[The sole authority on which this word has been accepted by modern antiquaries as the name of the mark in question is the passage from the Lansdowne MS. quoted below. The context in which the word there occurs seems to favor the supposition that it is simply fill-foot, meaning a pattern or device for filling the foot of a painted window. There is nothing to show whether the word denoted specifically this device as distinguished from others used for the same purpose, and it is even possible that it may have been a mere nonce-word.] A name for the figure called also a cross cramponnee (see CRAMPONNEE), and identical with the SWASTIKA of India, the gammadion of Byzantine ecclesiastical ornament; it has been extensively used as a decoration (often, apparently, as a mystical symbol) in almost all known parts of the world from prehistoric times to the present day. Also fylfot cross.
a. 1500. Instruct. Memorial Wind., in MS. Lansdowne, 874 lf. 190. Let me stand in the medyll pane a rolle abo[ve my hede] in the hyest [pane] vpward, the fylfot in the nedermast pane vnder ther I knele. [The words defaced or torn off are supplied conjecturally. In the sketch, below the effigy of the writer, is a fylfot composed of broad fillets, with tricking app. intended for ermine.]
1842. I. G. & L. A. B. Waller, Monumental Brasses, A Priest & a Frankelein. This device is denominated the fylfot, on the authority of some ancient directions for the execution of two figures in painted glass, apparently of the latter part of the fifteenth century, preserved in Lansdowne MS. 874.
1852. Planché, Pursuivant of Arms, 135. The Fylfot is a mystic figure, called in the Greek Church, Gammadion. It is very early seen in heraldry, and appeared in the paintings formerly in the Old Palace of Westminster.
1861. Haines, Monumental Brasses, I. p. cix. The Fylfot, a kind of cross potent rebated, or cross cramponeé.
1868. Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, Ser. II. iii. 89. Bells were often marked with the fylfot, or cross of Thorr.
1887. Athenæum, 20 Aug., 249/2. It comprises a fylfot cross set with studs.