. iii., pp. 280, 297. His remarks on the use of gold in Scotland in ancient times, and on digging for gold in that country, found in strata of sand, as in the borders of Hungary, at Nitria and Presburg, deserve notice.—Ibid., p. 299.
