Triskelion, Isle of Man.—The triskelion of Sicily is also the armorial emblem of the Isle of Man, and the same contention has been made for it, i. e., that it was a modification of the Swastika. But its migration direct from Sicily to the Isle of Man can be traced through the pages of history, and Mr. John Newton,[233] citing the Manx Note Book for January, 1886, has given this history at length, of which the following is a résumé:
Prior to the thirteenth century the Isle of Man was under dominion of the Norse Vikings, and its armorial emblems were theirs; usually a ship under full sail. Two charters of Harold, King of Man (1245, 1246 in the Cotton MSS.), bear seals with this device. Twenty years later, after the conquest of the island by, and its cession to, Alexander III of Scotland, A. D. 1266, the Norse emblems disappeared entirely, and are replaced by the symbol of the three legs covered with chain armor and without spurs. “It appears then,” says Newton, “almost certain, though we possess no literary document recording the fact, that to Alexander III of Scotland is due the introduction of the ‘Tre Cassyn’ as the distinguishing arms of the Isle of Man.” He then explains how this probably came about: Frederick II (A. D. 1197-1250), the Norman King of Sicily, married Isabella, the daughter of Henry III of England. A quarrel between the King of Sicily and the Pope led the latter to offer the crown to Henry III of England, who accepted it for his son Edmund (the Hunchback), who thereupon took the title of King of Sicily and quartered the Sicilian arms with the Royal arms of England. The negotiations between Henry and the Pope progressed for several years (1255 to 1259), when Henry, finding that he could no longer make it an excuse for raising money, allowed it to pass into the limbo of forgotten objects.
Alexander III of Scotland had married Margaret, the youngest daughter of Henry III, and thus was brother-in-law to Edmund as well as to Frederick. In 1256, and while these negotiations between Henry and the Pope concerning Sicily were in progress, Alexander visited, at London, his royal father-in-law, the King of England, and his royal brother-in-law, the King of Sicily, and was received with great honors. About that time Haco, the Norse king of the Isle of Man, was defeated by Alexander III of Scotland, and killed, soon after which event (1266) the Isle of Man was ceded to the latter. The Norse coat of arms disappeared from the escutcheon of the Isle of Man, and, being replaced by the three legs of Sicily, Mr. Newton inquires:
What more likely than that the King (Alexander III), when he struck the Norwegian flag, should replace it by one bearing the picturesque and striking device of Sicily, an island having so many points of resemblance with that of Man, and over which his sister ruled as Queen and her brother had been appointed as King?
However little we may know concerning the method of transfer of the coat of arms from Sicily to the Isle of Man, we are not left at all in doubt as to the fact of its accomplishment; and the triskelion of Sicily became then and has been ever since, and is now, the armorial emblem of the Isle of Man.
The Duke of Athol, the last proprietary of the Isle of Man, and who, in 1765, sold his rights to the Crown of England, still bears the arms of Man as the fifth quartering, “The three human legs in armor, conjoined at the upper part of the thigh and flexed in triangle, proper garnished,” being a perpetuation of the triskelion or triquetrum of Sicily.[234]
The arms of the Isle of Man afford an excellent illustration of the migration of symbols as maintained in the work of Count Goblet d’Alviella; but the attempt made by others to show it to be an evolution from and migration of the Swastika is a failure.
Punch marks on Corinthian coins mistaken for Swastikas.—But is the Swastika really found on ancient coins? The use of precious metals as money dates to an unknown time in antiquity. Gold was used in early Bible times (1500 B. C.) among nearly every people as money, but it was by weight as a talent, and not as minted coin. The coinage of money began about 700 B. C. in Lydia. Lydia was a province on the western side of the peninsula of Asia Minor looking out toward Greece, while Lycia, its neighbor, was a province on the southern side looking toward the island of Rhodes. The Lydians began coinage by stamping with a punch each ingot or nugget of gold or silver, or a mixture of them called “Electrum.” In the beginning these ingots were marked upon but one side, the reverse showing plainly the fiber of the anvil on which the ingot was laid when struck with the punch. But in a short time, it may have been two hundred years, this system was changed so as to use a die which would be reproduced on the coin when it was struck with a punch. The lion, bull, boar, dolphin, and many other figures were employed as designs for these dies. Athens used an owl; Corinth, Pegasus; Metapontine, a sheaf of wheat; Naples, a human-headed bull. The head and, occasionally, the entire form of the gods were employed. During almost the entire first period of nigh three hundred years the punch was used, and the punch marks show on the reverse side of the coins. These punch marks were as various as the dies for the obverse of the coins, but most of them took a variety of the square, as it would present the greatest surface of resistance to the punch. Even the triskelion of the Lycian coins is within an indented square (figs. [225] and [226]). A series of these punch marks is given for demonstration on [pl. 9]. A favorite design was a square punch with a cross of two arms passing through the center, dividing the field into four quarters. Most of the punch marks on the coins of that period were of this kind. These punch marks and the method and machinery with which they were made are described in standard numismatic works.[235]
