Page:Curious myths of the Middle Ages (1876).djvu/362

 Between these birds is a cross, with pellets at the end of each limb, and a pellet in each angle.

A similar coin has been found in numbers near Arthenay, in Loiret, as well as others of analogous type. Other Gaulish coins bear the cross on both obverse and reverse. About two hundred pieces of this description were found in 1835, in the village of Cremiat-sur-Yen, near Quimper, in a brown earthen urn, with ashes and charcoal, in a rude kistvaen of stone blocks; proving that the cross was used on the coins in Armorica, at the time when incremation was practised. This cross with pellets, a characteristic of Gaulish coins, became in time the recognized reverse of early French pieces, and introduced itself into England with the Anglo-Norman kings.

We unfortunately know too little of the iconography of the Gauls, to be able to decide whether the cross was with them the symbol of a water deity; but I think it probable, and for this reason, that it is the sign of gods connected, more or less remotely, with water in other religions. That it was symbolic among the Irish and British Kelts is more than probable. The temple in the