Popular tales of the West Highlands : orally collected . th fish; so has that of the twostories which follow ; so, as an illustration, I have copied all thefish which are figured in the sculptured stones of Scotland,together with some of the characteristic ornaments which accom-pany them. It is remarkable that, with the exception of two, all these areswimming from the left to the right of an observer, and that anondescript creature which is often figured on the same stoneswith fish, heads the same way. I take the monster to be a repre-sentation of a water animal, a walrus, by an artist who had
Popular tales of the West Highlands : orally collected . th fish; so has that of the twostories which follow ; so, as an illustration, I have copied all thefish which are figured in the sculptured stones of Scotland,together with some of the characteristic ornaments which accom-pany them. It is remarkable that, with the exception of two, all these areswimming from the left to the right of an observer, and that anondescript creature which is often figured on the same stoneswith fish, heads the same way. I take the monster to be a repre-sentation of a water animal, a walrus, by an artist who had neverseen one. As no explanation has yet been found for the symbols, as fishclearly have to do with Celtic mythology, and as Celtic mytho-logy appears to have been mixed with solar and well worship,it seems worth considering whether these symbols may nothave an astronomical meaning. One of the signs of theZodiac is and has been for many a day Pisces; and the symbol isK. The sun passes northwards through the constellation in HOW THE EEN WAS SET UP. 339. the spring, and when the sun is travelling north the fish areswimming south. South and to the right are expressed by thesame word in Gaelic— deas. Fish swimming to the right areswimming south (deas). The sun crosses the equator at the vernalequinox ; and one of the emblems here associated with fish con-sists of circles, which still stand for the sun in our almanacks ;joined by two crescents which in like manner stand for moons ormonths, and separated by a line. Another consists of a circle
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