In southern France—the Land of the Troubadours—the Solomon’s Knot, as illustrated in Fig. 438, is alternatively known as lacs d’amour, or the knot of the Annunciation: this design consists, as will be noted, of a svastika extended into a rose or maze, and a precisely similar emblem is found in Albany. The title lacs d’amour or lakes of love, consociated with the synonymous knot of the Annunciation, is seemingly further confirmation of the equation amour = Mary: another form of knot is illustrated in Fig. 440, and this the reader will compare with Fig. 439, representing a terra-cotta tablet found by Schliemann at Troy.
Fig. 439.—From Troy (Schliemann).
Figs. 440 and 441.—Mediæval Papermarks. From Les Filigranes (Briquet, C. M.).
It will be remembered that according to the Pierrot legend St. Peter looking out from the Walls of Heaven detected what he first took to be a rosebud in the snow: the name Piers, which like Pearce is a variant of Peter, is essentially pieros, either Father Rose or Father Eros. The rood or rhoda pierre here illustrated is a Rose cross, and is conspicuously decorated with intreccias, or Solomon’s Knots: whether the inscription—which looks curiously Arabic—has ever been deciphered I am unable to say; it would, however, seem that the Andrew or Chi cross, which figures upon it, permits the connection of this Chooyvan rood with Choo or Jou.
Fig. 442.—From A New Description of England (Anon, 1724).
Fig. 443.—From Evans.