. The Victoria history of the county of Cumberland. Natural history. REMAINS OF THE PRE-NORMAN PERIOD freestone, very loose in design, angular and disconnected, evidently belonging to the close of the period. Over the porch of the vicarage at Brigham is a head which bears a figure entangled in and grasping interlaced coils which are now too mutilated to show the dragon's head if there was one, but this is the completed type of the dragonesque subject—Christ, the seed of the woman, wrestling with and overcoming the serpent. The idea is carried out in a shaft recovered in 1900 from the Nor- man
. The Victoria history of the county of Cumberland. Natural history. REMAINS OF THE PRE-NORMAN PERIOD freestone, very loose in design, angular and disconnected, evidently belonging to the close of the period. Over the porch of the vicarage at Brigham is a head which bears a figure entangled in and grasping interlaced coils which are now too mutilated to show the dragon's head if there was one, but this is the completed type of the dragonesque subject—Christ, the seed of the woman, wrestling with and overcoming the serpent. The idea is carried out in a shaft recovered in 1900 from the Nor- man foundations of Great Clifton church, where there is an echo of the Gosforth saint's tomb in the two dragons surmounted by two small human figures, a resemblance so striking as to suggest imitation ; while at the foot of the shaft is a much ruder figure, with nimbus and long robes, holding and held by the coils of a serpent. Above this is a great. Socket Stone, Brigham Church. Cross-head, Brigham Vicarage. dragon with an unmistakable wolfs head, and a little plaited snake with a human head, the tempter of Eve—another form of the symbolism in Dacre cross. The most perfect example of this conflict with the dragon is the lintel at St. Bees church, representing St. Michael with helmet, sword and shield fighting the dragon. Finely designed frets are on either side. This must belong to quite the end of the pre-Norman series, if not to the twelfth century, when however Cumberland was not yet really Normanized. There are many bits of twelfth century interlacing, as at Brigham and Great Salkeld, in the capitals and details of architecture which show a continuous tradition of these earlier types, and in some slabs and fonts there are similar survivals which ought not to be omitted in a review of early Cumberland art. The curious slab at Cross Canonby with the cable-stemmed cross, zigzag ornament as in some Welsh stones, and rude figure, is difficult to class. The ' gridiron ' over the
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectnatural, bookyear1901
