There is a symbolic sign (known to archæologists as the fylfot or sauvastika) of very simple form, which is found very widely scattered among the relics of many different races and early peoples. "It is found," says Dr. March (of the Lancashire and Cheshire Archæological Society, who has written very suggestively and learnedly on the subject), "on archaic Greek pottery, on the stamped clay of Swiss lake dwellings, adorning Latin inscriptions on Roman altars"; is common in India and Asia; is met with in Scandinavia, Iceland, Shetland, and Scotland; in Celtic Ireland, in Saxon England, as well as in Germany. The sign was adopted by Christians, is found in the catacombs of Rome, in the cathedrals of Winchester and Exeter, on a shield in the Bayeux tapestry, and on English mediæval brasses. It also occurs on a bell at Hathersage Church in Derbyshire, dated 1617.
This sign appears to have originally signified the supreme god of the Aryans, and became the emblem of the divinity from whom emanates the one movement of the universe; later, it may have merely indicated the axial rotation of the heavens round the Pole Star, and still later it was used simply as a benedictory sign or mark of good luck. When the feet were turned to the left the nocturnal movement of the stars was suggested, and when the feet turned to the right the diurnal movement of the sun was supposed to be indicated. The sign is frequently placed in a circle. A very few of its stages will suffice to show its transformation into ornament. We may thus see how a sign purely symbolical, used as we should use writing, becomes in course of time a decorative unit, and is incorporated into ornament. A kindred form is composed of three crescents, which has its heraldic descendant in the three armoured legs of the bearings of the Isle of Man. Here we seem to see the idea of rotation very emphatically conveyed.
The primitive symbols for fire and water found (as on the Danish bracteate) in association with the fylfot sign shown above, form linear patterns in themselves, and frequently recur in constructive and surface ornament; the former suggesting the method of setting the Roman bricks, called "herring bone," which constantly occurs in modern work in brick paving and wood parquet, forming one of the simplest and most satisfactory plans for floors and pavings in such materials.
POLYNESIAN ORNAMENT FROM HERVEY ISLAND PADDLE
The zigzag, as an ornament incised on clay vessels painted in patterns, or carved in masonry, has been a very favourite form from the ancient Egyptian decorators (to whom it possessed its original significance as water) onwards, becoming in later times more particularly characteristic of Scandinavian ornament and Romanesque architecture. The zigzag, however, appears to have an independent source and meaning in the evolution of Polynesian ornament. In the so-called "Paddles," decorated with carved patterns which are now considered to be really tables of descent, we may see rows of human figures arranged formally, the legs and arms bent. The angles thus formed, in the course of repetition and abbreviation, become simple lines of zigzag pattern.
The circle, a universal and important element in ornamental design of all times and kinds, appears early as a symbol for the sun. We might trace it from its primitive cross and disk and rayed ornament common to all primitive art to the splendid Greek conception of Phœbus Apollo in his chariot drawn by fiery horses, which figures so constantly in Greek design, the circular flaming disk being represented in the wheel, though in an early relief discovered by Dr. Schliemann the head of Apollo is surrounded by rays, which gives the type generally used by Gothic and modern designers in symbolic representations of the sun—simply a face in the circle surrounded by rays.
Another means of symbolical expression by the use of the circle is to be found in a type of Scandinavian ornament composed of three circles, one within the other, which with the rayed sun frequently occurs either singly, as in the form of a metal shield boss or a fibula, or as the unit of a repeating textile pattern, or as a border. An Anglo-Saxon lady in a Benedictional executed for St. Ethelwold at Winchester in the tenth century (963-984) wears a dress so decorated. The original symbolic meaning of this ornament is supposed to bear upon the Norsemen's conception of the universe, the inner circle, representing the midgard, or the earth; the second, the osgard, or asgard, the abode of the gods; and the utgard, the world beyond, inhabited by giants and spirits of evil. Beyond the outer circle is a circle of dots signifying stars. (See fig. on p. 224.)