130 THE PAGAN-CHRISTIAN OVERLAP OF THE WISE BIRD. 



Worsaae, in his work on " The Industrial Arts of Denmark," 

 says, " The idea of a divine trinity must have been extensively 

 diffused throughout the north during the Bronze Age." This 

 conception, too, was henotheistic. The sign of Woden was the 

 triskele, the three-legged symbol ; Thor was often represented 

 with three heads, as indicative of triunity ; whilst Frey's token 

 was that of supremacy, the solar cross. Carved upon a runic 

 stone in Gotland may be seen this triad grouped together ; on one 

 side Woden with his spear, in the middle Thor, Woden's divine 

 sen, begotten of Fjorgyn, or Mother Earth, and on the other side 

 Frey with a large bird that bends its head over him. 



It was inevitable that Christian art should be influenced by 

 such an environment. Pagans of the North, as they tardily, 

 through the long centuries, embraced a new religion, saw nothing 

 strange in symbolising knowledge by a wise bird by an eagle or 

 a dove. S. John was represented, as in S. ^Ethelwold's Bene- 

 dictional of the 10th century, not in the form of an eagle, but in 

 the company of one, who taught him what to write (fig. 2). In 

 the Byzantine Guide to Painting, a work that had much vogue 

 between the 12th and 15th centuries, the artist is directed, in 

 dealing with the " tetramorph," to turn the eagle's gaze towards 

 S. John, since the semblance of an eagle indicates [not the 

 evangelist, but] the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. On the runic 

 cross of Bewcastle, in Scotland, of the 7th century, an eagle on 

 the wrist of S. John is apparently holding converse with him 

 (fig. 3) ; whilst on the runic cross of Ruthwell, of the same 

 country and century, an eagle climbs the evangelist's thigh to 

 whisper its tidings (fig. 4). 



It would appear, too, that our Saxon forefathers, led by thsir 

 preconceptions in favour of a wise bird to a ready adoption of the 

 dove as a symbol of the Holy Ghost, naturally supposed that the 

 \6yos, or verbum, or Word, in the opening sentence of S. John's 

 Gospel was the Third Person, and not the Second Person, of the 

 Trinity. They were further confused as to the proper relationship 

 of the Dove by a discovery that the sum of the numerical letters 



