Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/304

 250 NOTES AND QUERIES. [io» s. iv. SEPT. 23, iw. son William, who, by a Barney of Reedham, Norfolk, had Thomas and Syndrack Denny, who left numerous issue. This whole pedi- gree, addition and all, is printed in the Harleian Society's ' Visitation of Norfolk.' I_ should be much obliged for any evidence either corroborating or disproving this inter- polated descent. I am myself inclined to think that this unconsidered younger son, Robert Denny, has been made by some enterprising genealogist a peg whereupon to hang a pedigree. (Rev.) H. L. L. DENNY. 6, Wilton Terrace, Dublin. WHEEL AS A SYMBOL IN RELIGION. (10th S. iv. 167.) IN Greek temples the wheel was placed as an emblem of the sun. It was borrowed from Egypt. The sacred cakes of the Greeks were impressed with a wheel. It is on an Italian vase of archaic Greek style (Birch, 'Catalogue of Greek and Etruscan Vases in the British Museum '). It is found on coins of Thrace and Bceotia (Head,' Greek Coins '), and on coins of Agrigentum and Lucria (Head, ' Historia Numismatics;'). The wheel emblem was also used by the Romans. It appears on coins of Alba Fucintis, Umbria, and Etruria (Head, 'Hist. Num.1); also on coins of the Calpurnia Gens, c. B.C. 89, and of Massila (Babelon, ' Mo. Con.'). It is found on Egyptian Gnostic gems, one form being a griffin rolling a wheel. The Scandinavfan god Seator's emblem is a wheel. The Saxon god of the sun had a wheel of fire. It is found in the car of Juggernaut. Buddha is king of the wheel, and is called the divine wheel, the precious wheel of religion (Scrib- ner"s Magazine, 1881, vol. xxii.). It is found on Gaulish coins before B.C. 350 (Head). Seator or Saturn held the wheel in his hand, as so engraved (Saturday Magazine, vol. iv. p. 240). A coin of the British king Tascio- vanus has a chariot-wheel on it (Knight, 'Old England,' vol. i.). At UYswick, Fur- ness, is a Druidical stone structure in the form of a wheel, 250 ft. in diameter, with a central circular nave and nineirregularspokes (Archaeoloffia, vol. xxxi. p. 449). A sculp- ture of a Buddhist wheel with the mystic chattah over it is in India (Scribner). The wheel as a religious symbol arose from the course of the sun. Joshua went round Jericho, probably with the sun. The Jews are said to march seven times round their coffined dead ; and the bride to go three times round the bride- rroom, and he three times round her. At Konz, on the Moselle, and at Trier, it was an old custom till lately to carry a large wheel, enveloped in straw, on Midsummer Eve to down into the Moselle to procure luck for Joor at Morton, near Brading, Isle of Wight, shows a bearded astrologer, seated, near a wheel on a column, with a globe, brazier, rod, and cup (Price, 'Guide to the Roman Villa,' 1881, pp. 20, 23). Meant for Hip- parchus? On the Antonine column at Home are seen Germans throwing wheels from heir ramparts upon Roman soldiers (' Cas- sell's Historical Educator,' 1854, vol. i. p. 370). Apuleius, speaking of the mysteries jf Isis, says the sacred formula contained 'marks of notes, intricately knotted, re- volving in the manner of a wheel, * Meta- morphosis,' lib. ii." (Hurd, Warburton's Divine Legation,' 1847, vol. ii. p. 200). The wheel of Ezekiel evidently symbolized Providence, and from it we have_ our splendid wheel windows, as in Westminster Abbey transepts. The proper number of spokes seems to have been twelve, with the twelve signs of the zodiac between them, as at St. Augustine's, Paris, St. Denis, &c. On the screen top in St. Agnes', Kennington, are two large wheels. In Westminster Cathedral the wheels are sculptured on the column capitals. Many wheels are on the religious Buddhistic sculptures, from an Indian tope, on the grand staircase in the British Museum. D. M. J. The wheel is essentially a purely mystical symbol, which has been adopted in some form in most religions. The wheels of Ezekiel are typical. The Wheel of Fortune, the tenth of the Tarot Trumps, is the conscious or uncon- scious begetter of many symbolic wheels. The cross within a circle of the Rosicrucians is a wheel. The " rose" windows in cathe- dral churches are wheels. The circle, a symbol of eternity, is a wheel. All have mystic meanings—meanings derived from what may be called the bed-rock of religious feeling. But those meanings are unknown, and unnecessary, to the multitude. E. E. STREET. The wheel does not occur in Louisa Twin- ing's 'Symbols and Emblems of Christian Art,' one of the best authorities upon that subject. But a cherub standing upon a wheel may be seen in the fifteenth-century painted-glass south window of the ante- chapel at New College, Oxford. Husenbeth,
 * he top of the hill, set it on fire, and roll it
 * he harvest (Scribner). A Roman mosaic