Bells were rung in the Middle Ages to drive away thunder. Among the German peasantry the sign of the cross is used to dispel a thunder-storm. The cross is used because it resembles Thorr’s hammer, and Thorr is the Thunderer: for the same reason bells were often marked with the “fylfot,” or cross of Thorr (Fig. 11), especially where the Norse settled, as in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. Thorr’s cross is on the bells of Appleby, and Scotherne, Waddingham, Bishop’s Norton, and West Barkwith, in Lincolnshire, on those of Hathersage in Derbyshire, Mexborough in Yorkshire, and many more.
The fylfot is curiously enough the sacred Swaslika of the Buddhist; and the symbol of Buddha on the reverse of a coin found at Ugain is a cross of equal arms, with a circle at the extremity of each, and the fylfot in each circle.
The same peculiar figure occurs on coins of Syracuse, Corinth, and Chalcedon, and is frequently employed on Etruscan cinerary urns. It curiously enough appears on the dress of a fossor, as a sort of badge of his office, on one of the paintings in the Roman catacombs.
But, leaving the cross cramponnée, let us examine some other crosses.
