REMAINS OF THE PRE-NORMAN PERIOD 
There can be no doubt that the sculpture is meant to illustrate the story. 
Above is a horseman with spear upside down, and over him a man 
standing with a horn in his left hand and a staff in his right, with which 
he is restraining the attack of two plaited serpents. 
This seems to illustrate lines in the same poem referring to Heimdal 
the warder of the gods, who at the battle of Ragnardk, the Armageddon 
sans 
AIT 
Hermpat, Gosrortu Cross, 
of Edda mythology, was to blow his horn when the evil powers attacked 
heaven. The falling horseman may be one of the attacking enemies or 
Odin in his fall or in his descent to hell, but this is less evident. What 
is quite plain is that Christian and heathen subjects are curiously mixed 
in this monument; while, curious as it is, the apparent confusion is 
not without parallel. On the Penrith crosses there are the stag and 
figures very like this group of Loki and Sigun; on the Dacre cross 
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