Petrosomatoglyph
In the Mabinogion, the story is told of Culhwch and Olwen, and part of this relates to the hunting by King Arthur and his knights of the wild boar Twrch Trwyth[4] with dogs.
[15] At Kelso in Roxburgh Street is the outline of a horseshoe where the horse of Prince Charles Edward Stuart cast a shoe as he was riding it through the town on his way to Carlisle in 1745.
St Victor Petroglyphs Provincial Park,[20] Saskatchewan, Canada, features footprint petrosomatoglyphs of bison, deer, elk and antelope.
Cattle At South Lopham in Norfolk, England is the Ox-Foot Stone, which previously lay in a meadow still known as the Oxfoot Piece, and bears the supposed imprint of an ox's foot.
A large carving representing the claw marks of a bear can be seen at Chaw'se, Indian Grinding Rock State Park, near Fiddletown, California.
The legend says that one day the Devil disguised himself as a druid in an attempt to gain favour with the old priests, but was discovered in his plans and so, in anger, flew out across the hills carrying a great stone with him, which he dropped from the skies.
This mark in a tile resembles a footprint, which according to legend was where the devil stood after he had made a deal with the builder to finance construction of the church on the condition that it contain no windows.
[33] In China, during the Tang dynasty, the discovery of a large footprint of the Buddha in Chengzhou caused Empress Wu Zetian to inaugurate a new reign name in that year, 701 CE, starting the Dazu (Big Foot) era.
A copy of these footprints is preserved, as an ex voto offering, at the Church of Domine Quo Vadis, the chapel marking the traditional spot of Jesus' appearance to Peter.
Henry III of England was given a piece of white marble which allegedly carried a trace of one of Jesus' feet, which he had left as a souvenir to his apostles after his Ascension.
[36] At Pochayiv Lavra in western Ukraine, there is a footprint which by tradition was left in the stone by the Theotokos (Virgin Mary) after her miraculous appearance to two monks in the 15th century.
Muhammad's footprints are (by Islamic tradition) found in numerous places, such as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, in Damascus, and in mosques in West Bengal, Bangladesh and Gudjarat.
[38] They used them for protective rites on leaving for a journey and for thanksgiving for a safe return, when the traveler would place his feet in the footprints to mark the beginning or end of the undertaking.
This same story is told of King Maelgwn of Gwynedd in North Wales, who placed his feet in carved footprints to ensure his safe return from a pilgrimage to Rome.
[2] On the Clare Hills in Ireland, on the Gort to Feakle road in the townland of Drumandoora, is the engraved outline or impression of a foot clothed by a sandal.
[41] At Slievenamon (The Mountain of the Women), at South Tipperary in Ireland, is the rock that bears the footprints of Goll—"the One-Eyed"—who made a giant leap across the valley to catch up with the hunt of the Fianna.
Footprints of the Buddha also exist in Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, the Maldives, Pakistan, Singapore, and Burma.
[58] A tradition of body-part impressions at holy wells, rivers and beneath waterfalls comes from the fact that Celtic monks or culdees often prayed in such places, continuing the veneration of the Druids for sacred waters.
[10] John O'Donovan, in his Ordnance Survey Letters of 1840, tells the story of Saint Moling crossing a small hill in the County Wexford district, when an evil spirit annoyed him.
[60] At Oberhasli on the road to Gadmen near Meiringen in Switzerland is the Sterbensstein, a rock with the impression of a hand and several fingers left by a dying man after he had been attacked.
Near Minden in the Geismarwald on the Totenberg in Germany, an army leader who before a battle in the Thirty Years' War declared that he had as much chance of winning as he had of the stone becoming soft.
[10] Near Strathpeffer in Scotland is the finger and thumb print of a dwarf associate of Finn Mac Cuill on an old gate post near to the Pictish Eagle Stone.
[63] In Argyll and Bute, Kilneuair's kirk has inside, to the east of the nave door, a sandstone block bearing a now almost invisible five-toed print with nails on three of the toes and which is referred to as 'the Devil's hand'.
[65] The Food-vessel peoples at the Tregulland barrow near Bodmin moor in Cornwall had placed slate slabs around the central burial bearing circular pecked hollows resembling oculi, presumably having a protective function for the person buried within.
[69] The Serpent Stone from a Roman cemetery in Maryport in Cumbria has a Celtic severed head wearing a torc carved on the top of a phallic-shaped pillar.
[44] The Husjatyn god-pillar from the River Zbrucz in Galicia, Poland, has several heads carved on its four sides, together with images of horses, people and weapons.
The vesica piscis shape as found on the lid of the Chalice Well at Glastonbury includes an almond- or lozenge-shaped central area that is seen as a possible representation of the female genitals.
[78] The hole in the stone represented the female birth canal in the Druid or pagan mind, and by passing through it, a person was symbolising the act of rebirth and therefore regaining innocence or being cleansed of post-parturition illness, etc.
[citation needed] Located at Smithills Hall, near Bolton in Lancashire, is the impressed footprint at the bottom of a set of stairs of George Marsh, a Protestant martyr.
In Sarajevo, there is a preserved square of footpath or pavement asphalt with two shoe prints which are believed to be those of Gavrilo Princip, made as he waited for the arrival of the motorcade of the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand in June 1914.
