I would insert here that it was only when the present investigation was almost completed, that my attention was arrested by a reference in Professor Wilson's work, already cited, to a short article on the Fylfot and the Futhorc tir by H. Colley March, M.D.
Having succeeded in obtaining a copy of the Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society (vol. 4, pp. 1-12, 1886), in which it appeared, I had the extreme satisfaction of finding that a specialist working in another field and approaching the problem from another direction had come to two of the identical conclusions that I had reached in a totally different manner. This fact constitutes, in my opinion, the most powerful support of the correctness of the views we hold in common after having formed, expressed and worked them out in such a different way, as can be verified by a comparison of our two works.
Referring the reader to his valuable and suggestive communication to which I shall revert, I shall merely mention here that Dr. March recognizes, as I do, that the “essential suggestion [of the swastika and fylfot] is of axial rotation.” He attributes the original of the swastika to the nocturnal (not as I do, to the annual) rotation of the Ursa Major around Polaris, and likewise refers to the fact that about four thousand years ago, the circular sweep of the circumpolar constellations was far more striking than at present. After meeting on this common ground our lines of investigation part company and go wide asunder, nor am I able to follow some of Dr. March's conclusions such as, for instance, his opinion that the fylfot was a sign of a “diurnal rotation” suggested by “the rising and setting of the sun and moon when the spectator looked at them with his back to the north.” On the other hand I am indebted to him for much valuable information relating to the rune or futhorc tir, to which I shall refer later.
Besides the word coatl=twin, the Mexicans had another term to express some thing double, in pairs. A plant with two shoots was named xolotl. Double agave plants, or maize when occasionally met with, were regarded with superstition and named me-xolotl. The pretty little parroquets, popularly known as “love-birds” from their habit of constant association, in pairs, were named xolotl. The circumstance that the term for birds'-down was also xolotl may explain why the down-feathers of eagles and other birds were employed and played a certain rôle in ritual observances. They expressed and conveyed the sound of a word which meant something double and could therefore be used to symbolize a variety of meanings relating to multiplication or propagation. That the Mexicans figuratively connected birds'-down with generation is proven by the well-known myth of the birth of Huitzilopochtli from the union of a ball of birds'-down and a goddess named “she with the petticoat of serpents” (Sahagun, book iii, chap. i).
Tufts of birds'-down figure, in the B. N. MS., on the shield of the female ancestress of the human race, one of whose numerous titles was toci,=“our grandmother,” to express which the figure of a citli or hare was sometimes employed in pictography. Of her it was said, that she bore only twins, a figure of speech meaning great productiveness, just as the female divinity is also termed “the woman with 400 breasts” (text to p. 29, Vatican Codex, Kingsborough, vols. ii and v). In the text to the Telleriano-Remensis Codex (Kingsborough, vol. i, pl. 24), we find Xolotl, a deity wearing the shell-symbol of Quetzalcoatl, directly named “the god of twins.”
This native belief is beautifully illustrated by the two “highly artistic shell-gorgets representing winged human beings,” which are described and figured by Mr. Wm. H. Holmes, in Part ii of his instructive and extremely useful “Archaeological Studies among the Ancient Cities of Mexico,” which I have received just as this paper is going to press. I am much pleased at the possibility of drawing attention, by means of a footnote, to the interesting fact that in one gorget the human head is figured with butterfly wings, whilst in the other it is accompanied by conventionalized feathers and a butterfly wing. There can be no doubt that both gorgets are attempts to represent the resuscitated souls of departed warriors, according to the native ideas concerning them. It is nevertheless very remarkable to see actually that the ancient Mexicans employed the butterfly as a symbol of an immortal soul and had also evolved the idea of a winged head, analogous to that of a cherub, to represent a blest spirit, dwelling in celestial regions.
It is noticeable that the name of the Mexican priests was papa, which syllables are the first in the word papalotl=butterfly. It may be that a distinction was made and that the souls of the dead priests were supposed to assume the shape of butterflies or moths, whilst the warriors became celestial humming-birds.
It is the merit of the late distinguished philologist Dr. Buschmann, in his invaluable work on Aztec names of localities to have pointed out that although the Cakchiquel language is now spoken at Cozumalhuapa or Cotzumalguapan, its name is unquestionably Nahuatl (Cozamalo-apan). Ueber Aztekische Ortsnamen, vii, p. 34.
The largest number of illustrations of the beautiful bas-reliefs found in the above locality have been published by M. Herman Strebel of Hamburg, whose valuable publications and splendid collections of ancient Mexican antiquities, preserved at Berlin and Hamburg, are well known. Die Steinsculptures von Santa Lucia Cozumalhuapa (Guatemala) in Museum fur Volkerkunde. Hamburg, 1894. Jahrbuch der Hamburgischen Wissenschaftlichen Austallen, xi.
Three of these remarkable bas-reliefs are figured in the valuable publication by Geheimrath A. Bastian: Steinsculpturen aus Guatemala, Berichte der Königlichen Museen zu Berlin, 1882. Dr. Habel's drawings were published in 1878, in the 22d vol. of the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge.