Whatever is introduced into a Celtic illumination is at once treated as a matter of ornament. When the human figure appears it is remorselessly subjected to the same rules as the rest of the work; the hair and beard are spiral coils, the eyes, nostrils, and limbs are symmetrical flourishes. Colour is quite regardless of natural possibility. The hair and draperies are simply patterned as compartments of green or blue, or red or black, as may be required for the _tout ensemble_; the face remains white. Lightened tints are preferred to full colours, as pale yellow, pink, lavender, and light green. A very ludicrous device is made use of to denote the folds of the drapery; they are not darkened, there is no light and shade in Celtic work, but are simply lines of a strongly contrasting colour. The blue and red appear to be opaque, and therefore mineral colours; the rest are thin and transparent. Nothing can be more wayward than the colouring of the symbolic beasts of the Gospels. In the Evangeliary of St. Columbanus (not Columba, but the founder of Luxeuil and Bobbio, who died in 614) the Lion of St. Mark is an admirable beast in a suit of green-and-red chain armour in the form of mascles or lozenges. (See the illustration in Westwood's _Palæographia Sacra Pictoria_ of a figure page from the Gospels of Mael Brith Mac Durnan for a typical example.)[12] [12] See also an article by Westwood in _Journal Archæol. Inst._, vii. 17, on "Irish Miniatures." The only point that might argue the freedom in Celtic work from Byzantine influence is the absence of gold, but perhaps this was only because the earlier Irish illuminators could not obtain it; we find it later on. In the Book of Kells and the Lambeth Gospels there is no gold. The former dates somewhere in the seventh century, not the sixth, as sometimes stated; the latter, shortly before 927. In the Lindisfarne Gospels (698-721) gold is used. In the Psalter of Ricemarchus, now in Trinity College, Dublin, are traces of silver. It is in connection with these Irish MSS. that decorated and jewelled cases, called _cumdachs_, make their appearance, such as the one attached to the Gospels of St. Moling in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. These book-shrines are almost exclusively an Irish production. In other countries the idea was to adorn the volume itself with a splendid and costly binding, perhaps including gold, silver, and gems. In Ireland the idea of sacredness was carried out in another way. Instead of decorating the covers of the book itself, it was held, as in such a MS., for instance, as the Book of Durrow, to be too venerable a relic to be meddled with, and a box or case was made for it, on which they spent all their artistic skill. Generally the case is known as a _cumdach_; but one kind, called the _cathach_, was so closed that the book was completely concealed, and it was superstitiously believed that if it were opened some terrible calamity would overtake its possessors.