f some great mystery. So the
reticulated and geometrical tracery on the sculptured stones has been
invested with mythic attributes, under such names as "the Runic Knot."
It has been counted symbolical of a mysterious worship or creed, and has
been associated with Druids and other respectable, but not very
palpable, personages.[83]

[Footnote 83: It would not be difficult to trace a resemblance between
some of the exceedingly elaborate sculpture of the New Zealanders and
that of the sculptured stones, especially in the instance of the very
handsome country-house of the chief Rangihaetita, represented in Mr
Angas's New Zealanders Illustrated. Its name, by the way, in the native
Maori, is Kai Tangata, or Eat-man House--so called, doubtless, in
commemoration of the many jolly feasts held in it, on missionaries and
others coming within Wordsworth's description of

"A being not too wise and good
For human nature's daily food."]

Good theories are such a rarity in the antiquarian world, that it is a
luxury to find one which, in reference to this sort of decoration,
merits that character. The buildings, both ecclesiastical and civil, of
the early Christians of the North were, as we have seen, made of wattles
or wicker-ware. The skill, therefore, of the architectural decorator
took the direction of the variations in basket-work. We know that in the
Gothic age those forms which were found the most endurable and graceful
in which stone could be placed upon stone, became also the ruling forms
which guided the carver and the painter; so that all wood-work,
metal-work, seal-cutting, illumination of books, and the like, repeated
the ornaments of Gothic architecture. It would only, then, be a
prototype of an established phenomenon were it to be found that the
sculptor of an earlier age adopted the decorations developed by the
skillful platting of withes or wattles; and accordingly, this is just
the character of the platted ornaments so prevalent on the sculptured
stones.[84] But, however these may have been suggested, they show the
work of the undoubted artist, and furnish, as the advertisements say, "a
varied assortment of the most elegant and attractive patterns."

[Footnote 84: See "An Attempt to Explain the Origin and Meaning of the
Early Interlaced Ornamentation found on the Ancient Sculptured Stones of
Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man, by Gilbert J. French of Bolton."
Privately printed.]

Every one who in futu