184 ROMAN PAVEMENTS AND INTRECCI. 



willow. Woden, the Reader of Mystic Runes, declares " I know 

 a chant whereby, if a man hurts me by spells of the withy, the 

 curse shall seize him and not me."* 



Sigurd boasts against Ey stein " I went all the way to Jordan, 

 and swam across the river, and there I twisted a knot of willows 

 which is waiting there for thee. For this knot, I said, thou 

 shouldst untie, or take the curse that is bound up in it." 



And there were love-knots, too, and bonds of fidelity. But 

 knots knitted in stone, tied by the sculptor's hand, could not well 

 be undone. We may see them on a Roman altar of the Galli, 

 from Northumberland ; in a rock-sculpture of Scotland ; on a 

 stone coffin from Cambridge Castle ; and on Disley Cross, 

 Illustration VII. 



Perhaps the latter examples indicate the bond that unites the 

 soul and the Redeemer. 



7. Lastly there are phyllomorphic intrecci, or those which have 

 arisen from a decorative treatment of sacred trees. Assyrian art 

 had made them rigid and symmetrical. In a paper read to this 

 club two years ago, reference was made to the Arbor Pereclixion, 

 that grew amidst water-streams. It was a Mesopotamia!! con- 

 ception. Its fruit furnished food, the branches gave shelter, the 

 shade brought sleep. But, together with the doves that sought 

 its boughs, it was especially a charm against the cruel dragon.f 

 Such a tree seems to be intended by a sculpture at Ferrara, of 

 the VIII. cent.J Doves and peacocks, resting on the angular 

 and ungraceful branches, are secure from wild beasts below and 

 from serpents above. The advance of Christian art developed 

 this into the vineal intreccio shown in Illustration XX. 



Mr. Barnes maintains, in his chapter of Leader Scott's book 

 The Cathedral Builders, that all the intrecci of this country were 



* ffdva Mdl, Corpus Boreald. 



t Arborem quoque Pereclixion iiicolere, ejus fructu refici, umbra requiescere, 

 ramis protegi, dicuut et a crudeli dracoue tueri. Istiusmodi physici de coluinba 

 docent. Vita B. Colombo Beatiua; v., 323. 



J Cattaneo, Up. Git., p. 132. 



