20 TWO EXAMPLES OF SYMBOLISM. 



effect. The esoteric, the cryptic, the magical, have little import 

 for him ; and when he has wrought his will, no wonder it is 

 doubted whether such devices have not been, from the beginning, 

 only artistic conceits. 



Even Mr. Romilly Allen declares that "the attempt to discover 

 symbolism where there is no evidence to prove either its intention 

 or its existence is a modern innovation." 



He points to Cornish coped-stones, as those in St. Tudy and 

 Lanivet churchyards (Fig. 2), to the working of the motif into 

 the corners of the ornamental field, so that the triquetra is 

 stretched out to fill a triangular surface, as the duplex below is 

 made to occupy a square surface ; and he believes that these 

 knots, these intrecci, were designed for " fillings-in" of awkward 

 spaces.* 



This could not have been the case, however, with a Danish 

 fibula of the Viking period, where the designs are displayed on 

 specially elevated structures, and where, according to the 

 antiquary Worsaae, the triquetra is the mark of Odin, as the 

 chief member of a Triad, and the duplex is that of the sun-god 

 Frey.f 



Nor was it the case with a sculpture in the church of 

 S. Maria, near Assisi, of the IXth century (Fig. 3), where the two 

 emblems are disposed on either side of the cross in quite equal 

 spaces, but are distorted after the fashion of the time.J 



They are as much emblems as are the triskele on the 

 Hogbacked tomb at Heysham and the solar-cross on that at 

 Hexham, marks of the Trinity and of Christ, if not, indeed, of 

 Odin and Frey. 



On a stone in the Durham Museum, found at Brompton, in 

 Yorkshire (Fig. 4), is the crucified Son of Man, standing " free" 

 in the Scandinavian manner, with the duplex over his head and 

 on either side the triquetia and the simplex the latter a sign of 



* Introd. to Cornish Crosses, by Langdoii, p. 27. 



t Danish Arts, p. 144, 168, 196. 

 J Cattaneo, Architecture in Italy, p. 297. 



