Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

2 54 ^^^ Irish Religions
re-born at Christmas, when rising toward the northern
summer lands."
Scotland, peopled by the same race, on its western side,
as Ireland, had the like veneration for stone crosses.
Donald Clark, a Gaelic scholar, derives Inverary from
the river A 7'ay and Aorad/i (worshipped). "This place,"
says he, " is still called Cj'ois-an-Sleiichdte (kneeling cross),
because the pilgrims on arriving there were wont to kneel
in prayer. Before, however, they arrived here, they had
to ford the river Aray at a point where the cross came in
sight, and in sight of the cross they aoj^adk (worshipped),
and the stream was from this association called iiisge
aoradh (water of worship), not simply aoradh (worship)."
One cross of Kintyre is m.ade of four round bosses, with
a fifth in the centre. At Keills, of KintyrC; the cross is
highly sculptured. A winged figure appears in the top
compartment, and the centre is circular, with three bosses
inside, surrounded by four dogs. Captain White finds
" the conical or pyramidal weather-cope on so many of
the Irish crosses is conspicuously absent in the Scottish
examples." He observed, however, that '' the primitive
kind of four-holed cross, met with in Knapdale (Kintyre) is
common to Wales, Cornwall, Cumberland, and other western
districts."
His remarks on serpent crosses are as follows— "The
representations of serpents, so prevalent in the one set of
sculptures (/r2>//), are almost unknown to the other, though
on the eastern pillar-shafts they so frequently appear. I
cannot recall a single instance of a serpent delineated on
a West Highland ecclesiastical carving in the mainland districts
I have traversed ;
it appears, however, on a cross
in Islay, and on one in lona." The open wheel, so prevalent
in Ireland, occurs, according to Captain White, but
thrice in Scotland.