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THE GROTESQUE IN CHURCH ART.




  Only 400 copies of this Book published
  for Sale, and this is No. 315




[Illustration: THE STORY OF JONAH, RIPON.]




  The Grotesque
  in Church Art


  By T. Tindall Wildridge


  [Illustration]


  LONDON:
  WILLIAM ANDREWS & CO., 5, FARRINGDON AVENUE, E.C.
  1899.




Preface.


The designs of which this book treats have vast fields outside the English
church works to which it has been thought good to limit it. Books and
buildings undoubtedly mutually interchanged some forms of their ornaments,
yet the temple was the earlier repository of man's ideas expressed in art,
and the proper home of the religious symbolism which forms so large a
proportion of my subject. In view also of the ground I have ventured to
hint may be taken up as to the derivation, of a larger number than is
generally supposed, of church designs from heathen prototypes by the hands
of apprenticed masons, it is fitting that the evidences should be from
their chisels. The only exceptions are a few wall-paintings, which serve
to point a difference in style and origin.

In every case the examples are from churches in our own land. The
conclusions do not nearly approach a complete study of the questions, the
research to the present, great as it is, chiefly shewing how much has yet
to be learned in order to accurately compare the extant with the
long-forgotten. The endeavour has been to present sufficient to enable
general inferences to be drawn in the right direction.

Of the numerous works consulted in the course of this essay, the most
useful has been "Choir Stalls and their Carvings," sketched by Miss Emma
Phipson. While tendering my acknowledgments for much assistance obtained
from that lady's book, I would add that the 'second series' suggested
cannot but equal the first as a service to the cause of comparative
mythology and folk-lore.

This place may be taken to dispose of two kinds of grotesques in church
art which belong to my title, though not to my intention.

The memorial erections put into so many churches after the middle of the
sixteenth century are to be placed in the same category as the less often
ludicrous effigies of earlier times, and may be dismissed as "ugly
monumental vanities, miscalled sculpture." The grotesqueness of some of
these sepulchral excrescences may in future centuries be still more
apparent, though to many even time cannot supply interest. Not all are
like the imposing monument to a doctor in Southwark Cathedral, on which,
by the way, the epitaph is mainly devoted to laudation of his _pills_.
Yet, though the grotesque is not entirely wanting in even these monuments,
it is chiefly through errors of taste. The worst of them are more pathetic
than anything else. The grotesque proper implies a proportion of levity,
whereas the earnestness evinced by these effigies are more in keeping with
the solemnity of the church's purpose than the infinitely more artistic
and unobtrusive ornament of the fabric. The other class of grotesque is
the modern imitation of mediæval carving, with original design. Luckily,
it is somewhat rare to find the spirit of the old sculptors animating a
modern chisel. One of the best series of modern antiques of this kind is a
set of gargoyles at St. Nicholas's, Abingdon, executed about 1881, of
which I think it worth while to append a warning sample.

These two classes are left out of account in the following pages.

[Illustration: MODERN GARGOYLE, ABINGDON, 1881.]




Contents.


                                                      PAGE

  PREFACE                                                v

  INTRODUCTION                                           1

  DEFINITIONS OF THE GROTESQUE                           5

  THE CARVERS                                            9

  THE ARTISTIC QUALITIES OF CHURCH GROTESQUES           19

  GOTHIC ORNAMENT NOT DIDACTIC                          24

  INGRAINED PAGANISM                                    27

  MYTHIC ORIGIN                                         34

  HELL'S MOUTH                                          60

  SATANIC REPRESENTATIONS                               64

  THE DEVIL AND THE VICES                               78

  ALE AND THE ALEWIFE                                   99

  SATIRES WITHOUT SATAN                                106

  SCRIPTURAL ILLUSTRATIONS                             112

  MASKS AND FACES                                      121

  THE DOMESTIC AND POPULAR                             134

  THE PIG AND OTHER ANIMAL MUSICIANS                   152

  COMPOUND FORMS                                       157

  NONDESCRIPTS                                         169

  REBUSES                                              173

  TRINITIES                                            175

  THE FOX IN CHURCH ART                                184

  SITUATIONS OF GROTESQUE ORNAMENT IN CHURCH ART       213

  INDEX                                                219

[Illustration: A ROOF SUPPORTER, EWELME, OXON.]




The Grotesque in Church Art.




Introduction.


[Illustration: GORGONIC MASK, EWELME.]

The more lofty the earlier manifestations of man's intellect, the more
complete and immediate seems to have been their advancement. That is to
say, where the products of genius depend mainly upon the recognition of
great principles and deliberate adherence to them, they are more
satisfying than when success depends upon dexterous manipulation of
material. What I have in view in this respect in connection with
architecture has its co-relative in language. The subtlety and poetic
force of Ayran roots shew a refined application of principle--that of
imagery--in far advance of the languages rising from them. The successive
growths of the detail of language, for use or ornament,--and the useful of
one age would seem to become the ornamental of another--necessarily often
forsake the high purity of the primeval standard, and give rise, not only
to the commonplace, but, by misconception or wantonness, to perversion of
taste. So in architecture. Temples were noble before their ornaments. The
grotesque is the slang of architecture. Nowhere so much as in Gothic
architecture has the grotesque been fostered and developed, for, except
for a blind adherence to ancient designs, due to something like gild
continuity, the whole detail was introduced apropos of nothing. The
assisting circumstance would appear to have been the indifference of the
architects to the precise significance of the detail ornaments of their
buildings. Gothic, or in fact any architecture admitting ornament, calls
for crisp sub-regular projections, which shall, by their prominence and
broken surface, attract the eye, but by the vagueness of their general
form attract it so slightly as to lose individuality in a general view.
These encrusting ornaments, by their opposition to the light of what the
carvers call a "busy" surface, increase and accentuate rather than detract
from the effect of the sweep of arches or dying vistas of recurring
pillars. They afford a sort of punctuation, or measurers of the rhythm of
the composition. Led from point to point, the eye gathers an impression of
rich elaboration that does not interfere with its appreciation of the
orderliness of the main design.

These objects gained, the architects did not, apparently, enquire what the
lesser minds, who carved the boss or dripstone, considered appropriate
ornament. Hence we have a thousand fancies, often beautifully worked out,
but often utterly incongruous with the intent of the edifice they are
intended to adorn, and unworthy of the architecture of which they are a
part.

As in language the grotesque is sometimes produced by inadvertency and
misconception, so in ornament not all the grotesque is of set purpose, and
here the consideration of the less development of the less idea has its
chief example. As original meaning became lost, the real merit of
earnestness decreased, and the grotesque became an art.

Moreover, the execution of Gothic ornament is excellent in proportion to
its artistic easiness. Thus the foliate and florate designs are better
carved than the animal forms, and both better than the human. With the
exception of little else besides the Angel Choir at Lincoln, and portions
of the Percy Shrine at Beverley, there is nothing in Gothic representation
of sentient form really worthy of the perfect conceptions of architecture
afforded by scores of English churches. It may, of course, be considered
that anything but conventional form is out of place as architectural
ornament; on the other hand, it must not be ignored that conventionality
is a growth. It is only to be expected, therefore, that where the artist
found character beyond his reach he fell readily into caricature, though
it is a matter for surprise to find such a high standard of ability in
that, and in the carved work generally. We find no instances of carving so
low in absolute merit as are the best of the wall-paintings of the same
periods.

The sources from which the artists obtained their material are as wide as
the air. A chief aim of this volume is to indicate those sources, and this
is done in some cases rather minutely, though not in any exhaustively. The
point of view from which the subject is surveyed is that the original
detail of the temples entirely consisted of symbols of worship and
attributes, founded chiefly upon astronomical phenomena: that owing to the
gild organization of the masons, the same forms were mechanically
perpetuated long after the worship of the heavenly bodies had given way to
Christianity, often with the thinnest veil of Christian symbolism thrown
over them. To this material, descended from remote antiquity, came
gradually to be added a multitude of designs from nature and from fancy.

[Illustration: HARPY, EXETER.]




[Illustration: RAGE AND TERROR, RIPON.]


Definitions of the Grotesque.


The term "Grotesque," which conveys to us an idea of humourous distortion
or exaggeration, is simply _grotto-esque_, being literally the style of
art found in the grottos or baths of the ancients. The term rose towards
the end of the fifteenth century, when exhumation brought to light the
fantastic decorations of the more private apartments of the licentious
Romans. The use at that period of a similar style for not unsimilar
purposes gave the word common currency, and it has spread to everything
which, combined with wit or not, provokes a smile by a real or pretended
violation of the laws of Nature and Beauty. In its later, and not in its
original, meaning is the word applied to the extraordinary productions of
church art. We may usefully inquire as to the causes of those remarkable
characteristics of Gothic art which have caused the word Grotesque to
fittingly describe so much of its detail.

The joke has a different meaning for every age. The capacity for
simultaneously recognizing likeness and contrast between things the most
incongruous and wide-sundered, which is at the root of our appreciation of
wit, humour, or the grotesque, is a quality of slow growth among nations.
No doubt early man enjoyed his laugh, but it was a different thing from
the laughter of our day. Many races have left no suspicion of their ever
having smiled; even where there are ample pictorial remains, humour is
generally unrepresented. The Assyrians have left us the smallest possible
grounds for crediting them with its possession. Instances have been
adduced of Egyptian humour, but some are doubtful, and in any case the
proportion of fun per acre of picture is infinitesimally small. The
Greeks, perhaps, came the nearest to what we consider the comic, but with
both Greek and Roman the humour has something of bitterness and sterility;
even in what was professedly comic we cannot always see any real fun.
Where it strikes out unexpectedly in brief flashes it is with a cold light
that leaves no impression of warmth behind. The mechanical character of
their languages, with a multitude of fixed formulæ, is perhaps an index to
their mental development. The subtleties of wit ran in the direction of
gratifying established tastes and prejudices by satirical references, but
rarely condescending to amuse for mere humour's sake. Where is found the
nearest approach to merriness is in what now-a-days we regard as the least
interesting and meritorious grade of humour, the formal parody. The Greeks
had, outside their fun, let it be noted, something better than jococity,
and that was joyousness. The later Romans became humourous in a low way
which has had a permanent influence upon literature and art.

Sense of humour grew with the centuries, and by the time that the Gothic
style of architecture arose, appreciation of the ludicrous-in-general
(_i.e._ that which is without special reference to an established phase of
thought) is traceable as a characteristic of, at least, the Teuton
nations. It must be admitted that the popular verbal fun of the middle
ages is not always easy to grasp, but it cannot be denied that where
understood, or where its outlet is found in the graphic or glyphic arts,
there is allied to the innocent coarseness and unscrupulousness, a
richness of conceit, a wealth of humour, and a delicate and accurate sense
of the laughable far beyond Greek wit or Roman jocularity.

It is to the embodiments of the spirit of humour as found in our mediæval
churches that our present study is directed.

It may be as well to first say a little upon those comicalities which may
be styled 'grotesques by misadventure.' This is a branch of the subject to
be approached with some diffidence, for it is in many cases difficult to
discriminate between that which was intended to be grotesque, and that
which was executed with serious or often devout feelings, but for one of
several causes often presenting to us an irresistibly comic effect.

The causes may be five. First, the varying mechanical and constructive
incompetency of the artists to embody their ideas. Second, the copying of
an earlier work with executive ability, with strong perception of its
unintentional and latent humour, but without respect to, or without
knowledge of, its serious meaning. Third, the use of symbolic
representation, in which the greater the skill, often the greater the
ludicrous effect. Fourth, the change of fashion, manners, and customs.
Fifth, a bias of mind which impelled to whimsical treatment.

Consideration of the causes thus roughly analysed will explain away a
large proportion of the irreverence of the irreverent paintings and
carvings which excite such surprise, and sometimes disgust, in the minds
of many modern observers of ecclesiological detail.

It will be seen that the placing of carvings in any one of these five
classes, or in the category of intentional grotesques, must, in many
cases, be a mere matter of opinion. For the present purpose it will not be
necessary to separate them, except so far as the plan of the work does it
automatically. Many ecclesiastical and other seals afford familiar
instances of the 'comic without intention,' parallel to what is said above
as to carvings.




The Carvers.


[Illustration: LINCOLN, _14th cent._]

Seemingly probability and evidence go hand in hand to shew that a great
bulk of the church mason work of this country was the work of foreigners.
Saxon churches were probably first built by Roman workmen, whose erections
would teach sufficient to enable Saxons to afterward build for themselves.
Imported talent, however, is likely to have been constantly employed.
Edward the Confessor brought back with him from France new French designs
for the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey, and doubtless he brought French
masons also. Anglo-Norman is strongly Byzantine in character, and though
the channels through which it passed may be various, there is little doubt
that its origin was the great Empire of the East. Again, the great
workshop of Europe, where Eastern ideas were gathered together and
digested, and which supplied cathedrals and cathedral builders at command,
was Flanders; and there is little doubt that during some five centuries
after the Norman Conquest, Flemings were employed, in a greater or less
degree, on English work. Italians were largely employed. The Angel Choir
of Lincoln is one distinct witness to that. The workmen who executed the
finely-carved woodwork of St. George's Chapel, Windsor, King's College,
Cambridge, and Westminster Abbey, in the sixteenth century, were chiefly
Italians, under the superintendence of Torregiano, a Florentine artist. He
was a fellow-pupil of Michael Angelo, and is best known by the dastardly
blow he dealt him with a mallet, disfiguring him for life. The resentment
of Lorenzo de Medici at this caused Torregiano to leave Florence. He came
to England in 1503.

The architect, however, of King Henry VII.'s Chapel was Bishop Alcock, an
Englishman, born at Hull, the already existing Grammar School of which
place he endowed, and, perhaps, rebuilt. Many other architects of English
buildings were Englishmen, probably the majority, and doubtless a large
proportion of the workmen also,[1] but it would be idle to deny that
imported art speaks loudly from work of all the styles.

The carved detail may be relied upon to tell us something, and it speaks
of an original reliance upon the East, which was never outgrown. The
carvings found in England are not marked by anything at all approaching a
national spirit, even in the limited degree that was possible. Except for
a few carvings of armorial designs, and still fewer with slight local
reference, there are none in wood or stone which would not be equally in
place in any Romance country in Europe. The carvings, also, in the
Continental churches present familiar aspects to the student of English
ornament.

But if we have yet to wait some fortunate discovery of rolls of workmen's
names, with their rate of wages, we are not without such interesting
information concerning the old carvers as is contained in portraits they
have left of themselves. Just as authors sometimes recognize how
satisfactory it is to have their "effigies" done at the fronts of their
books, so have the carvers of old sometimes attached to their works
portraits of themselves or their fellows, in their habits as they lived,
in their attitudes as they laboured.

[Illustration: AN INDUSTRIOUS CARVER, LYNN.]

Our first carver hails from Lincolnshire. In 1852, when the Church of St.
Nicholas, Lynn, was restored, the misericordes were taken out and not
replaced, but passed as articles of commerce eventually to the
Architectural Museum, Tufton Street, London. Among these is a view of a
carver's studio, shewing the industrious master seated, tapping carefully
away at a design upon the bench before him. There are three apprentices in
the background working at benches; there are at the back some incised
panels, and a piece of open screen-work. Perhaps we may suppose the
weather to be cold, for the carver has on an exceedingly comfortable cloak
or surcoat. At his feet reposes his dog.

[Illustration: CARVER'S INITIALS, ST. NICHOLAS'S, LYNN.]

There is an interesting peculiarity about these Lynn carvings; the sides
of the misericordes are designs in the fashion of monograms, or rebuses.
The sides supporting the carver are his initials, pierced with his carving
tools, a saw and a chisel. The difficulty is the same in all of the set;
the meaning of the monograms is not to be lightly determined. In this case
it may be U.V., or perhaps U is twice repeated.

[Illustration: COMMUNICATING A STRIKING IDEA, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

The next carvers belong to the following century. Here also we see the
principal figures in the midst of work. In this case, however, there has
arrived an interruption. Either one of the workers is about to commit
mock assault and battery upon another with a mallet, or a brilliant idea
for a grotesque has just struck him, and he hastens to impart it. From the
expression of the faces, and the attitudes for which two other workmen
have stood as models, at the sides, the latter may be the more likely. It
is not impossible that the carver of the fine set of sixty-eight
misericordes in Beverley Minster had in mind the incident of the blow
given to Michael Angelo, and it would be interesting to know if any of
Torregiano's Italians worked at Beverley. This aproned, noisy, jocular
crew are very different from the dignified artist we have just left, but
doubtless they turned out good work of the humorous class.

The two "sidesmen" are occupied in the two ways of shewing intelligence
and contempt known as "taking a sight," etc.

[Illustration: MUTUAL CONTEMPT, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

The next carver is a figure at Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. This is
locally known as the Wellingborough shoemaker, but nearly all local
designations of such things are wrong, and this is no exception. Elsewhere
in speaking of this sedate figure, I have conjectured he may be cutting
something out of leather, and not making shoes. However, I have since
arrived at Miss Phipson's conclusion: the figure can only be that of a
carver. He is fashioning not a leather rosette, but a Tudor rose in oak,
to be afterwards pinned with an oak pin in some spandrel. He is rather a
reserved-looking individual, but a master of his craft, if we may suppose
he has "turned out" the two eagles at his right and left.

[Illustration: A PIECE OF FINE WORK, WELLINGBOROUGH.]

No doubt there were several ways of building churches, or supplying them
with their art decorations. Some masons would be attached to a cathedral,
and be lent or sent here and there by arrangement. Others would be ever
wandering, seeking church work. Others might come from abroad for
particular work, and return with the harvest of English money when the
work was done. For special objects there were depôts. It is an
acknowledged fact that the black basalt fonts of Norman times were
imported from Flanders. There are occasionally met other things of this
material with the same class of design, evidently from the same source,
such as the sculptured coffin-lid at Bridlington Priory, given on a
following page. I have not seen it noted, but I think it will be
established that "brasses," so much alike all over the country, were
mostly ready-made articles also from Flanders. From the stereotyped
conventionality of the altar-tomb effigies, they also may be judged to be
the productions of workshops doing little but this work, and probably
foreign.

What is required to determine the general facts on these points is a
return from various fabric accounts. We shall probably find both English
and foreign carvers. There is little or no doubt that the carvers of our
grotesques were members of the mysterious society which has developed into
the modern body of Freemasons. It would be interesting--if it were not so
apparently impossible--to trace in the records of early Freemasonry, not
only the names and nationalities of the masons and carvers, but the
details of that fine organization which enabled them to develope ideas and
improvements simultaneously throughout Europe; and which would tell us,
moreover, something of the master minds which conceived and directed the
changes of style. But the masonic history of our carvers is much enveloped
in error to the outside world. Thus we are told that in the minority of
Henry VI. the masons were suppressed by statute, but that on his assuming
the control of affairs he repealed the Act, and himself became a mason;
moreover, we are told he wrote out "Certayne Questyons with Awnsweres to
the same concerning the Mystery of Maconrye" which was afterwards "copyed
by me Johan Leylande Antiquarius," at the command of Henry VIII.; the MS.
being gravely stated to be in the Bodleian Library. No such MS. exists at
the Bodleian Library. If it did, its diction and spelling (which is all on
pretended record in certain books probably repudiated by the masonic body
proper) would instantly condemn it as a forgery. Certainly an Act was
passed, 3 Henry VI., which is in itself a historical monument to the
importance of Freemasonry. It is a brief enactment that the yearly
meetings of the masons, being contrary to the Statute of Labourers (of 25
Edward III., 1351) fixing the rates of labour, which the masons varied and
apparently increased, were no longer to be held; offenders to be judged
guilty of felony. The Commons did not quite know what to style the
meetings, using in this short Act the following terms for them: Chapters,
Assemblies, Congregations, and Confederacies.

But important though this proves the masons to have been, there is no
account of the statute being repealed until the 5 Elizabeth, when another
took its place equally intolerant to the spirit of Freemasonry, and
Freemasonry really only became legal by the Act of 6 George IV.

But the prohibition of 1424 was not abolition. If the masons were debarred
from being allowed to exercise their advanced notions of remuneration, or
to have any legal recognition whatever, it scarcely seems to have affected
their action. For if they had refrained from exercising their freedom, and
submitted to being put down by statute, it is probable we should have met
them in the form of more ordinary gilds as instituted by other craftsmen.
But we do not meet them thus, and the inference is that they went on in
their own way, at their own time, and at their own price. It may be
presumed that the more or less migratory habits of the masons made the Act
impossible to be rigidly enforced.

Coming down towards the end of Gothic times, we find, at any rate, there
was one place where images might be ordered. In the Stanford
churchwardens' accounts for 1556 there occur the following entries:--

  "It. In expences to Abyndon to speke for ymages         vijd.
   It. for iij ymages, the Rode, Mare, and John   xxijs. iiijd."

It will have been noticed that the portraits of the carvers are Late. It
is a great merit, on antiquarian grounds, that Gothic work, prior to the
revival in art, was too much unconscious to admit anything so
self-personal as a thought of the workers themselves, though frequently
their 'marks' are unobtrusively set upon their works. By the sixteenth
century, the sculptor's art developed with the rest of mental effort, and
the artists drank fresh draughts from the springs coming by way of Rome,
springs whose waters had been concerned in the existence of nearly all the
art that had been in Europe for ten centuries.




[Illustration: DOG AND BONE, BRECHIN.]


The Artistic Quality of Church Grotesques.


The grotesque has been pronounced a false taste, and not desirable to be
perpetuated. Reflection upon the causes and meanings of Gothic grotesque
will shew that perpetuation is to be regretted for other than artistic
reasons. If the taste be false yet the work is valuable on historic
grounds, for what it teaches of its own time and much more for what it
hints of earlier periods of which there is meagre record anywhere.
Therefore it would be well not to confuse the student of the future with
our clever variations of imperfectly understood ideas. Practically the
grotesque and emblematic period ended at the Reformation; and it was well.

But while leaving the falseness of the taste for grotesques an open
question, there is something to be said for them without straining fact.
For it is certain that there is underlying Gothic grotesque ornament a
unique and, if not understood, an uncopiable beauty, be the subject never
so ugly. The fascinating element appear to be, first, the completeness of
the genius which was exercised upon it. It not only conveys the
travestying idea, but also sufficiently conveys the original thought
travestied.

What is it at which we laugh? It shall be a figure which is of a kind
generally dignified, now with no dignity; generally to be respected, but
now commanding no respect; capable of being feared, but now inspiring no
fear; usually lovable, but now provoking no love. It shall be a figure of
which the preconceived idea was either worthy or dreadful--which suddenly
we have presented to us shorn of its superior attributes. Ideals are
unconsciously enshrined in the mind, and when images proclaiming
themselves the same ideals appear in sharp degraded contrast--we laugh.
Thus we affirm the correctness of the original judgments both as to the
great and the contemptible imitating it, for laughter is the effect of
appreciation of incongruity. Custom overrides nearly all, and blunts
contrast of ideas, yet wit, darting here and there among men, ever finds
fresh contrasts and fresh laughter.

[Illustration: DOG AND BONE, CHRISTCHURCH, HAMPSHIRE.]

Further counts for something the excellence of the artistic management,
which in the treatment of the most unpromising subjects filled the
composition with beautiful lines. It was left to Hogarth's genius to
insist on the reality of "the line of beauty" as governing all loveliness,
and he suggests that a perceptive recognition of this existed on the part
of the classic sculptors. This applies to their work in general, but he
also mentions their frequent addition of some curved object connected
with the subject, as though it were a kind of key to the artistic
composition. Whether consciously or not, the ancients used many such
adjunctive curved lines, and Hogarth's conclusions cannot be styled
fanciful. The helmet, plume, and serpent-edged ægis of Minerva, the
double-bowed bolt and serpents of Jupiter, the ornaments of the trident,
the aplustre and the twisted rope of Neptune, the bow and serpent of
Apollo, the plume of Mars, the caduceus of Mercury, the ship-prow of
Saturn, the gubernum or rudder of Venus, the drinking horn of Pan,
together with many another form to be observed in particular works of the
ancients, is each a definite and perfect example of the faultless line.
Now, to repeat, many--an infinite number--of the ornaments of Gothic
architecture, and not less the grotesque than any other description, are
likewise composed of the most beautiful lines conceivable, either
entirely, or combined with lines of abrupt and ungraceful turn that seem
to deliberately provoke one's artistic protest; and yet the whole
composition shall, by its curious mixture of beauty and bizarre, its
contrast of elegance with awkwardness, leave a real and unique sense of
pleasure in the mind. Doubtless the root of this pleasure is the
gratification of the mind at having secretly detected itself responding to
the call of art to exercise itself in appreciative discrimination. This
may be unconsciously done; and in a great measure the qualities which give
the pleasure would be bestowed upon the work in similar happy
unconsciousness of the exact why and wherefore. Often, as in the ancient
statues, a small curved form is introduced as an appendage to a mediæval
grotesque.

[Illustration: HAWKS OR EAGLES? WELLINGBOROUGH, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.]

Thus we see that there are combinations of two kinds of contrast which
make Gothic grotesques agreeable, the artistic contrasts among the mere
lines of the carvings, and the significatory contrasts evolved by the
meanings of the carvings.

As far back as the twelfth century, a critic of church grotesques
recognized their combination of contrasts. This was St. Bernard of
Clairvaux, who, speaking of the ecclesiastical decoration of his time,
paid the grotesques of church art the exact tribute they so often merit;
probably the greater portion of what he saw has given place to succeeding
carvings, though of precisely the same characteristics. He calls them "a
wonderful sort of hideous beauty and beautiful deformity." He, moreover,
put a question, many times since repeated by hundreds who never heard of
him, asking the use of placing ridiculous monstrosities in the cloisters
before the eyes of the brethren when occupied with their studies.

It is not possible to explain the "use" of perpetuating the barbarous
symbols of a long-forgotten past; but it will be interesting to shew that
there were actual causes accounting for their continued existence and
their continued production, unknown ages after their own epoch.




Gothic Ornaments not Didactic.


Reflection will not lead us to believe carvings to have been placed in
churches with direct intent to teach or preach. Many writers have
coincided in producing a general opinion that the churches, as containing
these carvings, were practically the picture (or sculpture) galleries and
illustrated papers for the illiterate of the past. This supposition will
not bear examination. It would mean that in the days when humble men
rarely travelled from home, and then mostly by compulsion, to fight for
lord or king, or against him, the inhabitant of a village or town had for
the (say) forty years sojourn in his spot of Merrie England, a small
collection of composite animals, monsters, mermaids, impossible flowers,
etc.--with perhaps one doubtful domestic scene of a lady breaking a vessel
over the head of a gentleman who is inquisitive as to boots--with which to
improve his mind. Sometimes his church would contain not half-a-dozen
forms, and mostly not one he could understand or cared to interpret.

Misericordes, the secondary seats or shelves allowed as a relaxation
during the ancient long standing services, are invariably carved, and
episode is more likely to be found there than anywhere else in the church.
Hence, misericordes have been specially selected for this erroneous
consideration of ornament to be the story-book of the Middle Ages. This is
unfortunate for the theory, for they were placed only in churches having
connection with a monastic or collegiate establishment. They are in the
chancels, where the feet of laymen rarely trod, and, moreover, there would
be few hours out of the twenty-four when the stalls would not be occupied
by the performers of the daily offices or celebrations.

The fact appears to be that the carvings were the outcome of causes far
different from an intention to produce genre pictures. It is patent that
anything which kept within its proper mechanical and architectural
outline, was admitted. What was offered depended upon a multitude of
considerations, but chiefly upon the traditions of mason-craft. The Rev.
Charles Boutell has an apt description touching upon the origin of the
carvings: calling them "chronicles," he says they were "written by men who
were altogether unconscious of being chroniclers at all.... They worked
under the impulse of motives altogether devoid of the historical element.
They were influenced by the traditions of their art, by their own
feelings, and were directed by their own knowledge, experience, and
observation, and also by the associations of their every-day lives." This
appears to explain in general terms the sources of iconography. In brief,
the sculptor had a stock-in-trade of designs, which he varied or
supplemented, according to his ability and originality.

That the stock-in-trade, or traditions of the art, handed down from
master to apprentice, generation after generation, persistently retained
an immense amount of intellectualia thus derived from a remote antiquity,
is but an item of this subject, but the most important of which this work
has cognizance.

[Illustration: SEA-HORSE DRAGONZED, LINCOLN, _14th cent._]




Ingrained Paganism.


We at this day may be excused for not participating in the good St.
Bernard's dislike to the "hideous beauties" of the grotesque, and for not
deploring, as he does, the money expended on their production. For many of
them are the embodiments of ideas which the masons had perpetuated from a
period centuries before his time, and which could in no other way have
been handed down to us. There are many reasons why books were unlikely
media for early times; for later, the serious import of the origin of the
designs would be likely to be doubted; and for the most part the special
function of the designs has been the adornment of edifices of religion.
They were, in fact, religious symbols which in various ages of the world
have been used with varying degrees of purity. One of the Rabbis,
Maimonides, has an instructive passage on the rise of symbolic images.
Speaking of men's first falling away from a presumed early pure religion
he says:--"They began to build temples to the stars, ... and this was the
root of idolatry ... and the false prophet showed them the image that he
had feigned out of his own heart, and said it was the image of that star
which was made known to him by prophecy; and they began after this manner
to make images in temples and under trees ... and this thing was spread
throughout the world--to serve images with services different one from
another and to sacrifice unto, and worship them. So in process of time the
glorious and fearful name was forgotten out of the mouth of all living ...
and there was found on earth no people that knew aught save images of wood
and stone, and temples of stone which they built." The ancient Hindoo
fables also indicate how imagery arose; they speak of the god Ram, "who,
having no shape, is described by a similitude." The worship of the "Host
of Heaven" was star-worship, or "Baalim."

The Sabean idolatry was the worship of the stars, to which belongs much of
the earlier image carving, for the household gods of the ancient Hebrews,
the Teraphim (as the images of Laban stolen by Rachel), were probably in
the human form as representing planets, even in varying astronomical
aspects of the same planet. They are said to have been of metal. The
ancient Germans had similar household gods of wood, carved out of the root
of the mandragora plant, or alraun as they called it, from the
superstition kindred to that of the East, that the images would answer
questions (from _raunen_ to whisper in the ear). Examination of many
ancient Attic figurines appears to shew that they had a not unsimilar
origin, reminding us that both Herodotus and Plato state the original
religion of the Greeks to have been star-worship, and hence is derived the
[Greek: Theos] god, from [Greek: Thein] to run. Thus in other than the
poet's sense are the stars "elder scripture."

A large number of the forms met in architectural ornament, it may be
fittingly reiterated, have a more or less close connection with the
worships which existed in times long prior to Christianity. A portion of
them was continuously used simply because the masons were accustomed to
them, or in later Gothic on account of the universal practice of copying
existing works; unless we can take it for granted in place of that
practice, that there existed down to Reformation days "portfolios" of
carver's designs which were to the last handed down from master to
apprentice, as must have undoubtedly been the case in earlier times. Other
portions of the ancient worship designs are found in Christian art because
they were received and grafted upon the symbolic system of the Church's
teaching. The retention of these fragments of superseded paganism does not
always appear to have been of deliberate or willing intention. The early
days of the Church even after its firm establishment, were much occupied
in combating every form of paganism. The converts were constantly lapsing
into their old beliefs, and the thunders of the early ecclesiastical
councils were as constantly being directed against the ancient
superstitions. Sufficient remains on record to shew how hard the gods
died.

To near the end of the fourth century the chief intelligence of Rome
publicly professed the Olympic faith. With the next century, however,
commenced a more or less determined programme of persecutory repression.
Thus, councils held at Arles about 452 ruled that a bishop was guilty of
sacrilege who neglected to extirpate the custom of adoring fountains,
trees, and stones. At that of Orleans in 533 Catholics were to be
excommunicated who returned to the worship of idols or ate flesh offered
to idols. At Tours in 567 several pagan superstitions were forbidden, and
at Narborne in 590; freemen who transgressed were to have penance, but
slaves to be beaten. At Nicea in 681 image worship was allowed of
Christ.[2] At Augsburgh (?) in 742 the Count Gravio was associated with
the Bishop to watch against popular lapses into paganism. In 743 Pepin
held a council in which he ruled, as his father had done before, that he
who practised any pagan rites be fined 15 sous (15/22 of a livre). To the
orders was attached the renunciation, in German, of the worship of Odin by
the Saxons, and a list of the pagan superstitions of the Germans. The
Council of Frankfort in 794 ordered the sacred woods to be destroyed.
Constantinople had apparently already not only become a channel for the
conveyance of oriental paganism in astro-symbolic images, but was also
evidently nearer to the lower idolatry of heathenism than the Church of
the West. Thus we find the bishops of Gaul, Germany, and Italy in council
at Frankfort, rejecting with anathema, and as idolatrous, the doctrines of
the Council of Constantinople upon the worship of images.

While all this repression was going on, the Church was making itself
acceptable, just as the Mosaic system had done in its day, by assimilating
the symbols of the forbidden faiths. Itself instituted without formularies
or ceremonial, both were needed when it became a step-ladder of ambition
and the expedient displacer of the corrupt idolatries into which
sun-worship had disintegrated. Hence among the means of organization,
observance and symbol took the place of original simplicity, and it is
small wonder that ideas were adopted which were already in men's minds.
Elements of heathenism which, after the lapse of centuries, still clung to
the Church's robes, became an interwoven part of her dearest symbolism. If
men did not burn what they had adored, they in effect adored that which
they had burned.

In spite, however, of edicts and adoptions, paganism has never been
entirely rooted out; what Sismondi calls the "rights of long possession,
the sacredness of time-hallowed opinion, and the potency of habit," are
not yet entirely overcome in the midst of the most enlightened peoples.
The carvings which point back to forgotten myths have their parallels in
curious superstitions and odd customs which are not less venerable.

There were many compromises made on account of the ineradicable attachment
of the people to religious customs into which they were born. Christian
festivals were erected on the dates of heathen observances. In the sixth
century, Pope Gregory sent word to Augustine, then in England, that the
idolatrous temples of the English need not be destroyed, though the idols
should, and that the cattle sacrificed to the heathen deities should be
killed on the anniversary of dedication or on the nativities of the
saints whose relics were within the church.

It is said that it was, later, usual to bring a fat buck into St. Paul's,
London, with the hunters' horns blowing, in the midst of divine service,
for the cathedral was built on or near the site of a former temple of
Diana. This custom was made the condition of a feudal tenure. The story of
Prosperine, another form of Diana, was the subject of heathen plays, and
down to the sixteenth century the character appears in religious mystery
plays as the recipient of much abuse.

Ancient mythology points in one chief direction. "Omnes Deos referri ad
solem," says Macrobius, "All Gods refer to the sun," and in the light of
that saying a thousand complicated fables of antiquity melt into
simplicity. The ancient poets called the sun (at one time symbolically of
a First Great Cause, at another absolutely) the Leader, the Moderator, the
Depository of Light, the Ordainer of human things; each of his virtues was
styled a different god, and given its distinct name. The moon also, and
the stars were made the symbols of deities. These symbols put before the
people as vehicles for abstract ideas, were quickly adopted as gods, the
symbolism being disregarded, and the end was practically the same as that
narrated by the ancient rabbi just quoted. But it may be doubted whether
the pantheism of the classic nations was ever entirely gross. The great
festivals of the gods were accompanied by the initiation of carefully
selected persons into certain mysteries of which no description is
extant. Thirlwall hazards the conjecture "that they were the remains of a
worship which preceded the rise of the Hellenic mythology ... grounded on
a view of nature less fanciful, more earnest and better fitted to awaken
both philosophical thought and religious feeling." Whether a purer system
was unfolded to the initiated on these occasions or not, there is little
doubt that it had existed and was at the root of the symbol rites.

[Illustration: AN IMP ON CUSHIONS, CHRISTCHURCH, HANTS., _early 16th
cent._]




Mythic Origin of Church Carvings.


[Illustration: TAU CROSS, WELLINGBOROUGH.]

The discoveries in Egypt in recent years undoubtedly press upon us the
fact that there was in Europe an early indigenous civilization, and that
the exchange of ideas between East and West was at least equal. For the
purpose of this study, however, the theory of independence is not accepted
absolutely; it is premised that though there were in numerous parts of the
old world early native systems of worship of much similarity, yet that
such relics of them as are met in architecture came from the East.

The mythic ideas at the root of Gothic decoration were probably early
disseminated through Europe in vague and varying ways, whose chief impress
is in folk-lore; but the concrete forms themselves appear to have been
introduced later, after being brought, as it were, to a focus, being
selected and assimilated at some great mental centre. Alexandria was the
place where Eastern and Western culture impinged on each other, and
resulted in a conglomerate of ideas. These ideas, however, were not
essentially different in their nature, though each school, Assyrian,
Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, and Hebrew, had diverged widely if they came
from an unknown common source. But if Alexandria was the furnace in which
the material was fused, Byzantium appears to have been the great workshop
where the results were utilized, and from whence they were issued to
Europe.

Sculptured ornament is not alone in the fact of its being a direct legacy
from remotely ancient forms, though, on comparing that with any of the
other arts hitherto recognized as of Eastern origin, it will be found that
none bears such distinct marks of its parentage, or shews such continuity
of form. Thus examination of European glazed pottery, which comes perhaps
the nearest to our subject, shews that the ornamenting devices
occasionally betray an acquaintance with the old symbolic patterns, but
there is less recognition of meaning, scarcely any intention to perpetuate
idea, and no continuity of design. It was not in the nature of the
potter's purpose that there should be any of these, the difference being
that for the mason's and the sculptor's art there was a very close
association with the gild system. The first Christian sculptors would be
masons brought up in pagan gilds, and the gild instincts and traditions
had undoubtedly as strong an effect upon their work, on the whole, as any
religious beliefs they might possess.

The symbolism of the animals of the church in the late points of view of
the Bestiaries and of the expository writers of the Middle Ages, is not
here to be made the subject of special attention. That is a department
well treated in other works, particularly in the volume, "Animal Symbolism
in Ecclesiastical Architecture," by Mr. E. P. Evans, which yet remains to
be equalled. It is to be noted, however, that the early Christians,
seeing the animals and their compounds so integral a portion of pagan
imagery, endeavoured to twist every meaning to one sufficiently Christian:
but what is chiefly worthy of note is the unconscious resistance of the
sculptors to the treatment. Although a multitude of figures can be traced
as used symbolically in accordance with the Christian dicta, there are at
least as many which shew stronger affinity to pagan myth. There is
evidence that this was early recognized by the propogandists. The Council
of Nice in 787, in enjoining upon the faithful the due regard of images,
ordered that the works of art were not to be drawn from the imagination of
the painters, but to be only such as were approved by the rules and
traditions of the Catholic Church. So also ordained the Council of Milan
in 1565.

The Artists, however, did not invent the images so much as use old
material, and, the injunctions of the Council notwithstanding, the ancient
symbols apparently held their ground. The protests of St. Nilus, in the
fifth century, against animal figures in the sanctuary, were echoed by the
repudiations of St. Bernard in the twelfth and Gautier de Coinsi in the
thirteenth, a final condemnation being made at the Council of Milan in
1565, all equally in vain. Though the force of the myth symbols has passed
away, they have left another legacy than the grotesques of church art. The
art works of the Greeks arose from the same materials, the glorious
statues and epics being the highest embodiment of the symbolic, so loftily
overtopping all other forms by the force of supreme physical beauty as to
almost justify and certainly purify the religion of which they were the
outcome; so, later, the same ideas clothed with the moral beauty of
supreme unselfishness enabled Christianity to take hold of the nations.

By the diatribes of Bernard we can see what materials were extant in the
twelfth century for a study of worship-symbols and of the grotesque,
though he ignores any possible meaning they may have. He says, "Sometimes
you may see many bodies under one head; at other times, many heads to one
body; here is seen the tail of a serpent attached to the body of a
quadruped; there the head of a quadruped on the body of a fish. In another
place appears an animal, the fore half of which represents a horse, and
the hinder portion a goat. Elsewhere you have a horned animal with the
hinder parts of a horse; indeed there appears everywhere so multifarious
and so wonderful a variety of diverse forms that one is more apt to con
over the sculptures than to study the scriptures, to occupy the whole day
in wondering at these than in meditating upon God's law."

It has now to be observed how far the symbolic fancies of ancient beliefs
have left their impress on the grotesque art of our churches.

A common representation of the great sun-myth was that of two eagles, or
dragons, watching one at each side of an altar. These were the powers of
darkness, one at each limit of the day, waiting to destroy the light. This
poetic idea has come down to us in many forms. Greek art was unconsciously
frequent in its use of the form, and mediæval sculptors, being often quite
ignorant of the significance of the design, use it in a variety of ways,
in many of which the likeness to the original is entirely lost, the
composition ending in but a semi-natural representation of birds pecking
at fruit. In the above block from Lincoln Minster, the altar is well
preserved. In the next block, which is from a carving connected with the
preceding one, the idea is more distantly hinted at.

[Illustration: THE ALTAR OF LIGHT AND THE BIRDS OF DARKNESS, LINCOLN.]

[Illustration: SYMBOLS OF DARKNESS, LINCOLN.]

At Exeter, an ingenious grotesque composition of two duck-footed harpies,
one on either side of a _fleur-de-lis_, is evidently from the same source.
Examples of this could be multiplied very readily.

[Illustration: THE ALTAR OF LIGHT AND THE BIRDS OF DARKNESS, EXETER.]

The Cat and the Fiddle are subjects of carvings at Beverley and at Wells.

Man has an almost universal passion for the oral transmission of the
fruits of his mental activity. In the particular instances of many lingual
compositions this passion has become an inveterate race habit, and the
rhymes or reasons have been transmitted verbally to posterity long after
their original meaning has been lost or obscured. It is no new thing that
a nursery rhyme has been found to be the relic of an archaic poem long
misunderstood or perverted. The lines as to "the cat and the fiddle" are
an excellent instance of the aptitude to continue the use of metrical
composition the sense of which has departed. The full verse is, as it
stands, a curious jumble of disconnected sentences.

  "Hey, diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle,
    The cow jumped over the moon,
  The little dog laughed to see such sport,
    While the dish run away with the spoon."

[Illustration: THE WEEKS DANCING TO THE MUSIC OF THE MONTH, BEVERLEY
MINSTER.]

[Illustration: HEY, DIDDLE, DIDDLE, THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE, WELLS.]

I am not aware that any attempt has yet been made to explain this
extraordinary verse. Examination seemingly shews that it was originally a
satire in derision of the worship of Diana. The moon-goddess had a
three-fold existence. On the earth she was Diana. Among the Egyptians we
find her as Isis, and her chief symbol was the cat. Apuleius calls her the
mother of the gods. In the worship of Isis was used a musical instrument,
the sistrum, which had four metal bars loosely inserted in a frame so as
to be shaken; on the apex of this frame, which was shaped not unlike a
horse-shoe, was carved the figure of a cat, as emblematic of the moon. The
four bars are said by Plutarch to represent the elements, but it is more
likely they were certain notes of the diapason. The worship of Isis passed
to Italy, though the Greeks had previously connected the cat with the
moon. The fiddle, as an instrument played with a bow, was not known to
classic times, but the word for fiddle--_fides_--was applied to a lyre. It
is equivalent to a Greek word for gut-string. In the light of what
follows, I suggest that "the Cat and the Fiddle" is a mocking allusion to
the worship of Diana upon earth.

In the heavens the moon-goddess had the name of Luna, and her chief symbol
was the crescent, which is sometimes met figured as a pair of cow's horns.
Images of Isis were crowned with crescent horns; she was believed to be
personified in the cow, as Osiris was in the bull, and her symbol, a
crescent moon, is met in sculpture over the back of the animal. This
apparently suggested the second line.

The third personality of the goddess was Hecate, which was the name by
which she was known in the infernal regions,--which means of course, in
nature, when she was below the horizon. Now another name by which she was
known was Prosperine (Roman), and Persephone (Greek), and her carrying
down into Hades by Pluto (Roman), or Dis (Greek), was the fable wrought
out of the simple phenomenon of moon-set. I suggest that the last line of
the verse is a grotesque rendering of the statement that--

  "Dis ran away with Persephone."

Dis is equivalent to Serapis the Bull, otherwise Ammon, Æsculapius, Nilus,
etc., that is, the Sun. Why the little dog laughed to see such sport is
not easy to explain. It may be an allusion to one of the heads of Hecate,
that of a dog, to indicate the watchfulness of the moon. There is another
Hecate (a bad, as the above-mentioned was considered a beneficient deity),
but which was originally no doubt the same, whose attributes were two
black dogs, _i.e._, the darkness preceding and following the moonlight in
short lunar appearances. Or it may be an allusion to the fact that the dog
was associated with Dis, being considered the impersonation of Sirius the
Dog-star. In various representations of the rape of Prosperine, Dis is
accompanied by a dog, _e.g._, the grinning hound in Titian's picture.

Prosperine's symbol of a crescent moon was adopted as one of those of the
Virgin Mary, and Candlemas Day, 2nd February, takes the place of the Roman
festival, the candles used to illustrate the text, "a light to lighten the
Gentiles," being the representatives of the torches carried in the
processions which affected to search for the lost Prosperine.

Hindoo mythology has also a three-fold Isis, or moon-goddess; namely, Bhu
on earth, Swar in heaven, Pátála, below the earth.

The moon-deity has not come down to us as in every case a female
personation. This is, however, explained by an early fable [in the
Puránas] of the Hindoos, in which it is narrated that Chandra, or Lunus,
lost his sex in the forest of Gauri, and became Chandri, or Luna. The
origin of this has yet to be discovered; it may be nothing more than the
account of an etymological change, produced by a transcript of dialect.

Whether the Beverley artist knew that the cat was a moon-symbol may be
doubted. The fiddle has four strings, as the sistrum had four bars. As
well as the elements and the four seasons of the year, the four may mean
the four weeks. It will be observed that as the Hours are said to dance by
the side of the chariot of the sun, so here four weeks dance to the music
of the moon-sphere; the word moon means the measurer, and the cat is
playing a dance measure!

The cat is not a very frequent subject. At Sherborne she is shewn hanged
by mice, one of the retributive pieces which point to a confidence in the
existence of something called justice, not always self-evident in the
olden-time. Rats and mice are the emblem of St. Gertrude. The dog had a
higher place in ancient estimation than his mention in literature would
warrant; the fact that among the Romans he was the emblem of the Lares,
the household gods, is a weighty testimonial to that effect, while the
Egyptians had a city named after and devoted to the dog.

Among the pre-existing symbols seized by the Christians, the Egyptian
Cross and Druidical Tau must not be overlooked. It is found on the
capitals of pillars at Canterbury and other places; the example given in
the initial on page 34 is perhaps the latest example in English Gothic.
Its admission as a grotesque is due to its, perhaps merely accidental, use
as a mask as noted in the chapter on "Masks and Faces."

The sinuous course of the sun among the constellations is mentioned in
literature as far back as Euripides as an explanation of the presence of
the dragon in archaic systems of mythology. This may have been the origin
of the figure. Yet in addition to that there always seems to have been the
recognition of an evil principle, of which by a change of meaning, the
dragonic or serpentine star-path of the sun was made the personification
or symbol. According to Pausanius the "dragon" of the Greeks was only a
large snake.

It might not be impossible to collect several hundreds of names by which
the deistic character of the sun has been expressed by various peoples;
and the same applies, though in a less degree, to the Darkness, Storm,
Cold, and Wet, which are taken as his antithesis. One of the oldest of
these Dragon-names is Typhon, which is met in Egyptian mythology. Typhon
is said to be the Chinese _Tai-fun_, the hot wind, and, if this be so,
doubtless the adverse principle was taken to be the spirit of the desert
which ever seeks to embrace Egypt in its arid arms. The symbol of Typhon
was the crocodile, and doubtless the dragon form thus largely rose. Ráhu,
an evil deity in Hindoo mythology, though generally called a dragon, is
sometimes met represented as a crocodile, and his numerous progeny are
styled crocodiles. The constellation called by the Japanese the crocodile
is that known to us as the dragon. Can it be that in the universal dragon
we have a chronicle of our race's dim recollection of some survival of the
terrible Jurassic reptiles, and hence of their period?

But the myth has ever one ending; the power of the evil one is destroyed
for a time by the coming of the sun-god, though eventually the evil
triumphs, that is dearth recurs.

In the Scandinavian myth, Odin the son of Bur, broke for a season the
strength of the great serpent Jörmungard, who, however, eventually
swallowed the hero. Thus was Odin the sun; and his companions, the other
Asir, were more or less sun attributes. In the case of Egypt the god is
Horus (the sun-light), the youthful son of Osiris and Isis, who drives
back Typhon to the deserts; for that country the rising of the Nile is the
happy crisis. Horus is sometimes called Nilus. Whether the above
derivation of the word Typhon be correct or not, which may be doubtful,[3]
that of Horus from the root _Hur_ light, connected with the Sanscrit _Ush_
to burn (whence also Aurora, etc.,) is certain. When the great myth became
translated to different climates, the evil principle took on different
forms of dread. Water, the rainy season in some countries, the darkness
and cold of winter in others, were the Dragon which the Hero-god, the Sun,
had to overcome--out of which conflict arose myths innumerable, yet one
and the same in essence. Apollo slew the Python, the sunbeams drying up
the waters being his arrows; Perseus slew the Dragon, by turning him to
stone, which perhaps means that the spring sun dried up the mud of the
particular locality where the fable rose. Later, Sigurd slew the Dragon
Fafnir. When the Christians found themselves by expediency committed to
adopt the form, and to a certain degree the spirit, of heathen beliefs,
the Sun _versus_ Darkness, or the Spring _versus_ Winter myth was a
difficulty in very many places. At first the idea was kept up of a
material victory over the adverse forces of nature, and we find honourable
mention of various bishops and saints, who--by means of which there is
little detail, but which may be supposed to be that great monastic
beneficence, intelligent drainage--conquered the dragons of flood and fen.
It is somewhat odd that the Psalmist attributes to the Deity the victory
of breaking the heads of the "dragons in the waters."

Thus St. Romain of Rouen slew there the Dragon Gargouille, which is but
the name of a draining-gutter after all, and hence the grotesque
waterspouts of our churches are mostly dragons.

St. Martha slew the Dragon Tarasque at Aix-la-chapelle, but that name is
derived from _tarir_, to drain. St. Keyne slew the Cornish Dragon, and, to
be brief, at least twelve other worthies slew dragons, and doubtless for
their respective districts supplied the place of the older myth. Among
these, St. George is noteworthy. He is said to have been born at Lydda, in
Syria, where his legend awaited the Crusaders, who took him as their
patron, bringing him to the west, as the last Christian adoption of a
sun-myth idea, to become the patron saint of England. A figure of St.
George was a private badge of English kings till the time of the Stuarts.
On the old English angel the combat is between St. Michael and the Dragon,
and though St. George is generally shewn mounted, as was also sometimes
Horus, the Egyptian deity, he is sometimes represented on foot, like St.
Michael. The Dragon is generally the same in the two cases, being the
Wyvern or two-legged variety.

Another form of dragon is drake. Certain forms of cannon were called both
dragons and drakes. Sometimes the dragon is found termed the Linden-worm,
or Lind-drake, in places as widely sundered as Scotland and Germany. It is
said this is on account of the dragon dwelling under the linden, a sacred
tree, but this is probably only, as yet, half explained.

Perhaps through all time the sun-myth was accompanied by a constant
feeling that good and evil were symbolised by the alternation of season.
It is to be expected that the feeling would increase and solidify upon the
advent of Christianity, for the periodic dragon of heathendom was become
the permanent enemy of man, the Devil. The frequent combats between men
(and other animals) and the dragons, met among church grotesques, though
their models, far remote in antiquity, were representations of sun-myths,
would be carved and read as the ever-continuing fight between good and
evil. That, however, it is reasonable to see in these Dragon sculptures
direct representatives of the ancient cult, we know from a fact of date.
The festival of Horus, the Egyptian deity, was the 23rd of April. That is
the date of St. George's Day.

Less than the foregoing would scarcely be sufficient to explain the
frequency and significance of the Dragon forms which crowd our subject.

During the three Rogation days, which took the place of the Roman
processional festivals of the Ambarvalia and Cerealia, the Dragon was
carried as a symbol both in England and on the continent. When the Mystery
pageantry of Norwich was swept away, an exception was made in favour of
the Dragon, who, it was ordained, "should come forth and shew himself as
of old."

The Rogation Dragon in France was borne, during the first two days of the
three, before the cross, with a great tail stuffed with chaff, but on the
third day it was carried behind the cross, with the tail emptied of its
contents. This signified, it is said, the undisturbed dominion of Satan
over the world during the two days that Christ was in Hell, and his
complete humiliation on the third day.

In some countries the figure of the Dragon, or another of the Devil, after
the procession, was placed on the altar, then drawn up to the roof, and
being allowed to fall was broken into pieces.

Early Keltic and other pastoral staves end in two Dragons' heads,
recalling the caduceus of Mercury and rod of Moses; the Dragon was a
Keltic military or tribal ensign. Henry VII. assumed a red dragon as one
of the supporters of the royal arms, on account of his Welsh descent;
Edward IV. had as one of his numerous badges a black dragon. A dragon
issuing from a chalice is the symbol of St. John the Evangelist, an
allusion to the dragon of the Apocalypse.

[Illustration: THE SLAYER OF THE DRAGON, IFFLEY.]

The Dragon combat here presented is from the south doorway of Iffley
Church, near Oxford. In this example of Norman sculpture, the humour
intent is more marked than usual. The hero is seated astride the dragon's
back, and, grasping its upper and lower jaws, is tearing them asunder. The
dragon is rudely enough executed, but the man's face and extremities have
good drawing. The cloak flying behind him shew that he has leaped into
the quoin of vantage, and recalls the classic. The calm exultation with
which the hero seizes his enemy is only equalled by the good-natured
amusement which the creature evinces at its own undoing.

We now arrive at a form of the sun-myth which appears to have come down
without much interference. The god Horus is alluded to as a child, and in
a curious series of carvings the being attacked by a Dragon is a child. It
is attempted, and with considerable success, to be represented as of great
beauty. The point to explain is the position of the child, rising as it
does from a shell. This leads us further into the various contingent
mythologies dealing with the Typhon story. Horus (also called Averis, or
Orus), was in Egyptian lore also styled Caimis, and is equivalent to Cama,
the Cupid of the Hindoos. Typhon (also known as Smu, and as Sambar) is
stated to have killed him, and left him in the waters, where Isis restored
him to life. That is the account of Herodotus, but Ælian says that Osiris
threw Cupid into the ocean, and gave him a shell for his abode. After
which he at length killed Typhon.

Hence the shell in the myth-carvings to be found to-day in mediæval
Christian churches.

The Greeks represented Cupid, and also Nerites, as living in shells, and,
strangely enough, located them on the Red Sea coast, adjacent to the home
of the Typhon myth. It is probable that the word _sancha_, a sea-shell,
used in this connection, is from _suca_, a cave, a tent; and we may
conjecture that there is an allusion to certain dwellers in tents, who,
coming westward, worked, after a struggle, a political and dynastic
revolution, carrying with it great changes in agriculture. This is a
conjecture we may, however, readily withdraw in favour of another, that
the shell itself is merely a symbol of the ocean, and that Cupid emerging
is a figure of the sun rising from the sea at some particular zodiacal
period.

[Illustration: THE CHILD AND DRAGON, LINCOLN.]

Another story kindred to that of Typhon and Horus is that of Sani and
Aurva, met in Hindoo literature. They were the sons of Surya, regent of
the Sun (Vishnu); Sani was appointed ruler, but becoming a tyrant was
deposed, and Aurva reigned in his place. This recalls that one of the
names given to Typhon in India was Swarbhánu, "light of heaven," from
which it is evident that he is Lucifer, the fallen angel; so that
accepting the figurative meaning of all the narratives, we can see even a
propriety in the Gothic transmission of these symbolic representations.

It may be added to this that the early conception of Cupid was as the god
of Love in a far wider and higher sense than indicated in the later
poetical and popular idea. He was not originally considered the son of
Venus, whom he preceded in birth. It is scarcely too much to say that he
personified the love of a Supreme Unknown for creation; and hence the
assumption by Love of the character of a deliverer.

There are other shell deities in mythology. Venus had her shell, and her
Northern co-type, Frigga, the wife of the Northern sun-god, Odin, rode in
a shell chariot.

The earliest of our examples is the most serious and precise. The Dragon
is a very bilious and repulsive reptile, while the child form, thrice
repeated in the same carving, has grace and originality. This is from
Lincoln Minster.

The next is also on a misericorde, and is in Manchester Cathedral. Here
the shell is different in position, being upright. The Child in this has
long hair.

[Illustration: DRAGON AND CHILD, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

The third example is from a misericorde at Beverley Minster, the series at
which place shews strong evidence of having been executed from the same
set of designs as those of Manchester Cathedral, and were carved some
twelve years later. Many of the subjects are identically the same, but in
this case it will be seen how a meaning may be lost by a carver's
misapprehension. The shell would not be recognizable without comparison
with the other instances, and the Dragon has become two. The head of the
Child in this carving appears to be in a close hood, or Puritan infantile
cap, which, as the "foundling cap," survived into this century. In all the
three carvings, the Dragons are of the two-legged kind, which St.
George is usually shewn slaying. It is a little remarkable that the
Child's weapon in all three cases is broken away. The object borne
sceptre-wise by the left hand child in the Lincoln carving, is apparently
similar to the Egyptian hieroglyphic [symbol], the Greek [Greek: z],
European s. It may be worth while to suggest that the greatly-discussed
collar of ss, worn by the lords chief justices, and others in authority,
may have its origin in this hieroglyphic as a symbol of sovereignty,
rather than in any of the arbitrary ascriptions of a mediæval initial.

[Illustration: THE CHILD AND DRAGON, MANCHESTER.]

[Illustration: THE SLAYING OF THE SNAIL, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

The weapon is evidently a form of the falx, or falcula, for it was with
such a one (and here we see further distribution of the myth) that Jupiter
wounded Typhon, and such was the instrument with which Perseus slew the
sea-dragon: the falx, the pruning-hook, sickle or scythe, is an emblem of
Saturn, and the oldest representation of it in that connection shew it in
simple curved form. Saturn's sickle became a scythe, and the planet deity
thus armed became, on account of the length of his periodical revolution,
our familiar figure of Father Time. Osiris, the father of Horus, is styled
"the cause of Time." An Egyptian regal coin bears a man cutting corn with
a sickle of semi-circular blade. In many parts of England, the sickle is
spoken of simply as "a hook."

[Illustration: GROTESQUE OF HORUS IN THE SHELL. THE PALMER FOX EXHIBITING
HOLY WATER. NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD.]

Apparently the carver of the Beverley misericorde was conscious he had
rendered the shell very badly, for in the side supporter of the carving he
had placed, by way of reminder as to an attack upon the occupant of a
shell, a man in a fashionable dress, piercing a snail as it approaches
him. In mediæval carvings, as in many of their explanations, it is
scarcely a step from the sublime to the ridiculous.

One other carving which seems to point to the foregoing is at New
College, Oxford. It is a genuine grotesque, and may be a satire upon the
more serious works. It represents, seated in the same univalve kind of
shell as the others, a fox or ape in a religious habit, displaying a
bottle containing, perhaps, water from the Holy Land, the Virgin's Milk,
or other wondrous liquid. One of the side carvings is an ape in a hood
bringing a bottle.




Hell's Mouth.


[Illustration: HELL'S MOUTH, HOLY CROSS, STRATFORD-ON-AVON.]

Hell's Mouth was one of the most popular conceptions of mediæval times.
Except so far as concerns the dragon form of the head whose mouth was
supposed to be the gates of Hell, the idea appears to be entirely
Christian. "Christ's descent into Hell" was a favourite subject of Mystery
plays. In the Coventry pageant the "book of words" contained but six
verses, in which Hell is styled the "cindery cell." The Chester play is
much longer, and is drawn from the Apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus. This
gospel, which has a version in Anglo-Saxon of A.D. 950, is no doubt the
source from which is derived a prevalent form of Hell's Mouth in which
Christ is represented holding the hand of one of the persons engulped in
the infernal jaws. This is seen in a carving on the east window of
Dorchester Abbey.

The Mouth is here scarcely that of a dragon, but that of an exceedingly
well-studied serpent; for intent and powerful malignity the expression of
this fine stone carving would be difficult to surpass. The Descent into
Hell is one of a series, on the same window, of incidents in the life of
Christ; all are exceedingly quaint, but their distance from the ground
improves them in a more than ordinary degree, and their earnest intention
prevails over their accidental grotesqueness. The beautiful curves in this
viperous head are well worthy of notice in connection with the remarks
upon the artistic qualities of Gothic grotesques.

[Illustration: HELL'S MOUTH, DORCHESTER, OXON.]

The verse of the Gospel (xix., 12), explains who the person is. "And [the
Lord] taking hold of Adam by his right hand he ascended from hell and all
the saints of God followed him." The female figure is of course Eve, who
is shewn with Adam in engravings of the subject by Albert Durer (1512,
etc.,) and others. The vision of Piers Ploughman (_circa_ 1362), has
particular mention of Adam and Eve among Satan's captive colony. Satan, on
hearing the order of a voice to open the gates of Hell, exclaims:--

  "Yf he reve me of my ryght he robbeth me by mastrie,
  For by ryght and reson the reukes [rooks] that be on here
  Body and soul beth myne both good and ille
  For he hyms-self hit seide that Syre is of Helle,
  That Adam and Eve and al hus issue
  Sholden deye with deol [should die with grief] and here dwell evere
  Yf thei touchede a tree othr toke ther of an appel."

A MS. volume in the British Museum, of poems written in the thirty-fourth
year of the reign of Henry VI., has "Our Lady's Song of the Chyld that
soked hyr brest," in which other persons than Adam and Eve are stated to
have been taken out of hell on the same occasion:--

  "Adam and Eve wyth hym he take,
  Kyng David, Moyses and Salamon
  And haryed hell every noke,
  Wythyn hyt left he soulys non."

The belief in the descent in Hell can be traced back to the second
century. The form of Hell as a mouth is much later.

There is mention of a certain "Mouth of Hell," which in 1437 was used in a
Passion play in the plain of Veximiel; this Mouth was reported as very
well done, for it opened and shut when the devils required to pass in or
out, and it had two large eyes of steel.

The great east window of York Cathedral, the west front and south doorway
of Lincoln, and the east side of the altar-screen, Beverley Minster, have
representations of the Mouth of Hell. The chancel arch of Southleigh has a
large early fresco of the subject, in which two angels, a good and a bad
(white and black), are gathering the people out of their graves; the black
spirit is plucking up certain bodies (or souls) with a flesh-hook, and his
companions are conveying them to the adjacent Mouth. In a Flemish Book of
Hours of the fifteenth century (in the Bodleian Library) there is a
representation with very minute details of all the usual adjuncts of the
Mouth, and, in addition, several basketsful of children (presumably the
unbaptized) brought in on the backs of wolf-like fiends, and on sledges, a
common mediæval method of conveyance.

Sackvil mentions Hell as "an hideous hole" that--

  "With ougly mouth and griesly jawes doth gape."

Further instances of Hell's Mouth are in the block of the Ludlow ale-wife
on a following page.




Satanic Representations.


[Illustration: WINCHESTER COLLEGE, _14th century_.]

Quaint as are the grotesques derived from the great symbolic Dragon, there
is another series of delineations of Evil, which are still more curious.
These are the representations of Evil which are to be regarded not so much
symbolic as personal. The constant presence of Satan and his satellites on
capital and corbel, arcade and misericorde, is to be explained by the
exceedingly strong belief in their active participation in mundane affairs
in robust physical shapes.

[Illustration: SATAN AND A SOUL, DORCHESTER, OXON.]

It would, perhaps, not seem improper to refer the class of carving
instanced by the three cuts, next following, to the Typhon myth. I think,
however, a distinction may be drawn between such carvings as represent
combat, and such as represent victimization; the former I would attribute
to the myth, the latter to the Christian idea of the torments consequent
on sin. At the same time, the victim-carving, generally easily disposed of
by styling it "Satan and a Soul," is undoubtedly largely influenced by
the myth-idea of Typhon (by whatever name known) as a _seizer_, as
indicated definitely in one of his general names, Gráha. The figure was
naturally one according well with the mediæval understanding of spiritual
punishment, and its varieties in carving are numerous enough to furnish an
adequate inferno. The Dorchester example is a small boss in the groined
ceiling of the sedilia of celebrants; that at Ewelme is a weather-worn
parapet-ornament on the south of the choir; the carving at Farnsham is on
a misericorde.

[Illustration: SATAN AND A SOUL, EWELME, OXON.]

Not entirely, though in some degree, the two next illustrations support
the theory, of punishment rather than conflict, for the others.

[Illustration: REMORSE, YORK.]

The carving in York Cathedral is of a graceful type; there is one closely
resembling it at Wells. The Glasgow sketch is from the drawing of a
fragment of the cathedral; it is more vivid and ludicrous than the other.
A comparison of these two affords a good idea of the excellent in Gothic
ornament. The Glasgow carving lacks everything but vigor; the York
production, though no exceptional example, has vigor, poetry, and grace.

We will now revert to the more personal and "human" aspect of Satan.

[Illustration: REMORSE, GLASGOW.]

A writer[4] in the _Art Journal_ some years ago offered excellent general
observations upon the ideas of the Evil One found at various periods. He
pointed out that the frolicsome character of the mediæval demon was
imparted by Christianity, with its forbidden Satan coming into contact
with the popular belief in hobgoblins and fairies which were common in the
old heathen belief of this island, and so the sterner teaching was tinged
by more popular fancies.

There is much truth in this, except that for the hobgoblins and fairies we
may very well read ancient deities, for the ultimate effect of
Christianity upon Pagan reverence was to turn it into contempt and
abhorrence for good and bad deities alike. We can read this in the slender
records of ancient worships whose traces are left in language. Thus _Bo_
is apparently one of the ancient root-words implying divinity; _Bod_, the
goddess of fecundity; _Boivani_, goddess of destruction; _Bolay_, the
giant who overcame heaven, earth and hell; _Bouders_, or _Boudons_, the
genii guarding Shiva, and _Boroon_, a sea-god, are in Indian mythology.
_Bossum_ is a good deity of Africa. _Borvo_ and _Bormania_ were guardians
of hot springs, and with _Bouljanus_ were gods of old Gaul. _Borr_ was
the father of Odin, and _Bure_ was Borr's sister. The _Bo_-tree of
India is the sacred tree of wisdom. In Sumatra _boo_ is a root-word
meaning good (as in _booroo_). _Bog_ is the Slavonic for god. These are
given to shew a probable connection among wide-spread worships.

[Illustration: SATAN AND A SOUL, DORCHESTER.]

We are now chiefly concerned with the last instance. The Slavonic _Bog_, a
god, is met in Saxon as a goblin, for the "boy" who came into the court of
King Arthur and laid his wand upon a boar's head was clearly a "bog" (the
Saxon _g_ being exchanged erroneously for _y_, as in _dag's aeg_, day's
eye, etc). In Welsh, similarly, _Brog_ is a goblin, and we have the evil
idea in _bug_.

  "Warwick was a bug that feared us all."
              --_Shakespeare. Henry IV., v., 2._

That is "Warwick was a goblin that made us all afraid." The Boggart is a
fairy still believed in by Staffordshire peasants. We have yet _bugbear_,
as the Russians have _Buka_, and the Italians _Buggaboo_, of similar
meaning.

As with the barbaric gods, so with the classic deities, who equally
supplied material of which to make foul fiends. Bacchus, with the legs and
sprouting horns of a goat, that haunter of vine-yards, then his fauns
constructed on the same symbolic principle, gave rise to the satyrs.
These, offering in their form disreputable points for reprobation, were
found to be a sufficiently appropriate symbol of the Devil. The reasons of
variety in the satyr figure are not far to seek, beyond the constant
tendency of the mediæval artist to vary form while preserving essence.
Every artist had his idea of the devil, either drawn from the rich depths
of a Gothic imagination, from the descriptions accumulated by popular
credulity, and most of all from that result of both--the Devil of the
Mystery or Miracle Plays.

The plays were performed by trade gilds. Every town had many of these
gilds, though several would sometimes join at the plays; and even very
small villages had both gild and plays. There are yet existing some slight
traces of the reputation which obscure villages had in their own vicinity
for their plays, of which Christmas mumming contains the last tattered
relic. So that, the Devil being a favourite character in the pieces so
widely performed, it is not surprising to find him equally at home among
the works of the carvers, who, according to the nature of artists of all
time, would doubtless holiday it with the best, and look with more or less
appreciation upon such drama as was set before them.

Where we see Satan as the satyr, he is the rollicking fiend of the Mystery
stage, tempting with sly good-humour, tormenting with a grim and ferocious
joy, or often merely posturing and capering in a much to be envied height
of the wildest animal spirits. There is in popular art no trace, so far as
the writer's observation extends, of that lofty sorrow at man's
unworthiness, which has occasionally been attributed to Satan.

The general feeling is that indicated by the semi-contemptuous epithets
applied to the satyr-idea of "Auld Clootie" (cloven-footed), and "Auld
Hornie," of our Northern brethren.

[Illustration: A MAN-GOAT, ALL SOULS, OXFORD.]

Horns were among all ancient nations symbolic of power and dignity.
Ancient coinages shew the heads of kings and deities thus adorned. The
Goths wore horns. Alexander frequently wore an actual horn to indicate his
presumption of divine descent. The head dress of priests was horned on
this account. This may point to a pre-historic period when the horned
animals were not so much of a prey as we find them in later days; thus the
aurochs of Western Europe appears to have been more dreaded by the wild
men of its time, than has been, say, the now fast-disappearing bison by
the North American Indians. On the other hand, the marvellous continuity
of nature's designs lead us to recognize that the carnivorous animals must
always have had the right to be the symbols of physical power. Therefore,
the idea of power, originally conveyed by the horns, is that carried by
the possession of riches in the shape of flocks and herds. The pecunia
were the means of power, and their horns the symbol of it. With the
Egyptians, the ox signified agriculture and subsistence. Pharaoh saw the
kine coming out of the Nile because the fertility of Egypt depends upon
that river. So that it is easy to see how the ox became the figure of the
sun, and of life. Similar significance attached to the sheep, the goat,
and the ram. Horus is met as "Orus, the Shepherd." Ammon wore the horns of
a ram. Mendes was worshipped as a goat.

[Illustration: A CHERISHED BEARD, CHICHESTER.]

The goat characteristics are well carved on a seat in All Souls. A goat
figure of the thirteenth century at Chichester has the head of a man with
a curious twisted or tied beard, clutched by one of the hands in which the
fore feet terminate. The clutching of the beard is not uncommon among
Gothic figures, and has doubtless some original on a coin, or other
ancient standard design. At St. Helen's, Abingdon, Berkshire, in different
parts of the church, three heads, one being a king, another a bishop, are
shewn grasping or stroking each his own beard. It is to be remembered that
the stroking of the beard is a well-known Eastern habit.

Of close kindred to the goat form is the bull form. Just as Ceres
symbolized the fecundity of the earth in the matter of cereals, so Pan was
the emblem by which was figured its productiveness of animal life. Thus
Priapus was rendered in goat form, as the ready type of animal sexual
vigor; but not less familiar in this connection was the bull, and that
animal also symbolizes Pan, who became, when superstition grew out of
imagery, the protector of cattle in general. An old English superstition
was that a piece of horn, hung to the stable or cowhouse key, would
protect the animals from night-fright and other ills. When the pagan Gods
were skilfully turned into Christian devils, we find the bull equally with
the goat as a Satanic form, and several examples will be seen in the
drawings.

The ox, as the symbol of St. Luke, is stated to refer, on account of its
cud-chewing, to the eclectic character of this evangelist's gospel.
Irenæus, speaking of the second cherubim of the Revelation, which is the
same animal, says the calf signifies the sacerdotal office of Christ; but
the fanciful symbolisms of the fathers and of the Bestiaries are often
indifferent guides to original meaning. It may be that in the ox forms we
have astronomical allusions to Taurus, Bacchus, to Diana, or to Pan. A
note on the emblems of the Evangelists follows in the remarks on the
combinatory forms met in grotesque art.

Before passing on to consider particular examples of satyr or bull-form
fiends, a few words may be said as to another form which, though allied to
the dragon-shape embodiments, has the personal character. This is the
Serpent. The origin of this appears to be the translation of the word
_Nachasch_ for serpent in the Biblical account of the momentous Eden
episode, a rendering which, without philological certainty, is
countenanced by the general presence of the serpent in one form or another
in every system of theology in the world. Jewish tradition states that the
serpent, with beauty of form and power of flight, had no speech, until in
the presence of Eve he ate of the fruit of the Tree, and so acquired
speech, immediately using the gift to tempt Eve. Other traditions say that
Nachasch was a camel, and became a serpent by the curse. Adam Clarke
maintained that Nachasch was a monkey. The traditional and mystic form of
the angels was that of a serpent. _Seraph_ means a fiery serpent. In
Isaiah's vision, the seraphim are human-headed serpents. One of the most
remarkable items in the history of worship is the account of the symbolic
serpent erected by Moses, and the subsequent use of it as an idol until
the time of Hezekiah. In the first satire of Perseus, he says, "paint two
snakes, the place is sacred!"

[Illustration: THE SERPENT, ELY.]

The use of the serpent as the Church symbol of regeneration and revival of
health or life is not common in carvings. In these senses it was used by
the Greeks, though chiefly as the symbol of the Supreme Intellect, being
the special attribute and co-type of Minerva. The personal apparition
which confronted Eve is not so infrequent, though without much variety.

In a representation of the temptation of Adam and Eve among the
misericordes of Ely, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is shewn
of a very peculiar shape. The serpent, whose coils are difficult to
distinguish from the foliage of the tree, has the head of a saturnine
Asiatic, who is taking the least possible notice of "our first parents,"
as they stand eating apples and being ashamed, one on each side of the
composition.

[Illustration: THE OLD SERPENT, CHICHESTER. _13th century._]

A carving in the choir of Chichester Cathedral shews in a double
repetition, one half of which is here shewn, the evil head with an attempt
at the legendary comeliness, mingled with debased traits, that is
artistically very creditable to the sculptor. As though dissatisfied with
the amount of beauty he had succeeded in imparting to the heads on the
serpents, he adds, on the side-pieces of the carving, two other heads of
females in eastern head-dresses, to which he has imparted a demure Dutch
beauty, due perhaps to his own nationality. Human-headed serpents are in
carvings at Norwich and at Bridge, Kent.

[Illustration: DEMURENESS MEDITATING MISCHIEF. DEUTCHO-EGYPTIAN MASK,
CHICHESTER.]

With regard to Satan's status as an angel, a considerable number of
representations of him are to be found, in which he conforms to a
prevalent mediæval idea as to the plumage of the spirit race. Angels are
found clothed entirely with feathers, as repeated some scores of times in
the memorial chapel, at Ewelme, of Alice, Duchess of Suffolk,
grand-daughter of Chaucer, who died in 1475. The annexed block shews a
small archangel which surmounts the font canopy, and is of the same
character as the chapel angels. At All Souls, Oxford, is a carving of a
warrior-visaged person wearing a morion, and armed with a falchion and
buckler. He is clad in feathers only, appearing to be flying downward, and
is either a representation of St. Michael or Lucifer.

[Illustration: ANGEL, EWELME.]

[Illustration: ST. MICHAEL, ALL SOULS, OXFORD.]

Satan is often similarly treated. Loki, the tempter of the Scandinavian
Eden, who was ordered to seek the lost Idun he had deceived, had to go
forth clad in borrowed garments of falcon's feathers with wings. When the
pageant at the Setting of the Midsummer Watch at Chester was forbidden by
the Mayor, in 1599, one of the prohibited figures was "the Devil and his
Feathers."

There may be a connection between the final punishment of Loki and the
idea embodied in the carvings mentioned above as being at, among other
places, Wells, York, and Glasgow, and which have been considered as
conceptions of Remorse. Loki was condemned to be fastened to a rock to
helplessly endure the eternal dropping upon his brow of poison from the
jaws of a serpent; only that there is neither in these carvings, nor any
others noted to the present, any indication of the presence of the
ministering woman-spirit who for even the fiend Loki stood by to catch the
death-drops in a cup of mercy.




The Devil and the Vices.


[Illustration: RECORDING IMP. ST. KATHERINE'S, REGENT'S PARK. (_Initial
added_).]

Having examined the various lower forms given by man to his great enemy,
and now noting that to such forms may be added the human figure in whole
or part, we will next take in review a few of the sins which bring erring
humanity into the clutches of Satan; for we find some of the most
grotesque of antique carvings devoted to representation of what may be
called the finale of the Sinner's Progress. These are probably largely
derived from the Mystery Plays; for the moral teaching has the same direct
soundness. The ideas are often jocosely put, but the principle is one of
mere retribution. The Devil cannot hurt the Saint and he pays out to the
Wicked the exact price of his wrong-doing. Thus in nearly all of what may
be termed the Sin series there is a Recording Imp who bears a tablet or
scroll, on which we are to suppose the evil commissions and omissions of
the sinner are duly entered, entitling the fiend to take possession. This
reminds of the Egyptian Mercury, Thoth, who recorded upon his tablets the
actions of men, in order that at the Judgment there might be proper
evidence.

[Illustration: THE UNSEEN WITNESS, ELY.

The Account Presented. Satan Satisfied. The Record of Sin.]

There is a series of carvings, examplified at Ely, New College, Oxford,
St. Katherine's (removed from near the Tower to the Regent's Park) and
Gayton, which have Satan encouraging or embracing two figures apparently
engaged in conversation. I have placed these among the Sins, for though no
very particular explanation is forthcoming as to the meaning of the group,
it is clear that the two human beings are engaged in some occupation
highly agreeable to the fiend. This evidently has a connection with the
monkish story told of St. Britius. One day, while St. Martin was saying
mass, Britius, who was officiating as deacon, saw the devil behind the
altar, writing on a slip of parchment "as long as a proctor's bill" the
sins which the congregation were then and there committing. The people,
both men and women, appear to have been doing many other things besides
listening to St. Martin, for the devil soon filled his scroll on both
sides. Thus far our carvings.

The story goes further, and states that the devil, having further sins to
record, but no further space on which to write them, attempted to stretch
the parchment with teeth and claws, which, however, broke the record, the
devil falling back against a wall. The story then betrays itself. Britius
laughed loudly, whereat St. Martin, highly displeased, demanded the
reason, when Britius told him what he had seen, which relation the other
saint accepted as being true.

This story is one of a class common among mediæval pulpit anecdotes. It
cannot well be considered that the carvings arose from the story, nor the
story from the carvings. Probably both arose from something else,
accounting for the number of sinners being uniformly two, and for the
attitude of the fiend in each case being so similar. With regard to the
latter I must leave the matter as it is.

I venture, as to the signification of the two figures, to make a
suggestion to stand good until a better be found. In the Mystery Play
entitled the "Trial of Mary and Joseph" (Cotton MS., Pageant xiv.,
amplified out of the Apocryphal New Testament, _Protevan_, xi.), the story
runs that Mary and Joseph, particularly the former, are defamed by two
Slanderers. The Bishop sends his Summoner for the two accused persons, and
orders that they drink the water of vengeance "which is for trial," a kind
of miraculous ordeal by poison. Joseph drinks and is unhurt; Mary likewise
and is declared a pure maid in spite of facts. One of the Slanderers
declares that the drink has been changed because the Virgin was of the
High Priest's kindred, upon which the Slanderer is himself ordered to
drink what is left in the cup. Doing so he instantly becomes frantic. All
ask pardon of Mary for their suspicions, and, that being granted, the play
is ended.

Now the play commences with the meeting of the Two Slanderers. A brief
extract or two will shew their method.

  1ST DETRACTOR.--To reyse blawthyr is al my lay,
                    Bakbyter is my brother of blood
                  Dede he ought come hethyr in al this day
                    Now wolde God that he were here,
                  And, by my trewth, I dare well say
                  That if we tweyn to gethyr apere
                  Mor slawndyr we t[w]o schal a rere
                  With in an howre thorwe outh this town,
                  Than evyr ther was this thouwsand yer,
                  Now, be my trewth, I have a sight
                  Evyn of my brother ... Welcome ...

  2ND DETRACTOR.--I am ful glad we met this day.

  1ST DETRACTOR.--Telle all these pepyl [the audience] what is yor name--

  2ND DETRACTOR.--I am Bakbyter, that spyllyth all game,
                  Both hyd and known in many a place.

Then they fall to, and in terms of some wit and much freedom describe the
physical condition of she who was "calde mayd Mary."

The Two Slanderers in this play are undoubtedly men, for each styles the
other "brother." Yet there are words in their dialogue, not suited to
these pages, which could properly only be used by women. As in at least
one of the carvings the sinners are women, if my hypothesis has any
correctness there must be some other form of the story in which the
detractors are female. It is to be noted, also, that the play from which I
have quoted has no mention of the devil.

[Illustration: A BACKBITER, ST. KATHERINE'S.]

Years before I met with the play of the trial of Joseph and Mary, I
considered that the sin of the Two might be scandal, and put down a
curious carving adjoining the St. Katherine group as a reference to it,
and suggested it might be a humorous rendering of a Backbiter. This is
shewn in the accompanying block. It was therefore agreeable to find one
of the Mystery detractors actually named Backbiter. Against that it may be
mentioned that the composite figure with a head at the rear is not unique.
At Rothwell, Northamptonshire, is a dragon attempt, rude though probably
of late fifteenth century work, with a similar head in the same anatomical
direction; this is not connected with anything that can be considered
bearing upon the subject of the Mystery, unless the heads on the same
misericorde are meant to be those of Jews.

The example at Ely shews the fiend closely embracing the two sinners who
are evidently in the height of an impressive conversation. One figure has
a book on its knee, the other is telling the beads of a rosary. At the
sides are two imps of a somewhat Robin Goodfellow-like character, each
bearing a scroll with the account of the misdeeds of the sinners, and
which we may presume are the warrants by which Satan is entitled to seize
his prey. He is the picture of jovial good-nature.

[Illustration: A BACKBITER, ROTHWELL, NORTHANTS.]

New College, Oxford, has a misericorde of the subject in which the
figures, female in appearance, are seated in a sort of box. This reminds
us of Baldini and Boticelli's picture of Hell, which is divided into
various ovens for different vices. That may be the idea here, or perhaps
the object is a coffin and is used to emphasize what the wages of sin
are. They, like the two sinners of Ely, are in animated conversation.
Satan here is of a bull-headed form with wings rather like those of a
butterfly. These are of the end of the fifteenth century.

[Illustration: THE UNSEEN WITNESS, NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD.]

There are foreign carvings described by Mr. Evans as being of the devil
taking notes of the idle words of two women during mass. This is, perhaps,
the simple meaning of all this series, and an evidence of the resentment
of ecclesiastics against the irreverent. There is considerable evidence
that religious service was scarcely a solemn thing in mediæval times. If
this is the signification the box arrangement described above may be some
sort of early pew.

The next example, from St. Katherine's (lately) by the Tower, has the
fiend in a fashionable slashed suit. The ladies here are only in bust, and
though of demurely interested expression they have not that rapport and
animation which distinguish the two previously noticed. Satan does not
embrace them, but stands behind with legs outstretched and hands, or
rather claws, on knees, ready to clutch them at the proper moment.

[Illustration: THE UNSEEN WITNESS, ST. KATHERINE'S.]

At Gayton, Northants, is a further curious instance of this group. The two
Sinners are in this case unquestionably males, and, but for the
coincidence with the preceding examples, the men might have been supposed
to have been engaged in some game of chance. It will be observed that the
one to the right has a rosary as in the first-named carving. Satan here
is well clothed in feathers, and in his left wing is the head of what is
probably one of the instruments of torture awaiting the very much
overshadowed victims. It is a kind of rake or flesh-hook, with three
sharp, hooked teeth; perhaps a figure of the tongue of a slanderer,
materialized for his own subsequent scarification; it may be added as a
kind of satanic badge. Satan bears on his right arm a leaf-shaped shield.

[Illustration: THE UNSEEN WITNESS, GAYTON, NORTHANTS.]

The vice next to be regarded is Avarice. In a misericorde at Beverley
Minster we have three scenes from the history of the Devil. One gives us
the avaricious man bending before his coffers. He has taken out a coin; if
we read aright his contemplative and affectionate look, it is gold.
Hidden behind the chest behold Satan, one of whose bullock horns is
visible as he lurks out of the miser's sight, grinning to think how surely
the victim is his.

At the opposite end of the carving is the other extreme, Gluttony. A man
is drinking out of a huge flask, which he holds in his right hand, while
in the other he grasps a ham (or is it not impossible that this is a
second bottle). In this the devil is likewise present; he is apparently
desperately anxious the victim should have enough.

[Illustration: THE DEVIL AND THE MISER, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

[Illustration: SATAN AND A SOUL, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

Between these two reliefs appears Satan seizing a naked soul. In the
original all that remains of the Devil's head is the outline and one
horn; of the soul's head there remains only the outline; the two faces I
have ventured to supply, also the fore-arm of the Devil. The fiend is here
again presented with the attributes of a bullock, rather than a goat.
Satan has had placed on his abdomen a mask or face, a somewhat common
method of adding to the startling effect of his boisterous personality.
The fine rush which the fiend is making upon the soul, and the shrinking
horror of the latter, are exceedingly well rendered. The moral is, we may
suppose, that the sinners on either side will come to the same bad end.

[Illustration: THE DEVIL AND THE GLUTTON, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

Among the seat-carvings of Henry VII's. Chapel, Westminster Abbey, we have
the vice of Avarice more fully treated, there being two carvings devoted
to the subject. In the first we see a monk suddenly seized by a quaint and
curious devil (to whom I have supplied his right fore-arm). The monk,
horror-stricken, yet angry, has dropped his bag of sovereigns, or nobles,
and the coins fall out. He would escape if he could, but the claws of the
fiend have him fast.

[Illustration: DISMAY, WESTMINSTER.]

In the companion carving we have the incident--and the monk--carried a
little further. The devil has picked him up, thrown him down along his
conveniently horizontal back, and strides on with him through a wild place
of rocks and trees, holding what appears to be a flaming torch, which he
also uses as a staff. The monk has managed to gather up his dearly-loved
bag of money, and is frantically clutching at the rocks as he is swiftly
borne along. Satan in the first carving has rather a benevolent human
face, in the second a debased beast face, unknown to natural history.
There is no explanation of how Sathanus has disposed in the second scene
of the graceful dragon wings he wears in the first. It is probable that
two of the Italians who carved this set each took the same subject, and we
have here their respective renderings. I mention with diffidence that if
the mild and timorous face of Bishop Alcock (which may be seen at Jesus
College, Cambridge), the architect of this part of the abbey, could be
supposed to have unfortunately borne at any time the expressions upon
either of these two representations of the monk, the likeness would, in my
opinion, be rather striking.

[Illustration: THE OVERTAKING OF AVARICE, WESTMINSTER.]

[Illustration: THE TAKING OF THE AVARICIOUS, WESTMINSTER.]

[Illustration: DEMONIACAL DRUMMER, WESTMINSTER.]

On the side carving of the carrying-away scene is shewn a woman, dismayed
at the sight. On the opposite side a fiend is welcoming the monk with beat
of drum, just as we shall see the ale-wife saluted with the drone of the
bagpipes.

[Illustration: VANITY, ST. MARY'S MINSTER.]

A carving at St. Mary's Minster, Isle of Thanet, has the devil looking out
with a vexed frown from between the horns of a lofty head-dress, which is
on a lady's head. Whether this be a rendering of the dishonest ale-wife,
or a separate warning against the vice of Vanity, cannot well be decided.

There was a popular opinion at one time that the bulk of church carvings
were jokes at the expense of clergy, probably largely because every hood
was thought to be a cowl. There is, however, no doubt as to the carving
here presented. It may represent the consecration of a bishop. The
presence of Satan dominating both the individuals, and pulling forward the
cowl of the seated figure, appears to declare that this is to illustrate
the vice of Hypocrisy. It is at New College, Oxford.

[Illustration: HYPOCRISY, NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD.]




Ale and the Ale-wife.


[Illustration: THE JOLLY TAPSTER, LUDLOW.]

Ale, good old ale, has formed the burden of more songs and satires ancient
and modern, than will ever be brought together. Ale was the staple
beverage for morning, noon, and evening meals. It is probable that swollen
as is the beer portion of the Budget, the consumption of ale, man for man,
is much less than that of any mediæval time. The records of all the
authoritative bodies who dealt with the liquor traffic of the olden time
are crowded with rules and regulations that plainly demonstrate not only
the universal prevalence of beer drinking in a proper and domestic degree,
but also the constant growing abuse of the sale of the liquor. In the
reign of Elizabeth the evils of the tavern had become so notorious, that
in some places women were forbidden to keep ale-houses.

As far back as A.D. 794, ale-houses had become an institution, for we find
the orders passed at the Council of Frankfort in that year included one by
which ecclesiastics and monks were forbidden to drink in an ale-house. St.
Adrian was the patron of brewers.

In some boroughs (Hull may be given as an instance) in the fifteenth
century, the Mayor was not allowed to keep a tavern in his year of office.
Brewers and tavern keepers, with many nice distinctions of grade among
them, were duly licensed and supervised, various penalties meeting
attempts at illicit trade. The quality of ale was also an object of
solicitude, and an official, called the ale-taster, was in nearly every
centre of population made responsible for the due strength and purity of
the national beverage. It was customary in some places in the fifteenth
century for the ale-taster to be remunerated by a payment of 4d. a year
from each brewer.

It has to be remembered ale was drunk at the meals at which we now use
tea, coffee, and cocoa; it will be interesting to glance at an instance of
the rate at which it was consumed. At the Hospital of St. Cross, founded
in 1132, at Winchester, thirteen "impotent" men had each a daily allowance
of a gallon and a half of good small beer, with more on holidays; this was
afterwards reduced to three quarts with some two quarts extra for
holidays. The porter at the gate had only three quarts to give away to
beggars. There was great idea of continuity at this establishment; even in
1836 there was spent £133 5s. for malt and hops for the year's brewing.
The happy thirteen had each yet three quarts every day as well as a jack
(say four gallons) extra among them on holidays, with 4s. for beer money.
Two gallons of beer were also daily dispensed at the gate at the rate of a
horn of not quite half a pint to each applicant.

[Illustration: LETTICE LITTLETRUST AND A SIMPLE SIMON. WELLINGBOROUGH,
_14th century_.]

Ale, no more than other things, could be kept out of church. A carving at
Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, shews us an interview between a would-be
customer on the one part and an ale-wife on the other part. There is, in a
list of imaginary names in an epilogue or "gagging" summons to a miracle
play, mention of one Letyce Lytyltrust, whom surely we see above.
Evidently the man is better known than trusted, and while a generous
supply of the desired refreshment is "on reserve" in a dear old jug, some
intimation has been made that cash is required; he, like one Simon on a
similar occasion, has not a penny, and with one hand dipped into his
empty pocket, he scratches his head with the other. His good-natured
perplexity contrasts well with the indifferent tradeswoman-like air of the
ale-wife, who while she rests the jug upon a bench, does not relinquish
the handle. He is saying to himself, "Nay, marry, an I wanted a cup o' ale
aforetime I was ever served. A thirsty morn is this. I know not what to
say to t' jade;" while she is muttering, "An he wipe off the chalk ahint
the door even, he might drink and welcome, sorry rogue tho' he be. But no
use to cry pay when t' barrel be empty."

At Edgeware in 1558, an innkeeper, was fined for selling a pint and a half
of ale at an exorbitant price, namely, one penny. A quart was everywhere
the proper quantity, and that of the strongest; small ale sold at one
penny for two quarts. With regard to the then higher value of money,
however, the prices may be considered to be about the same as at present,
and the same may be said of many commodities which appear in records at
low figures.

Of an earlier date is the tapster of the initial block, from Ludlow, who
furnishes a comfortable idea of a congenial, and to judge from his pouch,
a profitable occupation. It is to be presumed the smallness of the barrel
as compared with that of the jug--probably of copper, and dazzlingly
bright--was the artist's means of getting its full outline within the
picture, and not an indication of the relations of supply and demand.

Alas for the final fate of the dishonest woman who could cheat men in the
important matter of ale! At Ludlow we are shewn such a one, stripped of
all but the head dress and necklace of her vanity, and carried
ignominiously and indecorously to Hell's Mouth on the shoulders of a
stalwart demon (whose head is supplied in the block). In her hand, and
partaking of her own reverse, she bears the hooped tankard with which she
defrauded her customers. It is the measure of her woe. The demon thus
loaded with mischief is met by another, armed with the bagpipes. With
hilarious air and fiendish grin he welcomes the latest addition to the
collection of evil-doers within. To the right are the usual gaping jaws of
Hell's Mouth, into which are disappearing two nude females, who, we may
suppose, are other ale-wifes not more meritorious than the lady of the
horned head dress. To the left is the Recording Imp.

[Illustration: THE END OF THE ALE-WIFE, LUDLOW.]

[Illustration: THE FEMALE DRAWER, ALL SOULS, OXFORD.]

There is allusion in a copy of the Chester Mystery of Christ's Descent
into Hell, among the Harleian MSS., to an ale-wife of Chester, which
doubtless suggested this carving. This lady, a little-trust and a cheater
in her day, laments having to dwell among the fiends; she endeavours to
propitiate one of them by addressing him as "My Sweet Master Sir
Sattanas," who returns the compliment by calling her his "dear darling."
She announces that:--

  "Some tyme I was a tavernere,
  A gentill gossipe and a tapstere,
  Of wyne and ale a trustie brewer,
      Which wo hath me wroughte.
  Of cannes I kepte no trewe measuer
  My cuppes I soulde at my pleasuer,
  Deceaving manye a creature,
      Tho' my ale were naughte."

The Devil then delivers a short speech, which is one of the earliest
temperance addresses on record. He says:--

  "Welckome, dere ladye, I shall thee wedd,
  For many a heavye and droncken head
  Cause of thy ale were broughte to bed
  Farre worse than anye beaste."

There is an old saying "pull Devil, pull Baker" connected with the
representation of a baker who sold his bread short of weight, and was
carried to the lower regions in his own basket; the ale-wife, of our
carving, however, does not appear to have retained any power of
resistance, however slight or ineffectual.

[Illustration: A HORN OF ALE, ELY.]

At All Souls, Oxford, there is a good carving of a woman drawing ale. It
is not, apparently, the ale-wife herself, but the maid sent down into the
cellar. The maid, perhaps after a good draught of the brew, seems to be
blowing a whistle to convey, to the probably listening ears of her
mistress upstairs, the impression that the jug has not received any
improper attention from her. The artful expression of the ale-loving maid
lends countenance to the conjecture that the precaution has not been
entirely efficacious. It is to this day a jocular expression in
Oxfordshire, and perhaps elsewhere, "You had better whistle while you are
drawing that beer."

A carving at Ely represents Pan as an appreciative imbiber from a
veritable horn of ale.




Satires without Satan.


[Illustration: THE SLUMBERING PRIEST, NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD.]

There are numbers of grotesques which are satires evidently aimed at sins,
but which have not the visible attendance of the evil one himself.

Among these must be included a curious carving from Swine, in Holderness.
The priory of Swine was a Cistercian nunnery of fifteen sisters and a
prioress. Mr. Thomas Blashill states, "There were, however, two canons at
least, to assist in the offices of religion, who did not refrain from
meddling in secular affairs."[5] There was also a small community of
lay-brethren.

The female in the centre of the carving is a nun; her hood is drawn partly
over her face, so that only one eye is fully visible, but with the other
eye she is executing a well-known movement of but momentary duration. The
two ugly animals between which she peers are intended for hares, a symbol
of libidinousness, as well as of timidity.

Another carving in the same chancel may be in derision of some official of
the papal court, which, in the thirteenth century, on an occasion of the
contumacy of the nuns in refusing to pay certain tithes, caused the
church, with that adjoining, of the lay brethren, to be closed. The nuns
defied all authority, broke open the chapels, and in general during the
long contest acted in a curiously ungovernable, irresponsible manner.

[Illustration: A PAPAL MONSTER, SWINE, YORKSHIRE.]

At Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, are some misericordes, which, says
Miss Phipson, are stated to have originally belonged to Old St. Paul's.
Among them is the annexed subject. The wicked expression of the face, and
the general incorrectness of the composition, are a historical evidence of
indecorum akin to the gestures of the Beverley carvers.

[Illustration: IMPUDENCE, BISHOP'S STORTFORD, HERTFORDSHIRE.]

From the fine choir carvings of Westminster Abbey yet another example is
given. It is one in which the spirit of the old _Comptes a Plaisance_ is
well illustrated. A well-clad man, suggesting Falstaff in his prime, is
seated with a lady among luxurious foliage. His arm is right round his
companion's waist, while his left hand dips into his capacious and
apparently well-lined pouch, or gipciere. He has been styled a merchant.
He is manifestly making a bargain. The lady is evidently a daughter of the
hireling (_hirudo!_), and is crying, "Give, give." In spite of this being
the work of an Italian artist, the artistic feeling about it would seem to
recall slightly the lines of Holbein.

[Illustration: THE WINKING NUN, SWINE, YORKSHIRE.]

[Illustration: A QUESTION OF PRICE, WESTMINSTER ABBEY.]

The small carving to the right of the above is a highly-elate pig, playing
the pipe. This is shewn in a short chapter hereafter given on Animal
Musicians. The initial at the head of this chapter is illustrated with the
"slumbering priest," the carving of whom is at the right of that of the
'Unseen Witness,' drawn on page 85. This doubtless implies that some
portion of the sin of the people was to be attributed to the indifference
of the clergy. Balancing this, there is in the original carving an aged
person kneeling, and, supported by a crutch, counting her beads.

In a subsequent chapter (on Compound Forms in Gothic) the harpy is
mentioned, and shewn to be a not uncommon subject of church art, either as
from the malignant classic form which symbolized fierce bad weather, or as
the more beneficient though not unsimilar figure which was the symbol of
Athor, the Egyptian Venus. A Winchester example which might seem in place
among the remarks on the Compounds, is included here, as it is evidently
intended to embody a sin. It serves to show that a modern use of the word
harpy was well understood in mediæval times. The design is simple, the
vulture wings being made to take the position of the hair of the woman
head. She lies in wait spider-wise, her great claws in readiness for the
prey; and is evidently a character-sketch of a coarse, insatiable daughter
of the horse-leech.

[Illustration: THE HARPY IN WAIT, WINCHESTER.]




Scriptural Illustrations.


[Illustration: ADAM AND EVE, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

Mystery Plays, we have seen, drew upon the Apocryphal New Testament for
subjects, but it has simply happened that the examples of vice carvings
illustrate those writings, for Mystery Plays were in general founded upon
the canonical scriptures. There are many carvings which have Biblical
incidents for their subject, but it is often impossible to say whether the
text were the sole material of the designer, or whether his ideas were
formed by representations he had seen on the Mystery stage. It may be
presumed that the effect would not be greatly different in one case from
the other.

The story of Jonah furnishes a subject for two misericordes in Ripon
Cathedral. One is in the frontispiece of this volume. In the first the
prophet is being pushed by three men unceremoniously over the side of the
vessel which has the usual mediæval characteristics, and, in which,
plainly, there is no room for a fourth person. The ship is riding easily
on by no means tumultuous waves, out of which protrudes the head of the
great fish. The fish and Jonah appear to regard the situation with equal
complacency.

In the sequel carving Jonah is shewn being cast out by the fish, of
which, as in the other, the head only is visible. The monster of the deep
has altered its appearance slightly during the period of Jonah's
incarceration, its square upper teeth having become pointed. The prophet
is represented kneeling among the teeth, apparently offering up thanks for
his deliverance. The sea is bounded by a rocky shore on which stand trees
of the well-known grotesque type in which they are excellent fir-cones.

[Illustration: THE STORY OF JONAH. THE CASTING OUT.]

These two carvings are of somewhat special interest, as their precise
origin is known. They are both exceedingly close copies of engravings in
the Biblia Pauperum, or Poor Man's Bible, otherwise called "Speculum
Humanæ Salvationis," or the Mirror of Human Salvation. Other Biblical
subjects in the Ripon Series of Misericordes are from the same source. Did
the Sculptor or Sculptors of the series fall short of subjects, or were
their eyes caught by the definite outlines of the prints in the "Picture
Bible" as it lay chained in the Minster?

The Adoration, in a carving in the choir of Worcester, comes under the
head of unintentional grotesques. It is a proof that though the
manipulative skill of the artist may be great, that may only accentuate
his failure to grasp the true spirit of a subject; and render what might
have been only a piece of simplicity, into an elaborate grotesque. The
common-place, ugly features--where not broken away--the repeated attitudes
and the symmetric arrangement join to defeat the artist's aim. Add to
those the anachronisms, the ancient Eastern rulers in Edward III. crowns
and gowns, seated beneath late Gothic Decorated Arches offering gifts,
and the absurdity is nearly complete. It is difficult to quite understand
the presence of the lady with gnarled features, on the left, bearing the
swathed infant (headless) which seems to demonstrate that this was carved
by a foreigner, or was from a foreign source; for though swathing was
practised to some extent in England, I can only find that in Holland,
Germany, etc., and more especially in Italy, the children were swathed to
this extent, in the complete mummy fashion styled "bambino."

Perhaps the reason of the two figures right and left was that the artist
went with the artistic tide in representing the recently-born infant as a
strapping boy of four or five; yet his common-sense telling him that was a
violation of fact he put the other figure in with the strapped infant to
show what--in his own private opinion--the child would really be like at
the time.

We might have supposed it to be St. John, but he was older and not younger
than the Divine Child. In the Scandinavian mythology, Vali, the New Year,
is represented as a child in swaddling clothes.

[Illustration: ADORATION OF THE MAGI, WORCHESTER.]

The Scriptural subjects in carved work may be compared with the wall
paintings which in a few instances have survived the reforming zeal of
bygone white-washing churchwardens. The comparison is infinitely to the
advantage of the carvings. These paintings are in distemper and were the
humble inartistic precursors of noble frescoes in the continental fanes,
but which had in England no development. To what extent there was merit in
the mural decoration of the English cathedrals cannot well be stated.
Such examples, as in a few churches are left to us, are simply
curiosities. Though changing with the styles they are more crude than the
sculptures, and the modern eye in search of the grotesque, finds here
compositions infinitely more excruciatingly imbecile than in any other
department of art-work of pretension.

[Illustration: BAPTISMAL SCENE, GUILDFORD.]

At the same time when they are considered in conjunction with the most
perfect of the paintings of their period they are by no means so low in
the scale of merit as at the first thought might be supposed.

Outside the present purpose of looking at them as unintentional grotesques
they are very valuable specimens of the English art of painting of dates
which have, except in illuminations, no other examples.

Those of St. Mary's, Guildford, are very quaint. The first selected from
the series is a representation of Christ attending the ministration of St.
John the Baptist. St. John has apparently taken down to the river bank a
classic font, in which is seated a convert. The Baptist himself, wearing a
Phrygian cap (probably Saxon), is turning away from the figures of Christ
and the man in the font, and is apparently addressing a company which does
not appear in the picture. Just as the font was put in to make the idea of
baptism easily understood, so, we may suppose, the curious buttons on
thongs, or whatever they are, were shewn attached to St. John's wrist, to
indicate that he is speaking of the "shoe-latchets." The waters and bank
of the Jordan are indicated in a few lines.

[Illustration: CASTING OUT OF DEVILS, GUILDFORD.]

The other selection is still more bizarre. It evidently portrays Christ
casting out devils. The chief point of interest in this painting is the
original conception of the devils. Anything more vicious, degraded, and
abhorrent, it would be difficult to produce in so few lines. Roughly
speaking, they are a compound of the hawk, the hog, and the monkey; this
curious illustration is an excellent pendant to the marks made upon early
Satanic depictions on a previous page. The faces are Saxon, except in the
case of the man with the sword, who is a distinct attempt at a Roman. The
artist had evidently in his mind one who was set in authority.

The churches of the Midlands are rich in wall-paintings.

A fine example is in North Stoke Church, Oxfordshire, which has two
Scriptural subjects, a series of angelic figures, and several other
figures, etc., only fragmentally visible. They were all found accidentally
under thick coats of whitewash. It may be doubted whether they were ever
finished. The two Biblical subjects are "Christ betrayed in the Garden,"
and "Christ before Pilate." Christ is a small apparently blind-folded
figure, of which only the head and one shoulder remains. Pilot is the
Saxon lord, posing as the seated figure of legal authority, poising a
hiltless sword in his right hand. The figure addressing Pilate is
apparently a Roman (Saxon) official; his hand is very large, but there is
a simple force about his drawing. The fourth figure in a mitre is
doubtless meant for a Jewish priest, and he has a nasty, clamorous look.
Pilate, unfortunately, has no pupils to his eyes, but his general
appearance is as though he was expostulating with the priest.

There is a carol, printed in 1820, which has a woodcut of the subject not
less rude and not less of an anachronism than this: but what is curious,
as illustrating the main theory of the present volume--the tenacity with
which form is adhered to in unconscious art--is that the disposition of
the figures is exactly the same in both pictures. Where the Saxon lord is
seated, imagine a bearded magistrate, at a sort of Georgian
quarter-sessions bench, with panelled front. For the simple Saxon, with
vandyked shirt, suppose a Roman half-soldier, half-village-policeman. Then
comes the figure of Christ, with the head much lower than those of the
others because he is nearer. Lastly, there is an incomplete figure behind.

In this case the perfect correspondence may be mere coincidence; it is
difficult to explain otherwise. The design, however, is the same, only the
Anglo-Norman filled in his detail from his observation of a manorial
court, the Moorfield engraver from his knowledge of Bow Street
police-court.

To conclude, although these paintings are ludicrous in the extreme, the
artists, who had no easy task, were absolutely serious, and their works,
divested of the comic aspect conferred by haste and manipulative
incompetence, are marked by bold impressiveness.

The initial to this chapter is from one of a series of similar ornaments
on the parapet of the south side of the nave of Beverley Minster; it
illustrates the toilsome nature of the later portion of Adam's life.




Masks and Faces.


[Illustration: FOLIATE MASK, THE CHOIR, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

The merriest, oddest, most ill-assorted company in the world meet together
in the masks and faces of Gothic ornament. Space could always be found for
a head, and skill to execute it. Yet though the variety is immense, the
faces of Gothic art will be found to classify themselves very definitely.

[Illustration: FOLIATE MASK, DORCHESTER, OXON.]

Perhaps the most prevalent type is the classic mask with leaves issuing
from the mouth. This may be an idea of the mask which every player in the
ancient drama wore, displayed as an ornament with laurel, bay, oak, ivy,
or what not, inserted in the mouth, because it was pierced for speaking
through, and the only aperture in which the decorative branches could be
inserted. Or seeds might germinate in sculptured masks and so have
suggested the idea. Masks were hung in vineyards, etc.

[Illustration: FOLIATE MASK, ST. MARY'S MINSTER, ISLE OF THANET.]

[Illustration: FOLIATE MASK, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

A mask above the internal tower-doorway in the Lady Chapel of Dorchester
Abbey has a close resemblance to the classic mask in the protruding lips,
which, for the conveying of the voice for the great distance necessary in
the arrangement of the ancient theatres, were often shaped like a shallow
speaking-trumpet. The leaves appear to be the vine, and so the head,
perhaps, that of Bacchus. Between the eyebrows will be noticed an angular
projection. This is probably explained by a mask in a misericorde in St.
Mary's Minster, in which some object, perhaps the nasal of a helmet, comes
down the middle of the forehead. The leaves in this case appear to be oak,
which is, indeed, the prevailing tree used for the purpose.

[Illustration: INDIAN MASK, ST. MARY'S, BEVERLEY.]

[Illustration: LATE ITALIAN FOLIATE MASK, WESTMINSTER.]

Occasionally a mask with leaves has the tongue protruding.

Perhaps one of the most remarkable masks in Gothic is on another
misericorde in the same town, but in St. Mary's Church; in which the
features, the head-dress, the treatment of the ears, are all Indian, while
the leaves are those of the palm. This is, perhaps, unique as an instance
of Gothic work so nearly purely Indian in its form.

[Illustration: RIPON, _late Fifteenth Century_.]

Sometimes the leaves are much elaborated as in one of the late
misericordes of Westminster Abbey; in a few cases the original simplicity
is quite lost, and we have, as at Ripon, the mask idea run mad, inverted,
and the leaves become a graceful composition of foliage, flower, and
fruit.

A rosette from the tomb of Bishop de La Wich, Chichester, has four animal
faces in an excellent design.

[Illustration: ROSETTE ON TOMB OF BISHOP DE LA WICH, CHICHESTER.]

Often masks are of the simple description known as the Notch-head; these
are of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They are generally found
in exposed situations at some elevation, as among the series of corbels
(_corbula_ a small basket) or brackets called the corbel-table,
supporting a stone course or cornice. The likeness to the human face
caused by the shadows of the T varies in different examples. That below,
by curving back at the base, suggests the idea of a mouth. Occasionally,
as at Finedon, Northamptonshire, the notch-head has its likeness to a face
increased by the addition of ears.

[Illustration: MASK, BUCKLE, OR NOTCH HEAD, CULHAM, YORKSHIRE.]

Norman masks are interesting, as they explain some odd appearances in
later work. In many churches are faces scored with lines across the
cheeks, regardless of the ordinary lines of expression, in a manner
closely resembling the tattoo incisions of the New Zealand warrior. This
appearance, however, is simply the too faithful copying of crude Norman
masks, in which the lines are meant to be the semi-circles round eyes and
mouth. Moreover, the Norman heads are most often the heads of animals
grinning to shew the teeth, although their general effect is that of
grotesque human heads. Iffley west doorway furnishes the best example.
Here we have the well-known "beak head" ornament. The semicircle and upper
portion of the jambs have single heads, not two of which are exactly
alike, though all closely resemble each other. They are heads of the eagle
or gryphon order, with a forehead ornament very Assyrian in character. The
heads of the jambs are compound, being the head of a grinning beast,
probably a lion, from the mouth of which emerges a gryphon head of small
size. These are sometimes called "Cat-heads," and the gryphon head is
sometimes considered (and perhaps occasionally shewn as such) a tongue. A
fine doorway of beak-heads is at St. Peter's-in-the-East, Oxford, which
church was probably executed by the workmen who were responsible for
Iffley.

[Illustration: BEAK HEADS, IFFLEY.]

It is probable that the symbolism of this is the swallowing up of night by
day or _vice versâ_. The outer arch of the Iffley doorway consists of
zodiacal signs, and at the south doorway are other designs elsewhere
mentioned in this volume, far removed from Christian intent.

[Illustration: NORMAN MASK, ROCHESTER.]

The grotesqueness of Norman work is almost entirely unconscious. The
workers were full of Byzantine ideas, and the severe and awful was their
object rather than the comic. They frequently attempted pretty detail in
their symbolic designs, but in all the forms which have come from their
chisels it is easy to see how incomplete an embodiment they gave to their
conceptions, or rather to the conceptions of their traditional school.
Norman work, beyond the Gothic, irrespective of the architectural
peculiarities, has traces of its eastern origin in the classic connection
of its designs. Adel Church, near Leeds, is peculiar in having co-mingled
with its eastern designs more than ordinarily tangible references to
ancient Keltic worship, but nearly all Norman ideographic detail concerns
itself with old-world myths.

[Illustration: GORGONIC MASK, EWELME.]

An excellent conception, well carried out, is in a mask which is one of a
series of late carvings alternating with the gargoyles of Ewelme. In this,
instead of leaves issuing from the mouth of the mask, there are two
dragons. If those with leaves are deities, this surely must be one of the
Furies. It is on the north side of the nave; on the exterior of the
aisle, at the same side, other sculptures form a kind of irregular
corbel-table, and special attention may be drawn to them as affording an
indication of the derivation of such ornaments from the "antefixes" or
decorated tiles occupying a nearly corresponding position in classic
architecture.

[Illustration: FOLIATE MASK, EWELME.]

One of those on the aisle offers a further explanation of the mark before
mentioned as being on the foreheads of some masks. In this case the
prominences of the eyebrows branch off into foliage. This appears also to
be the intention in a capital carving in Lincoln Chapter House.

Roslyn Chapel has some very realistic heads, notably of apes or gorillas
near the south doorway, of which one is drawn (opposite).

[Illustration: FOLIATE MASK, LINCOLN.]

Norman work has frequently some very grotesque heads in corbel tables and
tower corners, to the odd appearance of which the decay by weather has no
doubt much contributed. Two examples from Sutton Courtney, Oxfordshire,
illustrate this weather-worn whimsicality.

[Illustration: GORILLA, ROSLYN CHAPEL.]

Then comes a crowd of faces which have no particular significance, being
simply the outcome of the unrestrainable fun of the carver. Some are
merely oddities, while others are full of life-like character.

[Illustration: GARGOYLE, SUTTON COURTNEY.]

[Illustration: WEATHER-WORN NORMAN, SUTTON COURTNEY, BERKSHIRE.]

[Illustration: HUMOUR, YORK.]

[Illustration: MASK WITH SAUSAGE, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON.]

[Illustration: A JEALOUS EYE, YORK.]

The knight with the twisted beard, from Swine, may be a portrait, and the
Gargantuan-faced dominus from St. Mary's Minster certainly is. An old
barbarian head from a croche or elbow-rest at Bakewell is rude and worn,
but yet bold and fine.

[Illustration: A BEARD WITH A TWIST, SWINE, YORKSHIRE.]

[Illustration: A QUIZZICAL VISAGE, BAKEWELL.]

[Illustration: GRIMACE MAKER, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

[Illustration: FOOL'S HEADS, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

Some of these are better than the joculators and mimes' faces in which the
artist seriously set himself a humorous task, as in the three heads
(page 130) from Beverley Minster, though the latter are in some respects
more grotesque.

[Illustration: A PORTRAIT, ST. MARY'S MINSTER. ISLE OF THANET.]

[Illustration: A ROUGH CHARACTER, BAKEWELL.]

Another curious instance of a grimace and posture maker, assisting his
countenance's contortions by the use of his fingers, is at Dorchester
Abbey. In this the artist has not been master of the facial anatomy, and
shows a double pair of lips, one pair in repose, the other pulled back at
the corners.

[Illustration: GRIMACE MAKER, DORCHESTER, OXON.]

Often a grotesque face will be found added to a beautiful design of
foliage, either as the conventional mask, as in the design in Lincoln
Chapter House, or a realistic head, as the following grim, dour visage
between graceful curves on a misericord at King's College, Cambridge.

[Illustration: GRACE AND THE GRACELESS, KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.]




The Domestic and Popular.


[Illustration: THE WEAKER VESSEL, SHERBORNE.]

Domestic and popular incidents are plentiful among the carvings, of which
they form, indeed, a distinct class; and they afford a considerable amount
of material with which might be built up, in a truly Hogarthian and
exaggerated spirit, an elaborate account of mediæval manners in general.
In the majority of cases the incidents have a familiar, if not an
endearing suggestiveness.

[Illustration: DOMESTIC DISCIPLINE, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

The records of mankind are not wanting in stormy incidents in which the
gentle female spirit has chafed under some presumed foolishness or
wickedness of the head of the house, and at length breaking bounds,
inflicted on him personal reminders that patience endureth but for a
season. An example of this is given above, which shews the possibility of
such a thing as far back as 1520, the date of the Beverley Minster
misericordes. While the lady is devoting her attention to the flagellation
of her unfortunate and perhaps entirely blameless spouse, a dog avails
himself of the opportunity to rifle the caldron.

[Illustration: AN UNKIND FARE, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

The picture in the initial, taken from a carving in the choir of Sherborne
Minster, shews another domestic incident in which the lady administers
castigation. Though in itself no more than a vulgar satire, it is probable
that this carving was copied from some representation of St. Lucy, who is
sometimes shewn with a staff in her hand, and behind her the devil
prostrate.

It is not easy to say what is the meaning of another carving in Beverley
Minster, or whether it has any connection with that just noted. The
probability is that it has not. This may be a shrewish wife being wheeled
in the tumbril to the waterside, there to undergo for the better ruling of
her tongue, a punishment the authority for which was custom older than
law. But I am inclined to think that another reading will be nearer the
truth. The vehicle is not the tumbril but a wheelbarrow, and the man
propelling it is younger than the lady, who is pulling his hair. I imagine
the man is apprentice or husband, and is not very cheerfully trundling his
companion home. A similar, but more definite misericorde is in Ripon
Cathedral.

In this barrow, the old woman, wearing a cap with hat on the top, as yet
occasionally seen in country places, is seated in a mistress-like way. She
is not committing any violence, but apparently is offering the man (call
him the bridegroom) his choice of either a bag of money with dutiful
obedience, or a huge cudgel, which she wields with muscular power, with
dereliction. The gem of the carving is the man's face. He smiles a quiet,
amused, satirical smile, as of one who would say, "'Tis no harm to humour
these foolish old bodies, and must be done, I trow."

[Illustration: THE CHARIOT, RIPON.]

But the object called a bag of money is as likely to be a bottle, and the
whole subject may be something quite different. She may be going to the
doctor, or offering the man a drink; or it may be Noah wheeling his
wife into the Ark, which, it was one of the jokes in a Mystery play to
suppose she was very unwilling to enter.

[Illustration: PILGRIMAGE IN COMFORT, CANTERBURY.]

[Illustration: MARTINMAS. CHRISTMAS. HOLY TRINITY, HULL.]

The block from the capital of a column in the crypt of Canterbury
Cathedral, tells us little of its history. It is given as an example of a
cheerful grace and ease not common in early work.

The hunting of the boar is a frequent subject of the Gothic carver, being
generally considered the sport of September, though Sir Edward Coke says
the season for the boar was from Christmas to Candlemas. It is uncommon to
find the boar's head shewn treated as in the accompanying block, struck
off, and with the lemon in his mouth, ready for the table. These
quatrefoils are the only two with a special design upon them, out of
twelve on the font of Holy Trinity Church, Hull, the others having
rosettes. There is no rule in this, but there are other examples in which
small portions of fonts are picked out for significant decoration, and
possibly on the side originally intended to be turned towards the door of
the church, or the altar.

[Illustration: HUNTSMAN AND DEER, YORK.]

Hunting scenes frequently occur. A boss in York Minster shews a huntsman
"breaking" a deer as it hangs from a tree.

The wild sweetness of one stringed and one wind instrument--not uncommonly
met as harp and piccolo near London "saloon bars"--was a usual duet of
the middle ages. In Stoeffler's _Calendarum Romanorum Magnum_ (of 1518) in
a series of woodcuts illustrating the months, and which are otherwise
reasonable, he gives one of these duets performed in a field as a proper
occupation of the month of April with the following highly appropriate
distich--

  "Aprilis patule nucis sub umbra
  post convivia dormio libenter."

[Illustration: A CURIOUS DUET, CHICHESTER.]

In this carving, however, the musicians appear to be within doors and to
be giving a set duet. To the interest of the ear they add a curious
spectacle for the eye, for they are seated in chairs which have no
fore-legs, and their balance is kept by the flageoletist taking hold of
the harp as the players sit facing, so that while leaning back they form a
counter-poise to each other. The chairs are a curious study in mediæval
furniture.

It is not unlikely that the sculptor in the case of the annexed block had
in his mind something similar to the saying--

  "When a man's single he lives at his ease."

[Illustration: BACHELOR QUARTERS, WORCESTER.]

A man come in from, we may presume, frost and snow, has taken off his
boots, and warms his feet as, seated on his fald-stool by the fire, he
stirs the pot with lively anticipation of the meal preparing inside. He is
probably a shepherd or swine-herd; on one side is seated his dog, at the
other are hung two fat gammons of bacon.

[Illustration]

Shepherds and shepherding furnish frequent subjects to the carver.

In a Coventry Corpus Christi play of 1534 one of the three shepherds
presents his gloves to the infant Saviour in these words--

  "Have here my myttens, to pytt en thi hondis,
  Other treysure have I none to present thee with."

This carving has been called the Good Shepherd. If the artist really meant
Christ by this shepherd with a hood over his head and hat over that, with
great gloves and shoes, with a round beardless face, with his arms round
the necks of two sheep, holding their feet in his hands, it is the finest
piece of religious burlesque extant. But it is not to be supposed that the
idea even occurred to the sculptor.

The Feast of Fools was a kind of religious farce, a "mystery" run riot.
Cedranus, a Byzantine historian, who wrote in the eleventh century,
records that it was introduced into the Greek Church A.D. 990, by
Theophylact, patriarch of Constantinople. We can partly understand that
the popular craving for the wild liberties of the Saturnalia might be met,
and perhaps modified, by a brief removal of the solemn constraint of the
Christian priest-rule. But licentiousness in church worship was no new
thing, and, long before the time of Theophylact, the Church of the West,
and probably the Greek Church also, had been rendered scandalous by the
laxity with which the church services were conducted. At the Council of
Orleans, in A.D. 533, it was found necessary to rule that no person in a
church shall sing, drink, or do anything unbecoming; at another in
Châlons, in A.D. 650, women were forbidden to sing indecent songs in
church. There is in fact every evidence, including the sculptures of our
subject, that religion was not, popularly, a thing solemn in itself.
Cedranus mentions the "diabolic dances" among the enormities practised at
the Feast of Fools, which was generally held about Christmas, though not
confined to that festival.

In the twelfth century, the abuse increased; songs of the most indecent
and offensive character were sung in the midst of the mock services;
puddings were eaten, and dice rattled on the altar, and old shoes burnt as
incense.

[Illustration: DANCING FOOLS, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

This observance, so evidently an expedient parody of the old-time
festivals, is traceable in England, and said to have been abolished about
the end of the fourteenth century. The carvings in Beverley Minster, here
presented, are supposed to refer to the Feast, and at any rate give us a
good idea of the mediæval fool. There were innumerable classic dances.
The Greeks send down the names of two hundred kinds. A dance with arms was
the Pyrrhic dance, which was similar in some of its varieties to the
military dance known as the Morris. The Morris was introduced into Spain
by the Moors, and brought into England by John of Gaunt in 1332. It was,
however, little used until the reign of Henry VII. There were other
vivacious dances, called Bayle, of Moorish origin, which, as well as
various kinds of the stately Court dance, were used by the Spaniards. It
is difficult, from general sources, to ascertain the dances in vogue in
old England. A drawing in the Cotton MSS. shews a Saxon dancing a reel.
The general inference is, however, that the Morris (of the Moors or
Moriscoes) was the chief dance of the English, and perhaps it is that in
which the saltatory fools of the carving are engaged.

[Illustration: AN ABJECT OBJECT. WINCHESTER COLLEGE CHAPEL.]

Probably the extraordinary monstrosity shewn in the annexed block had an
actual existence. There are fairly numerous accounts of such malformities
in mediæval times, and it was a function of mediæval humour to make
capital out of unfortunate deformity. This poor man has distorted hands
instead of feet, and he moves about on pattens or wooden clogs strapped to
his hands and legs. There is little meaning in the side carvings. The
fool-ape, making an uncouth gesture, is perhaps to shew the character of
those who mock misfortune. The man with the scimitar may represent the
alarm of one who might suddenly come upon the sight of the abortion, and
fearing some mystery or trap, draw his blade. In a sense this is a
humourous carving--yet there is a quality for which it is much more
remarkable, and that is its element of forcible and realistic pathos.

[Illustration: A MYTHOLOGICAL EPISODE, YORK.]

Two reliefs from York Minster are presumably scenes from classic
mythology, from, in regard to the costumes, a Saxon point of view. One may
be supposed to be the rape of Ganymede. Oak leaves are an attribute of
Jupiter, as is also the eagle which bore Ganymede to Olympus.

The other may be Vulcan giving Venus "a piece of his mind."

[Illustration: MARITAL VIOLENCE, YORK.]

If these readings are correct these two carvings are among the very few
instances of representations of circumstantial detail of the Olympian
mythology. Most of the church references to mythology have more connection
with the earlier symbolic meanings than with the later narrative histories
into which the cults degenerated. Other examples are in the references to
Hercules in the sixteenth century stalls of Henry VII.'s Chapel,
Westminster.

There is in mediæval art several examples remaining of what may be called
topsy-turveyism, in which two figures mutually lent their parts to each
other in such a way that four figures may be found.

An excellent example of this is at New College, Oxford, in which, though
the four figures are so apparent when once seen, the two (taken as upper
and lower), are in a natural and ingenious acrobatic position. The
grotesque head at the base is put in to balance the composition, and
perhaps to prevent the trick being discerned at once.

[Illustration: A CONTINUOUS GROUP OF FOUR FIGURES, OXFORD.]

The grace of the free if somewhat meagre Corinthian acanthus as used in
Early English work is often rendered more marked by the introduction of
an extraneous subject. Thus at Wells the foliate design is relieved by the
ungainly figure of a melancholy individual, who, before retiring to rest,
pursues an examination into his pedal callosities, or extracts the
poignant thorn. Or can it be that we have here a reminder of the Egyptian
monarch, Sómarája, mentioned in the Hindoo accounts of the Egyptian
mythology, who was dissolute and outcast, and who, to shew his repentance
and patience, stood twelve days upon one leg?

[Illustration: A PILGRIM'S PAINS, WELLS.]

This discursive chapter would not be complete without a reference to the
alleged impropriety of church grotesques. Though it is not to be denied
that in the wide range of subjects a considerable number of indecent
subjects have crept in, yet their proportion is small. Examination would
lead to the belief that upon the whole the art of the churches is much
purer than the literature or the popular taste of the respective periods.
Though there may be sometimes met examples of grossness of humour and a
frank want of reserve, such as in the annexed drawing from the chapel of
All Souls, Oxford, yet these are rarely of the most gross or least
reserved character.

[Illustration: A POSTURIST, ALL SOULS, OXFORD.]

It may be well to note, in this connection that the literature from which
we draw the bulk of our ideas as to mediæval life, are foreign, and that,
although English manners would not be remotely different in essentials,
yet there would be as many absolute differences as there are yet remaining
to our eyes in architecture and in art generally.




The Pig and other Animal Musicians.


[Illustration: APE AS PIPER, BEVERLEY.]

One might count in the churches animal musicians, perhaps, by thousands,
and the reason of their presence is doubtless the same as that which
explains the frequency of the serious carvings of musicians which adorn
the arches of nave and choir throughout the country--namely the prevalent
use of various kinds of instrumental music in the service of the church.
The animal musicians are the burlesques of the human, and the fact that
the pig is the most frequent performer may perhaps suggest that the
ability of the musician had overwhelmed the consideration of other
qualities which might be expected, but were not found, in the
harmony-producing choristers. Clever as musicians, they may have become
merely functionaries as regards interest in the church, as we see to-day
in the case of our bell-ringers, who for the most part issue from the
churches as worshippers enter them.

It may also be that the frequency of suilline musicians may have derisive
reference to the ancient veneration in which the pig was held in the
mythologies. It was a symbol of the sun, and, derivatively, of fecundity.
Perhaps the strongest trace of this is in Scandinavian mythology. The
northern races sacrificed a boar to Freyr, the patron deity of Sweden and
of Iceland, the god of fertility; he was fabled to ride upon a boar named
Gullinbrusti, or Golden Bristle. Freyr's festival was at Yule-tide. Yule
is _jul_ or _heol_, the sun, and Gehul is the Saxon "Sunfeast." The gods
of Scandinavia were said to nightly feast upon the great boar Sæhrimnir,
which eaten up, was every morning found whole again. This seems somewhat
akin to the Hindoo story of Crórásura, a demon with the face of a boar,
who continually read the Vedas and was so devout that Vishnu (the sun god)
gave him a boon. He asked that no creature existing in the three worlds
might have power to slay him, which was granted.

[Illustration: SOW AND FIDDLE, WINCHESTER.]

The special sacrifice of the pig was not peculiar to Scandinavia, for the
Druids and the Greeks also offered up a boar at the winter solstice. The
sacrifice of a pig was a constant preliminary of the Athenian assemblies.
As a corn destroyer the same animal was sacrificed to Ceres.

The above explains the recurrence of the pig rather than the pig musician.
A pregnant sow was, however, yearly sacrificed to Mercury, the inventor of
the harp, and a sow playing the harp is among the rich set of choir
carvings in Beverley Minster.

The chase of the boar was the sport of September, the ordinary killing
season, the swine being then in condition after their autumn feed of
_bucon_, or beechmast (hence _bacon_), "His Martinmas has come" passed
into a proverb. The prevalence of the pig as a food animal had undoubtedly
its share in the frequency of art reference.

[Illustration: SOW AS HARPIST, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

In the Christian adoption of pagan attributes, the pig was apportioned to
St. Anthony, it is said, variously, because he had been a swine-herd, or
lived in woods. The smallest or weakling pig in a litter, called in the
north "piggy-widdy" (small white pig), and in the south midlands the
"dillin" (perhaps equivalent to _delayed_), and is elsewhere styled the
Anthony pig, as specially needing the protection of his patron.

[Illustration: MUSIC AT DINNER, WINCHESTER.]

A common representation of the pig musician is a sow who plays to her
brood. At Winchester, the feast of the little ones is enlivened by the
strains of the double flute. At Durham Castle, in a carving formerly in
Aucland Castle Chapel, the sow plays the bagpipes while the young pigs
dance. At Ripon, a vigorous carving has the same subject, and another at
Beverley, in which a realistic trough forms the foreground.

[Illustration: SOW AND BAGPIPES, DURHAM CASTLE.]

[Illustration: PIGS AND PIPES, RIPON.]

The "Pig and Whistle" forms an old tavern sign. Dr. Brewer explains this
as the pot, bowl, or cup (the _pig_), and the wassail it contained. The
earthenware vessel used to warm the feet in bed is in Scotland yet called
"the pig," and to southern strangers the use of the word has caused a
temporary embarrassment. If this explanation is not coincident with some
other not at present to hand, the carving of the pig and whistle in the
sixteenth century carving in Henry VII.'s chapel shows that the corruption
of the "pig and wassail" was accepted in ignorance as far back as that
period.

[Illustration: PIG AND WHISTLE, WESTMINSTER.]

But too much stress is not to be laid upon the pig as a musician, for at
Westminster the bear plays the bagpipes, just as at Winchester the ape
performs on the harp. In the Beverley Minster choir an ape converts a cat
into an almost automatic instrument by biting its tail.

[Illustration: APE AS HARPIST, WESTMINSTER.]




Compound Forms.


[Illustration: ATHOR, CHICHESTER.]

In nearly every church compound forms are met which in a high degree merit
the designation of grotesque. Few religions have been without these
symbolic representations of complex characters. If the Egyptian had its
cat-headed and hawk-headed men, the Assyrian its human-headed bull, the
Mexican its serpent-armed tiger-men, so also the Scandinavian mythology
had its horse-headed and vulture-headed giants, and its human-headed
eagle. Horace, who doubtless knew the figurative meaning of what he
satirizes, viewed the representations of such compounds in his days, and
asks--

  "If in a picture you should see
  A handsome woman with a fishes tail,
  Or a man's head upon a horse's neck,
  Or limbs of beasts of the most diff'rent kind,
  Cover'd with feathers of all sorts of birds
  Would you not laugh?"[6]

It is, perhaps, a little remote from our subject to inquire whether the
poet or the priest came the first in bringing about these archaic
combinations; yet a word or two may be devoted to suggesting the inquiry.
It is probable that the religious ideas and artistic forms met in ancient
worships first solely existed in poetic expressions of the qualities of
the sun--of the other members of the solar system--of the gods. Thus the
swiftness of the sun in his course and in his light induced the mention of
wings. Hence the wings of an eagle added to a circular form arose as the
symbol in one place; in another arose the God Mercury; while Jove the
great sun-god is shewn accompanied by an eagle. The fertility of the earth
became as to corn Ceres, as to vines Bacchus, as to flowers Flora, and so
forth. The human personification, in cases where a combination of
qualities or functions was sought to be indicated, resulted in more or
less abstruse literary fables; on the other hand the artist or symbol
seeker found it easier to select a lower plane of thought for his
embodiments. Thus, while swiftness suggested the eagle, strength was
figured by the lion: so when a symbol of swiftness and strength was
required arose the compound eagle-lion, the gryphon.

The gryphon, however, though constantly met in Gothic, is rarely grotesque
in itself. Another form which also, to a certain extent, is incorruptible,
is that of the sphinx. This is a figure symbolic of the sun from the
Egyptian point of view, in which the Nile was all-important. Nilus, or
Ammon, the Egyptian Jove, was the sun-god, an equivalent to Osiris, and
the sphinx was similar in estimation, being, it is reasonably conjectured,
a compound of Leo and Virgo, at whose conjunction the Nile has yearly
risen. According to Dr. Birch, the sphinx is to be read as being the
symbol of Harmachis or "the sun on the horizon." It may be that the Child
rising from the Shell is sunrise over the sea, and the Sphinx sunrise over
the land. It has been conjectured that the cherubim of the tabernacle were
sphinx-form. The cherubim on the Mosaic Ark are among the subjects of the
earliest mention of composite symbols. Ezekiel says they were composed of
parts of the figures of a man (wisdom, intellect), a lion (dominion), a
bull (strength), and an eagle (sharp-sightedness, swiftness.) The Persians
and Hindoos had similar figures. A man with buffalo horns is painted in
the Synhedria of the American Indians in conjunction with that of a
panther or puma-like beast, and these are supposed to be a contraction of
the cherubimical figures of the man, the bull, and the lion; these,
renewed yearly, are near the carved figures of eagles common in the Indian
sun-worship.

[Illustration: SPHINX AND BUCKLER, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

[Illustration: SPHINX FIGURE, DORCHESTER, OXON.]

A carving in the arm-rest of one of the stalls of Beverley Minster,
suggested in the block on page 159, shews a sphinx with a shield; there
are in the same church several fine examples seated in the orthodox
manner.

On a capital in the sedilia of Dorchester Abbey is a curious compound
which may be classed as a sphinx. One of the hands (or paws) is held over
the eyes of a dog, which suggests the manner in which animals were
anciently sacrificed. Another sphinx in the same sedilia is of the winged
variety. It has the head cowled; many of the mediæval combinatory forms
are mantled.

In Worcester Cathedral is a compound of man, ox, and lion, very different
from the sphinx or cherubim shapes, being a grotesque deprived of all the
original poetry of the conception.

[Illustration: COWLED SPHINX, DORCHESTER, OXON.]

Virgil describes Scylla (the Punic _Scol_, destruction) as a beautiful
figure upwards, half her body being a beautiful virgin; downwards, a
horrible fish with a wolf's belly (utero). Homer similarly.

The mermaid is a frequent subject, but more monotonous in its form and
action than any other creature, and is generally found executed with a
respectful simplicity that scarcely ever savours of grotesqueness. The
mermaid, "the sea wolf of the abyss," and the "mighty sea-woman" of
Boewulf, has an early origin as a deity of fascinating but malignant
tendencies.

The centaur, perhaps, ranks next to the sphinx in artistic merit. To the
early Christians the centaur was merely a symbol of unbridled passions,
and all mediæval reference classes it as evil. Virgil mentions it as being
met in numbers near the gates of Hades, and the Parthenon sculptures shew
it as the enemy of men.

[Illustration: GROTESQUE CHERUBIM, WORCESTER.]

The story of the encyclopedias regarding centaurs is that they were
Thessalonian horsemen, whom the Greeks, ignorant of horsemanship, took to
be half-men, half-animals. They were called, it is said, centaurs, from
their skill in killing the wild bulls of the Pelion mountains, and, later,
hippo-centaurs. This explanation may, in the presence of other
combinatory forms, be considered doubtful, as it is more probable that
this, like those, arose out of a poetic appreciation of the qualities
underlying beauty of form, that is, out of an intelligent symbolism. The
horse, where known, was always a favourite animal among men. Innumerable
coinages attest this fact. Early Corinthian coins have the figure of
Pegasus. In most the horse is shewn alone. In the next proportion he is
attached to a chariot. In few is he shewn being ridden, as it is his
qualities that were intended to be expressed, and not those of the being
who has subjected him. One of the old Greek gold staters has a man driving
a chariot in which the horse has a human head; while the man is urging the
horse with the sacred three-branched rod, each branch of which terminates
in a trefoil. The centaur has a yet unallotted place in the symbolism of
the sun-myth. Classic mythology says Chiron the centaur was the teacher of
Apollo in music, medicine, and hunting, and centaurs are mostly sagittarii
or archers, whose arrows, like those of Apollo, are the sunbeams. The
centaur met in Gothic ornament is the Zodiacal Sagittarius, and true to
this original derivation, the centaur is generally found with his bow and
arrow.

It is said that the Irish saints, Ciaran and Nessan, are the same with the
centaurs Chiron and Nessus.

[Illustration: MATERNAL CARES OF THE CENTAUR, IFFLEY.]

A capital of the south doorway, Iffley, has a unique composition of
centaurs. A female centaur, armed with bow (broken) and arrow, is suckling
a child centaur after the human manner. The equine portions of the figures
are in exceptionally good drawing, though the tremendous elongation of
the human trunks, and the ill-rendered position, render the group very
grotesque. Both the mother and child wear the classic cestus or girdle.
The bow carried by the mother is held apparently in readiness in the left
hand, while it is probable that the right breast was meant to be shown
removed, as was stated of the Amazons. The mother looks off, and there is
an air of alertness about the two, which is explained by the sculpture on
the return of the capital, where the father-centaur is seen slaying a
wolf, lion, or other beast.

[Illustration: CENTAUR AS DRAGON SLAYER, EXETER.]

On a centaur at Exeter of the thirteenth century, the mythical idea is
somewhat retained; the centaur has shot an arrow into the throat of a
dragon, which is part of the ornament. This is a very rude but suggestive
carving. Is the centaur but a symbol of Apollo himself?

The next block (at Ely) is also of the centaur order, though not
suggestive of aggression. The figure is female, and she is playing the
zither. This is of the fourteenth century.

[Illustration: MUSICAL CENTAUR, ELY.]

[Illustration: HARPY, WINCHESTER.]

Another classic conception which has been perpetuated in Gothic is the
harpy, though in most cases without any apparent recognition of the harpy
character. Exceptions are such instances as that of the harpy drawn in the
chapter "Satires without Satan." In one at Winchester a fine mediæval
effect is produced by putting a hood on the human head.

[Illustration: IBIS-HEADED FIGURE FROM AN UNKNOWN CHURCH.]

Another curious bird combination is in a carving in the Architectural
Museum, Tufton Street, London, from an unknown church. This is a
semi-human figure, whose upper part is skilfully draped. The head, bent
towards the ground, is that of a bird of the ibis species, and it is
probable that we have here a relic of the Egyptian Mercury Thoth, who was
incarnated as an ibis. Thoth is called the God of the Heart (the
conscience), and the ibis was said to be sacred to him because when
sleeping it assumes the shape of a heart.

[Illustration: THE SWAN SISTER, ST. GEORGE'S CHAPEL, WINDSOR.]

An unusual compound is that of a swan with the agreeable head of a young
woman, in St. George's Chapel, Windsor. This may be one of the
swan-sisters in the old story of the "Knight of the Swan."

The initial letter of this section is a fine grotesque rendering of the
Egyptian goddess Athor, Athyr, or Het-her (meaning the dwelling of God.)
She was the daughter of the sun, and bore in images the sun's disc.
Probably through a lapse into ignorance on the part of the
priest-painters, she became of less consideration, and the signification
even of her image was forgotten. She had always had as one of her
representations, a bird with a human head horned and bearing the disc; but
the disc began to be shewn as a tambourine, and she herself was styled
"the mistress of dance and jest." As in the cosmogony of one of the
Egyptian Trinities she was the Third Person, as Supreme Love, the Greeks
held her to be the same as Aphrodite. The name of the sun-disc was Aten,
and its worship was kindred to that of Ra, the mid-day sun. The Hebrew
Adonai and the Syriac Adonis have been considered to be derived from this
word Aten.

Several examples of bird-compounds are in the Exeter series of
misericordes of the thirteenth century. They are renderings in wood of the
older Anglo-Saxon style of design, and are ludicrously grotesque.

It is scarcely to be considered that the compound figures were influenced
by the prevalence of mumming in the periods of the various carvings. In
this, as in many other respects, the traditions of the carvers' art
protected it from being coloured by the aspect of the times, except in a
limited degree, shewn in distinctly isolated examples.

[Illustration: BIRD-COMPOUND, EXETER.]




Non-descripts.


[Illustration: A BEARDED BIPED, ST. KATHERINE'S.]

There is a large number of bizarre works which defy natural
classification, and though in many cases they are a branch of the compound
order of figures, yet they are frequently well defined as non-descripts.
These, though in one respect the most grotesque of the grotesques, do not
claim lengthy description. Where they are not traceable compounds, they
are often apparently the creatures of fancy, without meaning and without
history. It may be, however, that could we trace it, we should find for
each a pedigree as interesting, if not as old, as that of any of the
sun-myths. Among the absurd figures which scarcely call for explanation
are such as that shown in the initial, from the Hospital and Collegiate
Church of St. Katherine by the Tower (now removed to a substituted
hospital in Regent's Park).

[Illustration: A CLOAKED SIN, TUFTON STREET.]

In the Architectural Museum, Tufton Street, London, is a carving from an
unknown church, in which appear two figures which were not an uncommon
subject for artists of the odd. These are human heads, to which are
attached legs without intermediary bodies, and with tails depending from
the back of the heads.

[Illustration: THE WORM OF CONSCIENCE. (_From an unknown Church._)]

In the "Pilgremage of the Sowle," printed by Caxton in 1483, translated
from a French manuscript of 1435 or earlier, is a description of a man's
conscience, which, there is little doubt, furnished the idealic material
for these carvings. A "sowle" being "snarlyed in the trappe" of Satan, is
being, by a travesty on the forms of a court of law, claimed by both the
"horrible Sathanas" and its own Warden or Guardian Angel. The Devil calls
for his chief witness by the name of Synderesys, but the witness calls
himself the Worm of Conscience. The following is the soul's
description:--"Then came forth by me an old one, that long time had hid
himself nigh me, which before that time I had not perceived. He was
wonderfully hideous and of cruel countenance; and he began to grin, and
shewed me his jaws and gums, for teeth he had none, they all being broken
and worn away. He had no body, but under his head he had only a tail,
which seemed the tail of a worm of exceeding length and greatness." This
strange accuser tells the Soul that he had often warned it, and so often
bitten it that all his teeth were wasted and broken, his function being
"to bite and wounde them that wrong themselves."[7]

The above examples are scarcely unique. In Ripon Cathedral, on a
misericorde of 1489, representing the bearing of the grapes of Eschol on a
staff, are two somewhat similar figures, likewise mere "nobodies," though
without tails. These are a covert allusion to the wonderful stories of the
spies, which, it is thus hinted, are akin to the travellers' tales of
mediæval times, as well as a pun on the report that they had seen nobody.

[Illustration: NOBODIES, RIPON.]

It is evident that the idea of men without bodies came from the East, and
also that it had credence as an actual fact. In the _Cosmographiæ
Universalis_, printed in 1550, they are alluded to in the following
terms:--"Sunt qui cervicibus carent et in humeris habet oculos; De India
ultra Gangem fluvium sita."

[Illustration: NON-DESCRIPT, CHRIST CHURCH, HANTS.]

There are many carvings which are more or less of the same character, and
probably intended to embody the idea of conscience or sins.

The two rather indecorous figures shewn in the following block from Great
Malvern are varieties doubtless typifying sins.

[Illustration: SINS IN SYMBOL, GREAT MALVERN.]




Rebuses.


[Illustration: BOLT-TON.]

[Illustration: WILLIAM WHITE, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

Rebuses are often met among Gothic sculptures, but not in such frequency,
or with an amount of humour to claim any great attention here. They are
almost entirely, as in the case of the canting heraldry of seals, of late
date, being mostly of the 15th and 16th centuries. They are often met as
the punning memorial of the name of a founder, builder, or architect, as
the bolt-ton of Bishop Bolton in St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield, the
many-times-repeated cock of Bishop Alcock in Henry VII's. Chapel, the eye
and the slip of a tree, and the man slipping from a tree, for Bishop
Islip, Westminster; and others well known. In the series of misericordes
in Beverley Minster, there are _arma palantes_ of the dignitaries of the
Church in 1520. William White, the Chancellor, has no less than seven
different renderings of the pun upon his name, all being representations
of weights, apparently of four-stone ponderosity. Thomas Donnington, the
Precentor, whose name would doubtless often be written Do'ington, has a
doe upon a ton or barrel. John Sperke, the Clerk of the Fabric, has a dog
with a bone, and a vigilant cock; this, however, is not a name-rebus so
much as an allusion to the exigencies of his office. The Church of St.
Nicholas, Lynn, had misericordes (some of which are now in the
Architectural Museum) which have several monograms and rebuses.
Unfortunately, they are somewhat involved, and there is at present no key
by which to read them. The least doubtful is that given below.

[Illustration: WEIGHT, REBUS FOR WHITE, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

It has a "ton" rebus which will admit, however, of perhaps three different
renderings. It is most likely Thorn-ton, less so Bar-ton, and still less
Hop-ton, all Lincolnshire names.

[Illustration: MERCHANT MARK, COGNIZANCE AND REBUS, ST. NICHOLAS'S,
LYNN.]




Trinities.


[Illustration: LARVA-LIKE DRAGON, ST. PAUL'S, BEDFORD.]

Repeatedly has the statement been made that the various mythologies are
only so many corruptions of the Mosaic system. Manifestly if this could be
admitted there would be little interest in enquiring further into their
details. But there are three arguments against the statement, any one of
which is effective. Although it is perhaps totally unnecessary to
contradict that which can be accepted by the unreflective only, it is
sufficiently near the purpose of this volume to slightly touch upon the
matter, as pointing strong distinctions among ancient worships.

First, there is the simple fact recorded in the Mosaic account itself,
that there existed at that time, and had done previously, various
religious systems, the rooting out of which was an important function of
the liberated Hebrews. The only reply to this is that, by a slight shift
of ground, the mythologies were corruptions of the patriarchal religion,
not the Mosaic system. Yet paganism surrounded the patriarchs.

The second point is that most of the mythologies had crystallized into
taking the sun as the main symbol of worship, and into taking the
equinoxes and other points of the constellation path as other symbols and
reminders of periodic worship; whereas in the Mosaic system the whole
structure of the solar year is ignored, all the calculations being lunar.
If it be objected that Numbers ix. 6-13, and II. Chronicles xxx. 2, refer
indirectly to an intercalary month, that, if admitted, could only for
expediency's sake, and has no bearing upon the general silence as to the
solar periods. This second point is an important testimony to what may be
termed Mosaic originality.

The third point is that in most of the mythologies there is the distinct
mention of a Trinity; in the Mosaic system, the system of the Old
Testament, none. With the question as to whether the New Testament
supports the notion of a Trinity, we need not concern ourselves here; it
is enough that it has been adopted as an item of the Christian belief.

The mythological Trinities are vague and, of course, difficult or
impossible to understand. Most of them appear to be attempts of great
minds of archaic times to reconcile the manifest contradictions ever
observable in the universe. This is done in various ways. Some omit one
consideration, some another; but they generally agree that to have a
three-fold character in one deity is necessary in explaining the
phenomenon of existence. Some of the Trinities may be recited.

PERSIAN.

    OROMASDES, Goodness, the deviser of Creation.

    MITHRAS, Eternal Intellect, the architect and ruler of the world,
    literally "the Friend."

    ARIMANES, the mundane soul (Psyche).

GRECIAN.

    ZEUS.

    PALLAS.

    HERA.

ROMAN.

    JUPITER, Power.

    MINERVA, Wisdom, Eternal Intellect.

    JUNO, Love.

SCANDINAVIAN.

    ODIN, Giver of Life.

    HÆNIR, Giver of motion and sense.

    LODUR, Giver of speech and the senses.

AMERICAN INDIAN.

    OTKON.

    MESSOU.

    ATAHUATA.

EGYPTIAN.

    CNEPH, the Creator, Goodness.

    PTA (Opas), the active principle of Creation (= Vulcan).

    EICTON.

The Egyptians had other Trinities than the above, each chief city having
its own form; in these, however, the third personality appears to be
supposed to proceed from the other two, which scarcely seems to have been
intended in the instances already given. Some of the city Trinities were
as follow:--

THEBES.

    AMUN-RA (= Jupiter), (RA = the Mid-day Sun.)

    MANT or MENTU (= "the mother," Juno.)

    CHONSO (= Hercules.)

PHILAE & ABYDOS.

    OSIRIS (= Pluto).

    ISIS (= Prosperine).

    HORUS, the Saviour, the Shepherd (the Rising Sun).

ABOO-SIMBEL.

    PTA or PHTHAH.

    AMUM-RA.

    ATHOR, Love (the wife of HORUS).

So that it is no coincidence that both Hercules and Horus are met in
Gothic carvings as deliverers from dragons.

ELEPHANTINE.

    KHUM or CHNOUMIS.

    ANUKA.

    HAK.

MEMPHIS.

    PTAH.

    MERENPHTAH.

    NEFER-ATUM.

HELIOPOLIS.

    TUM (Setting Sun.)

    NEBHETP.

    HORUS.

Another Egyptian triad, styled "Trimorphous God!" was:--

    BAIT.

    ATHOR.

    AKORI.

Another:--

    TELEPHORUS.

    ESCULAPIUS.

    SALUS.

VEDIC HINDOO.

    AGNI, Fire, governing the Earth.

    INDRA, The Firmament, governing Space or Mid Air.

    SURYA, The Sun, governing the Heavens.

BRAHMINIC HINDOO.

    BRAHMA, the Creator.

    VISHNU, the Preserver.

    SIVA, the Destroyer (the Transformer) (= Fire).

The Platonic and other philosophic Trinities need not detain us; it has
been asserted that by their means the doctrine of the pagan Trinity was
grafted on to Christianity.

Right down through the ages the number three has always been regarded as
of mystic force. Wherever perfection or efficiency was sought its means
were tripled; thus Jove's thunderbolt had three forks of lightning,
Neptune's lance was a trident, and Pluto's dog had three heads. The
Graces, the Fates, and the Furies were each three. The trefoil was held
sacred by the Greeks as well as other triad forms. In the East three was
almost equally regarded. Three stars are frequently met upon Asiatic
seals. The Scarabæus was esteemed as having thirty joints.

Mediæval thought, in accepting the idea of the Christian Trinity, lavishly
threw its symbolism everywhere; writers and symbolists, architects and
heralds, multiplied ideas of three-fold qualities.

Heraldry is permeated with three-fold repetitions, a proportion of at
least one-third of the generality of heraldic coats having a trinity of
one sort or another. In all probability the stars and bars of America rose
from the coat-armour of an English family in which the stars were three,
the bars three.

St. Nicholas had as his attributes three purses, three bulls of gold,
three children.

Sacred marks were three dots, sometimes alone, sometimes in a triangle,
sometimes in a double triangle; three balls attached, making a trefoil;
three bones in a triangle crossing at the corners; a fleur-de-lys in
various designs of three conjoined; three lines crossed by three lines;
and many other forms.

God, the symbolists said, was symbolized by a hexagon, whose sides were
Glory, Power, Majesty, Wisdom, Blessing, and Honor. The three steps to
heaven were Oratio, Amor, Imitatio. The three steps to the altar, the
three spires of the cathedral, the three lancets of an Early English
window, were all supposed to refer to the Trinity.

Having seen that the idea of the Trinity is a part of most of the ancient
religious systems, it remains to point to one or two instances where, in
common with other ideas from that source, the Trinity has a place among
church grotesques.

There is a triune head in St. Mary's Church, Faversham, Kent, which was
doubtless executed as indicative of the Trinity. The _Beehive of the
Romishe Church_, in 1579, says: "They in their churches and Masse Bookes
doe paint the Trinitie with three faces; for our mother the holie Church
did learn that at Rome, where they were wont to paint or carve Janus with
two faces." In the Salisbury Missal of 1534 is a woodcut of the Trinity
triangle surmounted by a three-faced head similar to the above. Hone
reproduces it in his _Ancient Mysteries Described_, and asks, "May not the
triune head have been originally suggested by the three-headed Saxon deity
named "Trigla"?" The Faversham tria, it will be noticed, has the curled
and formal beards of the Greek mask.

[Illustration: A TRINITY, ST. MARY'S, FAVERSHAM.]

Another instance of a three-fold head similar to the Faversham carving is
at Cartmel.

A still more remarkable form of the same thing occurs as a rosette on the
tomb of Bishop de la Wich, in Chichester Cathedral, in which the trinity
of faces is doubled and placed in a circle in an exceedingly ingenious and
symmetrical manner. This has oak leaves issuing from the mouths, which we
have seen as a frequent adjunct of the classic mask as indicating Jupiter.

[Illustration: DOUBLE TRINITY OF FOLIATE MASKS, CHICHESTER.]

In carvings three will often be found to be a favourite number without a
direct reference to the Trinity. The form of the misericorde is almost
invariably a three-part design, and, being purely arbitrary, its universal
adoption is one of the evidences of the organization of the craft gild.

As with the misericorde, so with its subjects. At Exeter we have seen
(page 4) the tail of the harpy made into a trefoil ornament, while she
grasps a trefoil-headed rod (just as among Assyrian carvings we should
have met a figure bearing the sacred three-headed poppy). At Gayton (page
87) we have the three-toothed flesh-hook; at Maidstone is another.
Chichester Cathedral and Chichester Hospital have each three groups.
Beverley Minster has three fish interlaced, and three hares running round
inside a circle. In Worcester Cathedral there are three misericordes, in
each of which there are three figures, in which groups the number is
evidently intentional. Three till the ground, three reap corn with
sickles, three mow with scythes.

[Illustration: TRINITY OF MOWERS, WORCESTER.]

From them as being unusual in treatment, even in this stiff Flemish set,
is selected the trinity of mowers. Groups of three in mowing scenes is a
frequent number. Doubtless this carving is indicative of July, that being
the "Hey-Monath" of early times. One of the side supporters or pendant
carvings of this is a hare riding upon the back of a leoparded lion,
perhaps some reference to Leo, the sign governing July.

The three mowers do not make a pleasing carving, owing to the repetition
and want of curve.

Other instances of triplication in Gothic design might be given,
particularly in the choice of floral forms in which nature has set the
pattern. This section, however, is chiefly important as a convenient means
of incorporating a record of something further of the fundamental beliefs
of the world's youth, connected with and extending the question of the
remote origin of the ideas at the root of so many grotesques in church
art.




The Fox in Church Art.


[Illustration: PREACHING FOX, CHRISTCHURCH, HAMPSHIRE.]

The Fox, apostrophized as follows:

  "O gentle one among the beasts of prey
  O eloquent and comely-faced animal!"

as an important subject in mediæval art, has two distinct places.

There is a general impression that there was a great popular literary
composition, running through many editions and through many centuries,
having its own direct artistic illustration, and a wide indirect
illustration which, later, by its ability to stand alone, had broken away
from close connection with the epic, yet possessed a derivative identity
with it.

Closer examination, however, proves that there is indeed the Fox in its
particular literature with its avowed illustrations, but also that there
is the Fox in mediæval art, illustrative of ideas partly found in
literature, but illustrative of no particular work, and yet awaiting a
key. Each is a separate and distinct thing.

Among the grotesques of our churches there are some references to the
literary "Reynard the Fox," but they are few and far between; while
numerous most likely and prominent incidents of Reynard's career, as
narrated in the poem, have no place among the carvings.

The subjects of the carvings are mostly so many variations of the idea of
the Fox turned ecclesiastic and preying upon his care and congregation;
and in this he is assisted by the ape, who also takes sides with him in
carvings of other proceedings; but in none of these scenes is there
evidence of reference to the epic. A great point of difference, too, lies
in the conclusion of the epic, and the conclusion of Reynard's life as
shewn in the carvings. In the epic, the King makes Reynard the Lord
Chancellor and favourite.

The end of the Fox of church art, however, is far different; several
sculptures agree in shewing him hanged by a body of geese.

In the epic, Reynard's victims are many. The deaths of the Hare and the
Ram afford good circumstantial pictures, yet in the carvings there is
neither of these; and it is scarcely Reynard who plots, and sins, and
conceals, but a more vulgar fox who concerns himself, chiefly about geese,
in an open, verminous way, while many of the sculptures are little more
than natural history illustrations, in which we see _vulpes_, but not the
Fox.

To enable, however, a fair comparison to be made between literature and
art in this byway, it will be as well to glance at the history of the
poem, and lay down a brief analysis of its episodes; and, next, to present
sketches of some typical examples from the carvings.

Much of ancient satire owes its origin to that description of fable which
bestows the attributes and capacities of the human race upon the lower
animals, which are made to reason and to speak. Their mental processes and
their actions are entirely human, although their respective animal
characteristics are often used to accentuate their human character. In
every animal Edward Carpenter sees varying sparks of the actual mental
life we call human, in, it may be added, arrested or perverted
development, in which, in each instance, one characteristic has
immeasurably prevailed. For the animal qualities, whether human or not in
kind, man has ever had a sympathetic recognition, which has made both
symbol and fable easily acceptable. Perhaps symbolism, which for so many
ages has taken the various animals as figures to intelligibly express
abstract qualities, gave rise to fable. If so, fable may be considered the
grotesque of symbolism. The same ideas--of certain qualities--are taken
from their original serious import, and used to amuse, and, while amusing,
to strike.

On the other hand, Grimm asserts that animal-fable arose in the
Netherlands, North France, and West Germany, extending neither to the
Romance countries, nor to the Keltic; whereas we find animal symbolism
everywhere. Grimm's statement may be taken to speak, perhaps, of a certain
class of fable, and the countries he names are certainly where we should
expect to find the free-est handling of superstitions. His arguments are
based on the Germanic form of the names given to the beasts, but his
localities seem to follow the course of the editions. Perhaps special
causes, and not the influence of race, decided the localities. The
earliest trace of a connected animal-fable is of that which is also the
most wide-spread and popular--the history of the Fox.

This early production is a poem, called _Isengrinus_, in Latin hexameters,
by a cleric of South Flanders, whose name has not survived. It was written
in the first half of the twelfth century, and first printed, it is said,
so late as 1834.

In this, the narrative is briefly as follows:--The Lion is sick, and calls
a court to choose his successor. Reynard is the only animal that does not
appear. The Wolf, Isengrinus, to ruin Reynard's adherents, the Goat and
the Ram, prescribes as a remedy for the Lion's disorder a medicine of Goat
and Ram livers. They defend the absent Reynard, and pronounce him a great
doctor, and, to save their livers, drive the Wolf by force from before the
throne. Reynard is summoned. He comes with herbs, which, he says, will
only be efficacious if the patient is wrapped in the skin of a wolf four
years old. The Wolf is skinned, the Lion is cured, and Fox made
Chancellor.

In this story is neatly dovetailed another, narrating how the Wolf had
been prevented from devouring a party of weak pilgrim animals by the
judicious display of a wolf's head. This head was cut off a wolf found
hanging in a tree, and, at Reynard's instigation, the party, on the
strength of possessing it, led the Wolf to believe them to be a company of
professional wolf-slayers.

After this poem followed another at the end of the same century with
numerous additions and alterations, by a monk of Ghent. Next came a high
German poem, also of the twelfth century, expanded, but without great
addition. After this came the French version, Roman de Renart, which, with
supplementary compositions, enlarged the matter to no less than 41,748
verses. There is another French version, called Renart le Contrefet, of
nearly the same horrible length.

A Flemish version, written in the middle of the thirteenth century, and
continued in the fourteenth, became the great father of editions.

All these were in verse, but on the invention of printing the Flemish form
was re-cast into prose, and printed at Gouda in 1479, and at Delft in
1485; abridged and mutilated it was often re-printed in Holland.

Caxton printed a translation in 1481, and another a few years later. The
English quarto, like the Dutch, also gave rise in time to a call for a
cheap abridgment, and it appeared in 1639, as "The Most delectable history
of Reynard the Fox."

Meanwhile a Low Saxon form had appeared, "Reinche Bos," first printed at
Lubeck in 1498, and next at Rostock in 1517, a translation, with
alterations, from the Flemish publication. Various other editions in
German followed, with cuts by Amman.

In all these and their successors the incidents were varied. Having seen
that, within at least certain limits, the story must have been exceedingly
well-known and popular, we will run through the incidents narrated in the
most popular of the German Reynard poems, chiefly taken from Goethe's
rendering.

Nouvel, the Lion, calls a parliament, and the Fox does not appear, and is
accused of various crimes. The Wolf accuses him of sullying the honour of
his wife, and blinding his three children. A little Dog accuses him of
stealing a pudding end (this the Cat denies, stating that the pudding was
one of her own stealing). The Leopard accuses him of murder, having only
the day before rescued the Hare from his clutch as he was throttling him,
under pretence of severity in teaching the Creed.

The Badger, Grimbart, now comes forward in defence.

  "An ancient proverb says, quoth he,
  Justice in an enemy
  Is seldom to be found."

He accuses the Wolf in his turn of violating the bonds of partnership. The
Fox and the Wolf had arranged to rob a fish-cart. The Fox lay for dead on
the road, and the carter, taking him up, threw him on the top of the load
of fish, turning to his horse again. Reynard then threw the fish on to the
road, and jumping down to join in the feast found left for him but fin and
scales. The Badger explains away also the story of Reynard's guilt as to
Dame Isengrin, and, with regard to the Hare, asks if a teacher shall not
chastise his scholars. In short, since the King proclaimed a peace,
Reynard was thoroughly reformed, and but for being absorbed in penance
would no doubt have been present to defend himself from any false
reports.

Unfortunately for this justification, at the very moment of its conclusion
a funeral procession passes;

  "On sable bier
  The relics of a Hen appear,"

while Henning, the Cock, makes a piteous complaint of Reynard's misdeeds.
He said how the Fox had

  "Assured him he'd become a friar,
  And brought a letter from his prior;
  Show'd him his hood and shirt of hair,
  His rosary and scapulaire;
  Took leave of him with pious grace,
  That he might hasten to his place
  To read the nona and the sept,
  And vesper too before he slept;
  And as he slowly took his way,
  Read in his pocket breviary."

all of which ended in the devout penitent eating nineteen of Henning's
brood.

The Lion invites his council's advice. It is decided to send an envoy to
Reynard, and Bruno, the Bear, is selected to summon him to court.

Bruno finds him at his castle of Malepart, and thunders a summons.
Reynard, by plausible speech and a story of honey, disarms some of his
hostility, and entices him off to a carpenter's yard, where an oak trunk,
half split, yet has the wedge in. Reynard declaring the honey is in the
cleft, Bruno puts his head and paws in. Reynard draws out the wedge. The
Bear howls till the whole village is aroused, and Bruno, to save his life,
draws himself out minus skin from head and paws. In the confusion the
parson's cook falls into the stream, and the parson offers two butts of
beer to the man who saves her. While this is being done, the Bear escapes,
and the Fox taunts him.

The Bear displaying his condition at court, the King swears to hang
Reynard, this time sending Hinge, the Cat, to summon Reynard to trial.
Hinge is lured to the parson's house in hopes of mice, and caught in a
noose fixed for Reynard. The household wake, and beat the Cat, who dashes
underneath the priest's robe, revenging himself in a cruel and unseemly
way. The Cat is finally left apparently dead, but reviving, gnaws the
cord, and crawls back to court.

  "The King was wroth, as wroth could be."

The Badger now offers to go, three times being the necessary number for
summoning a peer of the realm. He puts the case plainly before Reynard,
who agrees to come, and they set out together. On the way Reynard has a
fit of remorse, and confesses his sins. Grimbart plucks a twig, makes the
Fox beat himself, leap over it three times, kiss it; and then declares him
free from his sins. All the time Reynard casts a greedy eye on some
chickens, and makes a dash at one shortly after. Accused by Grimbart, he
declares he had only looked aside to murmur a prayer for those who die in
"yonder cloister."

  "And also I would say
  A prayer for the endless peace
  Of many long-departed geese,
  Which, when in a state of sin,
  I stole from the nuns who dwell therein."

The Fox arrives at court with a proud step and a bold eye. He is accused,
but

  "Tried every shift and vain pretence
  To baffle truth and common sense,
  And shield his crimes with eloquence."

In vain. He is condemned to die. His friend Martin the Ape, Grimbart the
Badger, and others withdraw in resentment, and the King is troubled.

At the gallows Reynard professes to deliver a dying confession, and
introduces a story of seven waggon-loads of gold and jewels which had been
a secret hoard of his father, stolen for the purpose of bribing chiefs to
depose the Lion and place the Bear on the throne.

Reynard is pardoned on condition of pointing out the treasure. He declares
it to be in Husterlo, but excuses himself from accompanying the King on
his way there, as he, Reynard, is excommunicated for once assisting the
Wolf to escape from a monastery, and must, therefore, go to Rome to get
absolution.

The King announces his pardon to the court. The Bear and Wolf are thrown
into prison, and Reynard has a scrip made of a piece of the Bear's hide,
and shoes of the skin of the feet of the Wolf and his wife. Blessed by
Bellin the Ram, who is the King's chaplain, and accompanied a short
distance by the whole court, he sets out for Rome. The chaplain Ram and
Lampe the Hare, accompany him home to bid his wife farewell. He inveigles
the Hare inside, and the family eat him. He puts the Hare's head in the
bear-skin wallet, and taking it to the impatient Bellin outside, asks him
to take it to the King, as it contains letters of state policy.

The satchel is opened in full court, and Reynard once more proclaimed a
traitor, accursed and banned, the Bear and Wolf restored, and the Ram and
all his race given to them for atonement. A twelve-day tourney is held. On
the eighth day the Coney and the Crow present complaint against Reynard;
he had wounded the Coney, and eaten the Crow's wife. It is resolved, in
spite of the Lioness's second intercession, to besiege Malepart and hang
Reynard.

Grimbart secretly runs off to warn Reynard, who decides to return to court
once more and plead his cause. They set out together, and Reynard again
confesses his sins. This introduces a story of how he once fooled the
Wolf. Isengrin coveted to eat a foal, and sent the Fox to inquire the
price from the mare. She replied the price was written on her hinder hoof.
The Fox, seeing the trick, returned to the Wolf saying he could not
understand the inscription. The Wolf boasts of his learning, having long
ago taken his degrees as Doctor of Both Faculties. The Wolf bends down to
examine the newly-shod hoof, and the rest may be supposed.

On their way to court, Reynard and Grimbart meet Martin the Ape, who is
bound for Rome, and promises his gold shall buy Reynard's absolution.
Arrived at court, Reynard boldly explains away the stories of the Coney
and the Crow, and demands the trial by battle. The Coney and Crow, having
no witnesses, and being averse to battle, withdraw. Reynard accuses the
dead Bellin of killing the Hare Lampe and secreting rare jewels he sent
to the King. His story is half believed in the hope that the jewels, which
he described at great length, may be found. Reynard's former services to
the state are remembered, and he is about to depart triumphant, when the
Wolf, unable to restrain his rage, accuses him afresh. In the end, as each
accusation is smoothly foiled, he accepts the wager of battle. They
withdraw to prepare for the lists. Reynard is shorn and shaven, all but
his tail, by his relatives the Apes. He is well oiled. He is also enjoined
to drink plentifully overnight.

They meet in the lists. Reynard kicks up the dust to blind the Wolf, draws
his wet tail across his eyes, and at length tears an eye out. He is,
however, seized by the Wolf's strong jaw, and is about to be finished off
when he takes advantage of a word of parley to seize the wolf in a tender
part with his hand, and the fight recommences, ending in the total
overthrow of Isengrin. The King orders the fray to be stayed and the
Wolf's life spared. The Wolf is carried off. All fly to congratulate the
victor,

  "All gazed in his face with fawning eyes,
  And loaded him with flatteries."

The King makes him the Lord Chancellor and takes him to his close esteem.

The tale winds up:

  "To wisdom now let each one turn,
  Avoid the base and virtue learn;
  This is the end of Reynard's story,
  May God assist us to His glory."

[Illustration: THE FOX RETURNING FROM HUNTING, MANCHESTER.]

The above is the gist of the matter dealing with the Fox in letters; from
these lively images we will turn to the more wooden achievements of the
carvers. The general fact that the Fox is a marauder specially fond of the
flesh of that bird of long descent, the goose, but also partial to that of
other birds, is frequently illustrated by church carvings. In the churches
at the following places he is carved as having seized his prey:--Beverley
(Minster), Boston, Fairford, Faversham, Gloucester, Hereford, Norwich,
Oxford (Magdalen), Peterborough, Ripon, Wellingborough, Winchester, and
Windsor (St. George's Chapel). At the last-named he is also shewn as
preying upon a hen. At Beverley (Minster) Ely, Manchester, and Thanet (St.
Mary's Minster) the picture of the abduction of the goose is heightened in
interest by his pursuit by a woman armed with a distaff. Doubtless there
are others; the object throughout is to give examples, not an exhaustive
list.

A somewhat unusual subject is one in Manchester Cathedral, in which the
Fox is returning from hunting. A carving where the Fox is used to point a
moral is another, in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, in which three monks,
conveyed in a wheel-barrow into Hell's Mouth, are accompanied by a Fox
with a goose in his mouth. Probably the idea here broadly expressed is
intended to be quietly suggested by some of the above.

Next in frequency is the more definite satire of the Fox preaching to
Geese. We find it at Beverley (both the Minster and St. Mary's), Boston,
Bristol, Cartmel, Ely, Etchingham, Nantwich, Ripon, Stowlangcroft, and
Windsor (St. George's Chapel). In the last he has a goose in his cowl.

All those need for their completion the supposition that the text of the
Fox's sermon is the same as was given at length in a representation of a
preaching scene on an ancient stained-glass window in the church of St.
Martin, Leicester, which was unhappily destroyed in the last century. In
this, from the Fox's mouth proceeded the words "Testis est mihi Deus, quam
cupiam vos omnes visceribus meus" (God is my witness how I desire you all
in my bowels.--Philippians, i., 8). In Wolfius, A.D. 1300, is a
description of another such representation, in a MS. of Æsop's Fables. It
may accord quite well with the theory of the transmission of designs by
the continuity of the artificers' gild system to suppose that some
proportion of the material found its way into their repertoire through
the medium of manuscripts (not necessarily original in them), especially
for such subjects as were essentially mediæval. We have seen how the
carvings of Jonah and of Samson, at Ripon, were taken from the Poor Man's
Bible; here we have the Preaching Fox mentioned in a book of 1300 as being
in an earlier work. A Fox bearing two Cocks by the neck on a staff is the
initial T in a MS. considered by Montflaucon to be of the ninth century.
Fredegarius, the Frankish historian, in the middle of the seventh century,
has a fable of a Fox at the court of the Lion, repeated by others in the
tenth and eleventh. Paulin Paris and Thomas Wright agreed in thinking the
whole fable of French origin, and first in the Latin tongue. So that we
may reasonably suppose that the countless tons of books and MSS. (though
it is useless to grope now among the mere memories of ashes), burnt at the
Reformation, would contain much that would have made clearer our
understanding of this subject of Gothic grotesques. It is clear, however,
that the Fox was used as a means of satirical comment before the writing
of the Isengrine Fable, and that most of the church carvings refer to what
we may call pre-Fable or co-Fable conceptions.

There may be other material lying hidden in our great libraries, but
search for early Reynard drawings produces almost nothing.

At Ripon the Fox is shewn without vestments, in a neat Gothic pulpit
adorned with carvings of the trefoil.[8] His hands, and what they may
have held, are gone. His congregation is to his right a goose, to his left
a cock, who appear to be uttering responses, while his face is significant
of conscious slyness.

[Illustration: THE PREACHING FOX, RIPON.]

In Beverley Minster the Preaching Fox is in a square panelled pulpit on
four legs; before him are seven geese, one of whom slumbers peacefully. He
wears a gown and cowl, has a rosary in his right hand, and appears to be
performing his part with some animation. Behind the pulpit stands an ape
with a goose hung on a stick, while another fox--to give point to the
lesson--is slinking off with a goose slung over his back. At St. Mary's,
Beverley, the various carvings have a decidedly manuscript appearance. The
one of the Preaching Fox has labels, upon which, in some unknown original,
may have been inscribed texts or other matter. Here the Fox wears only his
"scapulaire," and has his right hand raised in correct exhortative manner;
his pulpit is of stone, and is early. Behind stand two persons, perhaps
male and female, whose religious dress would lead us to suppose them to
represent the class to whose teaching a fox-like character is to be
attributed. At the front are seated two apes, also in scapularies, or
hoods, who, as well as the Fox, may be here to shew the real character of
the supposed sanctified.

[Illustration: THE RULE AND THE ROAST CONTRASTED, ST. MARY'S, BEVERLEY.]

It will have been noticed how frequently the carvings evade explanation;
all these satires on the clergy may mean either that the system was bad,
or that there was much abuse of it. A remarkable instance of this is in
another misericorde in St. Mary's, Beverley. Here we have the Benedictine
with mild and serene countenance, without a sign of sin, and bearing the
scroll of truth and simplicity of life--call it the rule of his order. Yet
how do many of his followers act? With greed for the temporalities, they
aspire to the pastoral crook, and devour their flocks with such rapacity
as to threaten the up-rooting of the whole order.

[Illustration: THE PREACHING FOX, ST. MARY'S, BEVERLEY.]

Such might be one rendering; yet the placid cleric may be simply
introduced to shew the outward appearance of the ravening ones.

It has been a favourite explanation of these anti-cleric carvings to say
that they were due to the jealousy which existed between the regular
orders and the preaching friars. But carvings such as this last are
sufficient to prove the explanation erroneous; preaching friars carried no
croziers.

Yet another instance from St. Mary's shews us two foxes in scapularies
reading from a book placed on an eagle-lectern.

[Illustration: FOXES AT THE LECTERN, ST. MARY'S, BEVERLEY.]

The bird--lectern or not--has round its head a kind of aureola or glory;
it is probably an eagle, but who shall say it is not a dove? The
religiously-garbed foxes are alone unmistakable.

At Boston we have a mitred Fox, enthroned in the episcopal seat in full
canonicals, clutching at a cock which stands near, while another bird is
at the side. Close by the throne, another fox, in a cowl only, is reading
from a book.

At Christchurch, Hampshire, we see the Fox on a seat-elbow, in a pulpit of
good design, and near him, on a stool, the Cock; it appears in the
initial of this article.

At Worcester, a scapularied Fox is kneeling before a small table or altar,
laying his hand with an affectation of reverence upon--a sheep's head.
This is one of the side carvings to the misericorde of the three mowers,
considered under the head of "Trinities."

[Illustration: EPISCOPAL HYPOCRISY, BOSTON.]

The Fox seizing the Hen, at Windsor, reminds of the Fable, yet in so many
other instances it is the Cock who is the prey. Still further removing the
carvings out of the sphere of the Fable is a carving at Chicester of the
Fox playing the harp to a goose, while an ape dances; and another at St.
George's, Windsor, in which it is an ape who wears the stole, and is
engaged in the laying on of hands. In the Fable the Fox teaches the Hare
the Creed, yet in a carving at Manchester it is his two young cubs whom
he is teaching from a book.

The Fox in the Shell of Salvation, artfully discoursing on the merits of a
bottle of holy water, as drawn on page 58, may be considered a Preaching
Fox.

There is at Nantwich a carving which, unlike any of those already noticed,
is closely illustrative of an incident of the epic. It represents the
story told to Nouvel's court by the widower Crow. He and his wife, in
travelling through the country, came across what they thought was the dead
body of Reynard on the heath. He was stiff, his tongue protruded, his eyes
were inverted. They lamented his unhappy fate, and "course so early run."
The lady approached his chin, not, indeed, with any idea of commencing a
meal; far from that, it was to ascertain if perchance any signs of life
remained, when--snap! Her head was off! The Crow himself had the
melancholy luck to fly to a tree, there to sit and watch his wife eaten
up. In the carving we have the crows first coming upon the sight of the
counterfeit carrion as it lies near a rabbit warren. To shew how perfect
is Reynard's semblance of death, the rear portions of two rabbits are to
be seen as they hurry into their holes on the approach of the crows, the
proximity of the Fox not having previously alarmed them.

The side figures have no simultaneous connection with the central
composition, being merely representations of Reynard, once more as a
larder regarder. The pilgrim's hat, borne by one of the figures, is a
further reminder of the Fable, and the monkish garb is of course in
keeping. These two are somewhat singular in being fox-headed men. At
Chester, also, is a Fox feigning death.

[Illustration: THE FOX FEIGNING DEATH, NANTWICH.]

[Illustration: THE TEMPTATION. THE PUNISHMENT. THE WAKE KNOT. BEVERLEY
MINSTER.]

Thus far the examples have been of Reynard's crimes; we will now survey
his punishment. In the fable he was to be hanged, but was not, the Wolf
and the Bear, whom he always outwitted, being the disappointed
executioners. In the carvings he is really hanged, and the hangsmen are
the geese of his despoliation. Beverley Minster has among its fine
carvings an admirable rendering of this subject. Reynard is hanged on a
square gallows, a number of birds, geese, taking a beak at the rope. To
the left of the gallows stand two official geese, with mace and
battle-axe. The left supplementary carving gives a note of the crime;
Reynard is creeping upon two sleeping geese. The right hand supporting
carving gives us the Fox after being cut down. His friend, the Ape, is
untying the rope from his neck. Observe the twist of the rope at the end;
it declares that Reynard is dead, for it is a Wake Knot!

Also at Boston, Bristol, Nantwich, and Sherborne are carvings of the
hanging by geese. The gallows of the Sherborne execution is square, and
made of rough trees. The general action is less logical than in the
Beverley scene, but the geese are full of vivacity, evidently enjoying the
thoroughness with which they are carrying out their intentions.

[Illustration: EXECUTION OF REYNARD, SHERBORNE.]

In the hanging scenes there is no suggestion of the religious dress.
Reynard has lost his Benefit of Clergy. Besides the carving of the Ape
laying out the dead Fox, at Beverley there are also others where the Ape
is riding on the Fox's back, and again where he is tending him in bed. The
Ape succouring the Fox is also instanced at Windsor.

However, after the two broad classes of carvings are exhausted--the Fox
deluding or eating birds, and the Fox hanged by birds, there is little
left to tell of him.

It may be added that his hanging by his one-time victims has suggested to
the carver another subject of the same kind--the hanging of the cat by
mice, or, more probably, rats, mentioned on page 43. It is there stated to
be at Sherborne, in error, the place being Great Malvern.

[Illustration: EXECUTION OF THE CAT, GREAT MALVERN.]

The following curious scene from the Fox-fruitful church of St. Mary's,
Beverley, is perplexing, and gives the Fox receiving his quietus under
unique circumstances. He is, with anxiety, awaiting the diagnosis of an
ape-doctor, who is critically examining urinary deposits; his health has
been evidently not all he could wish. When, lo, an arrow, from the bow of
an archer in quilted leather, pierces him through the heart! What more
this carving means is a mystery.

[Illustration: REYNARD IN DANGER, ST. MARY'S, BEVERLEY.]

Carvings of the ordinary fables in which the Fox is concerned are not
unknown. At Faversham, Kent, is one of the Fox and the Grapes; at Chester
is the Fox and the Stork. The latter is, again, on a remarkable slab,
probably a coffin lid, in the Priory Church of Bridlington, East
Yorkshire, the strange combination of designs on which may be described.
At the head appear two curious dragon forms opposed over an elaborate
embattled temple, suggestive of Saxon and Byzantine derivation, with a
central pointed arch. This may be a rendering of the sun-myth, noted on
page 37. At the foot is a reversed lion, the curls and twists of whose
mane and tail closely resembles those of the white porcelain lions used by
the Chinese as incense-burners. Between the temple and the lion is incised
an illustration of the fable of the Fox and the Stork. The slab, of which
a rough sketch is annexed, is of black basaltic marble, similar to that
of the font of the church, which is of the type generally considered to be
Norman, and to have been imported ready made from Flanders, and on which
dragons are sometimes the ornament. The Fox on this slab is the earliest
sculptured figure of the animal known in England.

[Illustration: COFFIN LID, BRIDLINGTON, YORKSHIRE.]

There are also hunting scenes in which the fox is shot with bow and arrow,
as in Beverley Minster; or chased with hounds in a way more commending
itself to modern sporting ideas, as at Ripon.

In conclusion, the satirical intent of the fox inventions, as we find them
in the library or in the church, may be summed up, for here indeed lies
the whole secret of their prevalence and popularity. The section of
society satirized by the epic is large, but is principally covered by the
feudal institution. The notes struck are its greed of wealth and its greed
of the table, its injustice under the pretext of laws, its expedient
lying, the immunity from punishment afforded by riches, the absolute yet
revolution-fearing power of the sovereign, the helplessness of nobles
single-handed, and the general influence of religion thrown over
everything, while for its own sake being allowed to really influence
nothing.

The chief point of the epic is generally considered to be that power in
the hands of the feudal barons was accompanied by a trivial amount of
intelligence, which was easily deceived by the more astute element of
society. The carvings give no note of this. A further object, however, may
be seen. The whole story of the Fox is meant not only to shew that

  "It is not strength that always wins,
  For wit doth strength excel,"

by playing on the passions and weaknesses of mankind, but in particular to
hold up to scorn the immunity procured by professional religion, though it
is fair to note that the Fox does not adopt a religious life because
suited to his treacherous and deceitful character, but to conceal it. Thus
so far as they elucidate the general "foxiness" of religious hypocrisy,
the carvings and the epic illustrate the same theme, but it is evident
that they embodied and developed already-existing popular recognition of
the evil, each in its own way, and without special reference one to the
other.




Situations of the Grotesque Ornament in Church Art.


The places chosen for the execution of the work which, by reason of its
intention or its want of conformity with what we now consider a true taste
in art, may be styled Grotesque, do not seem to be in any marked degree
different from the situations selected for other ornamental work. It may,
however, be permitted to glance at those situations, and enquire as to
such comparisons as they afford, though the conclusions to be arrived at
must necessarily be loose and general.

In Norman work the chief iconographical interest is to be found in the
capitals of pilasters and pillars, for here is often told a story of some
completeness. Other places are the arches, chiefly of doorways; bosses of
groining, and the horizontal corners of pillar plinths; exteriorly, the
gargoyles are most full of meaning, seconded by the corbels of the
corbel-table. We may expect in Norman grotesque some reference to ancient
mystics; the forms are bold and rugged, such appearance of delicacy as
exists being attained by interlacing lines in conventional patterns, with,
also, the effect of distance upon repeating ornament.

Transitional Norman retained all the characteristic ornament of the purer
style, but with the development of Early English the grotesque for a time
somewhat passed out of vogue, slight but eminently graceful modifications
of the Corinthian acanthus supplying most of the places where strange
beasts had formerly presented their bewildering shapes. It might not be
impossible to connect this partial purification of ornament with a phase
of church history.

[Illustration: APE CORBEL, CARRYING ROOF TIMBER, EWELME.]

But in some portions of structure, as the gargoyles, and in the woodwork
of the choirs, the grotesque still held its own. As Early English grew
distinctly into the Decorated, every available spot was enriched with
carving. The collections (called "portfolios" elsewhere) of the old
carvers would seem to have been ransacked and exhausted, all that had gone
before receiving fresh rendering in wood and stone, while life and nature
were now often called upon to furnish new material. The pointed arch
remained, however, an undecorated sweep of mouldings, and the plinth
corners were rarely touched; in fact there was here scarcely now the same
squareness of space which before had asked for ornament. All the other
places ornamented in Norman work were filled up in Decorated with the new
designs of old subjects. The resting-places of ornament were multiplied;
the dripstones of every kind of arch, and the capitals of every kind of
pillar, whether in the arcading of the walls, the heaped-up richness of
the reredos, or the single subject of the piscina, became nests of the
grotesque. In a single group of sedilia all the architecture of a great
cathedral may be seen in miniature, in arch, column, groined roof, boss,
window-tracery, pinnacle, and finial, each part with its share of
ornament, of grotesque. In the choirs the carvers had busied themselves
with summoning odd forms from out the hard oak, till the croches or
elbow-rests, the bench ends, the stall canopies, and below all, and above
all, the misericordes, swarmed with all the ideas of Asia and Europe past
and present. Musicians are everywhere, but most persistently on the
intersections of the choir arches, and somewhat less so on those of the
nave.

[Illustration: MISERICORDE--LION COMPOSITION, WELLINGBOROUGH.]

A favourite place for humourous figures was on the stone brackets or
corbels which bear up timber roofs; examples are in the ape corbel in this
article, and the responsible yet happy-looking saint at the end of the
list of Contents.

When the Perpendicular style came with other arts from Italy, and the
lavish spread of the Decorated was chastened and over-chastened into
regularity, there came for the second or third time the same ideas from
the never-dying mythologies, their concrete embodiments sometimes with
eloquence rendered, nearly always with vigour. They came to the old
places, but in most fulness to that most full place, the dark recess where
lurks the misericorde.

Upon the whole it would appear that the grotesque, be it in the relics of
a long-forgotten symbolism, in crude attempts at realism, or in the
fantastic whimseys of irresponsibility, is chiefly met in the portions of
the church where would occur, in the development of architecture, the
problems and difficulties. They occur, so to speak, at the joints of
construction. It may be that the pluteresques (grotesque and other
ornaments made of metal) employed in many Spanish churches are to be
accounted for in this way on the score of the facility of attachment.
Where it may be questioned that the ornament was to conceal juncture, it
is often to be acknowledged that it was to give external apparent
lightness to masses which are in themselves joints or centres of weight.
To conclude--to whatever extent we may carry our inquiries into the
meaning of the grotesques in church art, we have in them undoubtedly
objects whose associations are among the most ancient of the human race;
whatever our opinion of their fitness for a place in the temple, it is
plain that practically they could be nowhere else.

[Illustration: MUSICIAN ON THE INTERSECTION OF NAVE ARCHES, ST. HELEN'S,
ABINGDON, BERKSHIRE.]




INDEX.




Index.


  Abdominal Mask, 91

  Abingdon, 18, 72, 218, and Preface

  Aboo-Simbel Trinity, 177

  Abydos Trinity, 177

  Acanthus, 149-50, 214

  Adam, 61, 62, 74;
    and Eve, 112, 120

  Adam Clarke, 74

  Adel, Yorkshire, 127

  Adonai, 168

  Adonis, 168

  Adoration, the, 113-5

  Ælian, 50

  Æsculapius, 42

  _Æsop's Fables_, 196

  Africa, 66

  Agni, 178

  Aix-la-Chapelle, 46

  Akori, 178

  Alcock, Bishop, 10, 92, 173

  Ale and the Alewife, 99-105

  Alewife, 97

  Alehouses, 99

  Ale-taster, 100

  Alexander, 71

  Alexandria, 34

  All Souls, Oxford, 71, 76, 104-5, 150-1

  Alraun images, 28

  Altar of the Sun, 37-39

  Ambarvalia, 48

  American Arms, 179

  American-Indian mythology, 159

  American-Indian Trinity, 177

  Amman, Justus, 188

  Ammon, 42, 72, 158

  Amun-Ra, 177

  _Ancient Mysteries described_, 180

  Ancient Worships, 27-59, 64-77, 152-3, 157-168, 175-183

  Angel Choir, Lincoln, 3, 9

  Angel (coin), 47

  Angels, 63

  Animal Musicians, 152-6

  Animal symbolism, 35

  Anthony pig, the, 154

  Anuka, 178

  Archers, 205, 209-10

  Ape, the, 59, 28-9, 145, 152, 156, 192-4, 198, 201, 203, 207-10, 214

  Aphrodite, 168

  Apocryphal New Testament, the, 60, 112

  Apollo, 21, 46, 162, 165

  April, 141

  Apuleius, 41

  Architectural Museum, Tufton Street, the, 12, 167, 169, 174

  Arimanes, 176

  Arles, the Council of, 29

  Arma palantes, 173

  Arthur, King, 69

  Artistic quality of Church grotesques, 19-23, 61

  _Art Journal, the_, 66

  Asir, 45

  Assyrian myth, 34, 157, 181

  Assyrians, no record of their humour, 6

  Astronomical symbols a source of Gothic design, 4, 27-8, 37-59, 73,
      157-68, 177

  Atahuata, 177

  Aten, 168

  Athor, 111, 157, 167, 177-8

  Athyr, 167

  Attic figurines, 28

  Auckland Castle, 155

  Augsburgh, (?) Council of, 30

  "Auld Clootie," 70

  "Auld Hornie," 70

  Aurva, 53

  Avarice, 87, 91-95

  Averus (Horus), 50


  Baalim, 28

  Babylonian myth, 34

  Bacon, 142, 154

  Bacchus, 69, 73, 158

  Backbiter, 82-84

  Badger Grimbart, 189, 191-3

  Bagpipes, 103, 152, 155

  Ba-it, 178

  Baker, 105

  Bakewell, Derbyshire, 130-1

  Baldini and Boticelli, 84

  Baptism of John, the, 117-8

  Barton, Lincs., 174

  Basketsful of Children, 63

  Bayle, a kind of dance, 147

  Beakheads, 125-6

  Bear Bruno, 190-3

  Bear, the, 152-156

  Beard, the, 72

  Bedford, 175

  _Beehive of the Romishe Church_, 180

  Bellin the Ram, 192

  Berkshire, 18, 72, 125, 129, 218

  Bestiaries, the, 73

  Beverley, Percy Shrine at, 3;
    Carvings at, 13, 39, 40, 54, 57, 63, 87, 112, 120-3, 130, 133-6, 144,
        152, 154-5, 159, 173, 182, 195-6, 198-9, 201-2, 208-11

  Bhu, 42

  Bible (as Old and New Testaments), 176

  Biblia Pauperum, 113

  Birch, Dr., 158

  Birds, 4, 9, 22, 38, 39

  Bishop Foxes, 199, 203

  Bishops Stortford, 109

  Blashill, Mr. Thomas, 106

  Bo, Bo-tree. Bod, Bog, Boggart, Boivani, Bolay, Boo, Bouders, Boudons,
      Boroon, Bormania, Borr, Borvo, Bouljanus, Brog, Bug, Bugbear,
      Buggaboo, Buka, 66, 69

  Boar, 139-40, 152

  Boar's Head, 69, 139

  Bodleian Library, 16, 63

  Bolton, Bishop, 173

  Boston, Lincolnshire, 195, 196, 202, 208

  Boutell, Rev. C., 25

  Bow and arrow, 162-5

  Boy (Bog), 69

  Brahma, 178

  Brahminic Trinity, 178

  Breast, removal of, 165

  Bridge, Kent, 75

  Bridlington Priory Church, Yorks, 15, 210-1

  Bristol, 196, 208

  British Museum, 62

  Bruno the Bear, 190-3

  Buckle Mask, 125

  Bull, the, 41-2, 72-3, 85, 88-9, 91, 159

  Bur, 45

  Byzantine ideas, 127

  Byzantium, 35


  Caimis, 50

  _Calendarum Romanorum Magnum_, 141

  Calf, 73

  Cama, 50

  Cambridge, 10, 92, 133

  Cambridgeshire, 74

  Candlemas, 42, 140

  Canterbury, 139

  Canting heraldry, 173

  Caricature in part explained, 3

  Carpenter, Mr. Edward, 186

  Cartmel, 180, 196

  Carvers, 9-18

  Cat, the, 156, 189, 191, 209

  Cat and Fiddle, the, 39-43

  Cat-heads, 126

  Caxton, 170, 188

  Cedranus, 143-4

  Centaur, 161-6

  Cerealia, 48

  Ceres, 72, 153, 158

  Cestus, 165

  Chairs, 141

  Châlons, Council of, 143

  Chandra, Chandri, 43

  Cherubim, 73, 159, 161

  Chester, 60, 77, 103, 207, 210

  Chichester, 72, 75, 124, 141, 157, 181, 182, 203

  Chiron the Centaur, 162

  Chnoumis, 178

  Chonso, 177

  Christ, 30, 48, 60-62, 104, 114-20

  Christchurch (Hants), 21, 33, 172, 184, 202

  Christmas, 139-40, 144

  _Chronicles, the Book of_, 176

  Church symbolism, expediency, etc., 31

  Ciaran (St.), 162

  Clergy, the, 97, 111

  Cneph, 177

  Cock, the, 184, 197-8, 202-3

  Compound Forms, 37, 111, 157-168

  Coney, the, 193, 204-5

  Conscience, 170-1

  Constantinople, Council of, 30;
    Byzantium, 35

  Continuous group, 149

  Conventional form a matter of development, 3

  Corinthian Acanthus, 149-50, 214

  Corpus Christi Play, 142-3

  _Cosmographiæ Universalis_, 172

  Cotton MSS., 82, 147

  Councils, Arles, 29;
    Augsburgh (?), 30;
    Constantinople, 30;
    Frankfurt, 30, 99;
    Narbonne, 30;
    Nicea, 30;
    Orleans, 29;
    Tours, 30;
    Nice, 36;
    Milan, 36

  Coventry, 60, 142

  Cow, the, 41

  Creators, Mythological, 176-8

  Crescent, the, 41, 42

  Cripple, 145, 147

  Crocodile, 44-5

  Crórásura, 153

  Cross, the, 43

  Crow and his wife, the, 193, 204-5

  Croziers, 198, 202

  Crusaders, 47

  Culham, Berkshire, 125

  Cupid, 50, 51, 53-55


  Dance, 40, 43, 144, 147

  David, King, 62

  Decorated Carvings, 214-217

  Deer, 140

  Definitions of the Grotesque, 5-8

  De la Wich, Bishop, 181

  Delft, 188

  Derbyshire, 130-1

  Design, Continuity of Gothic, 4

  Detractors, 82-3

  Devil and the Vices, the, 78-98

  Devil, the, 47, 69, 70, 77, 103-5

  Devils, 63, 119

  Diana, 32, 40-43, 73

  Diapason, the, 41

  Dillin pig, the, 154

  Disc of the Sun, 167-8

  Distaff, 195

  Dog, 5, 19, 21, 40, 42, 142, 159-60, 189

  Domestic and Popular, the, 134-151

  Donnington, Thomas (1520), 174

  Dorchester Abbey, Oxon., 60, 64-5, 121-2, 133, 159-60

  Dragons, 26, 37, 44-57, 60, 64-66, 84, 127, 165, 177, 211

  Drake (dragon), 47

  Druidical Tau, 43-4

  Drum (Tabor), 97

  Durer, Albert, 61

  Durham, 155


  Eagle, the, 22, 37, 148, 158-9, 202

  Early English Carvings, 214

  Eastern ideas, 9-10, 34-5

  Eden, 73, 76

  Edgeware, 102

  Edward the Confessor, 9

  Edward III., 17

  Edward IV., 49

  Egypt, 34, 43-45

  Egyptians, little record of their humour, 6

  Egyptian myth, etc., 34, 41-5, 47-8, 50-6, 157-8, 177-8

  Egyptian Trinities, 177-8

  Eicton, 177

  Elephantine Trinity, 178

  Ely, 74, 80-1, 84, 105, 166, 195-6

  Equinoxes, the, 175

  Eschol, 171

  Esculapius, 178

  Etchingham, 196

  Evans, Mr. E. P., 35, 85

  Evil, Images of, 1, 26, 33

  Eve, 62, 74

  Ewelme, Oxon., Carvings at, 1, 65, 67
    (not Dorchester), 76, 127-8, 214

  Exeter, 4, 39, 165, 168, 181

  Ezekiel, 159


  Fable, 186

  Fafnir the Dragon, 46

  Fairford, 195

  Fairies, 66

  Falx, the, 57

  Farnsham, 65

  Fates, the, 178

  Fauns, 69

  Faversham, Kent, 180, 195, 210

  Feast of Fools, the, 143-7

  Feathered Angels, 75-7

  Fecundity, Goddess of, 66, 72

  Fiddle, 40, 41, 153

  Figurines as _lares_, 28

  Finedon, Northamptonshire, 125

  Fire, 178

  Fish, 182

  Flagellation, 134

  Flanders, a church workshop, 9, 15

  Flesh hook, 63, 87, 182

  Fleur-de-lys, 39, 179

  Flora, 158

  Fools, 130

  Fools, the Feast of, 143-7

  Foreign carvers, 9-18

  Fox, the, 58-9, 184-212

  Fox and Grapes, the, 210

  Fox and Stork, the, 210-1

  France, 48

  Frankfort, Council of, 30, 99

  Fredegarius, 197

  Freemasonry, 16, 17

  French work for Saxons, 9

  Frigga, 53

  Freyr, 153

  Furies, the, 178


  Gallows, the, 207-9

  Ganges, the, 172

  Gargonilles, 46, 129

  Gaul, 66

  Gaul, Bishops of, 30

  Gauri, 43

  Gautier de Coinsi, 36

  Gayton, Northants, 81, 86, 87

  Geese, Reynard's theft of, etc., 191, 195, 198, 203

  Gehul, 153

  George IV., 17

  German "teraphim," 28;
    paganism, 30

  Germany, Bishops of, 30

  Ghent, 188

  Gild, continuity the explanation of continuity of design, 4, 35, 196
      (_see_ Freemasonry)

  Gilds, 70

  Glasgow, 65, 66, 77

  Gloucester, 195

  Gluttony, 88

  Goat, the, 69, 71-3, 187

  Goethe, 189

  Golden Bristle, 153

  Gorgon, 127

  Gothic ornament, uses of, etc., 2, 3;
    some characteristics of, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 19-23, 24-26, 35-39,
        49, 54;
    not didactic, 24-26;
    situations of, 213, 218

  Gouda, 188

  Graces, the, 178

  Gravio, Count, 30

  Great Malvern, 172, 209

  Grecian Trinity, 177

  Greek wit, 6;
    star-worship, 28;
    myth, 34, 41, 177-8;
    art, 36-37;
    symbolism 74;
    dances, 147

  Grimace-makers, 130, 133

  Grimbart, the Badger, 189, 191-3

  Grimm, 186

  Gryphon, 125, 158

  Guildford, Surrey, 117-8

  Gullinbrusti, 153


  Hades, 42, 161

  Hænir, 177

  Hak, 178

  Hampshire, 21, 33, 172

  Hanging of the Cat, 209

  Hanging of the Fox, 207-8

  Hare, the, 106-7, 182, 189, 192, 194, 203

  Harleian MSS., 104

  Harmachis, 158

  Harp, the, 140-1, 153, 154, 155

  Harpy, the, 4, 111, 166, 181

  Hebrew Teraphim, 28

  Hecate, 41, 42

  Heliopolis, Trinity of, 178

  Hell, 48, 84, 104

  Hell's Mouth, 60-63, 103, 196

  Hen, the, 195, 203

  Henning the Cock, 190

  Henry VI., 16, 62

  Henry VII.'s Chapel, 10, 91, 95, 148, 156, 173

  Henry VIII., 16, 49

  Hera, 177

  Heraldry, canting, 173

  Heraldry and three-fold repetitions, 179

  Hercules, 148, 177

  Hereford, 195

  Herodotus, 28, 50

  Hertfordshire, 109

  Het-her, 167

  Hexagon, symbolic, 179

  Hezekiah, 74

  Hindoo myth, 28, 42-45, 50, 53, 153, 178

  Hinge the Cat, 191

  Hippocampus, Lincoln, 26

  Hippo-centaurs, 161

  Hobgoblins, 66

  Hogarth, 20, 21

  Holy Cross, Stratford-on-Avon, 60

  Holy Trinity, Hull, 139-40

  Holderness, 106

  Homer, 160

  Hone, 180

  Hopton, 174

  Horace, 157

  Horns, 70;
    Horn, 73

  Horse, the, 162, 139

  Horse-leech, 110-1

  Horus, 45, 48, 50-56, 57, 72, 177, 178

  Hull, 10, 100, 139-40

  Humour, of nations, 6, 7;
    defined, 20

  Hunting, 140

  Huntsman, 139

  Husterlo, 192

  Hypocrisy, 98


  Ibis, 167

  Iceland, 153

  Idun, 76

  Iffley, 49, 126, 162, 163

  Imagery in Architecture and Language compared, 1-3

  Impudence, 109

  Indecency in church, 143-7, 150-1

  India, 172

  Indian mask, 123-4

  Indian mythology, East, 66, 69, 178

  Indian Trinity, American, 177

  Indra, 178

  Irenæus, 73

  Irreverence in art explained in part, 8

  _Isaiah_, 74

  _Isengrinus_, 187

  Isis, 41, 42, 45, 50, 177

  Islip, Bishop, 173

  Italian workers in England, 9, 10, 13

  Italy, 41

  Italy, Bishops of, 30


  Janus, 180

  Japanese (crocodile), 45

  Jesus College, Cambridge, 92

  Joke, the, 6

  Jonah, 112-3, 197

  Jörmungard, 45

  Jove (Jupiter), 11

  July, 183

  Juno, 177

  Jupiter, 21, 57, 148, 158, 177, 178, 181

  Jurassic reptiles, 145


  Keltic dragons, 49

  Kent, 75, 180, 182

  Khum, 178

  King Arthur, 69

  King Edward the Confessor, 9

  King Edward III., 17

  King Edward IV., 49

  King George IV., 17

  King Henry VI., 16, 62

  King Henry VII., 147

  King Henry VII. Chapel, 10, 173

  King Henry VIII., 16, 49

  King's College, Cambridge, 10, 133


  Lampe the Hare, 192, 194

  Lares, 43

  Laughter of nations, 6-7;
    defined, 20

  Lectern, 202

  Leicester, 196

  Leland, John, 16

  Lemon, 139-40

  Leo, 158

  Leopard, The, 189

  Lincoln Cathedral, 3, 9, 38, 51, 54, 63, 128, 133

  Lincolnshire, 11, 174

  Lind-drake, 47

  Linden worm, 47

  Linden tree, 47

  Line of Beauty, 20

  Lion, 5, 158, 183, 187, 189-90, 210-1, 215

  Lioness, The, 193

  Little-trust, Lettice, 101

  Lodur, 177

  Loki, 76, 77

  Love, 53

  Lubeck, 188

  Lucifer, 53, 76

  Ludlow, 99, 102, 103

  Luna, 41, 43

  Lunar calculations of Mosaic system, 176

  Lunus, 43

  Lydda, 47

  Lynn, 11, 174


  Macrobius, 32

  Magdalen College, Oxford, 195

  Magi, Adoration of the, 113-5

  Maidstone, 182

  Maimonides, the Rabbi, 27

  Malepart, 190, 193

  Malvern, Great, 172, 209

  Manchester, 54, 55, 203-4, 195, 196

  Mandragora images, 28

  Mann, Mr. Robert, 66

  Mant, 177

  Mare and foal, the story of, 193

  Mars, 21

  Marks, sculptors', ignored; an example is on p. 103

  Martinmas, 139, 154

  Martin the Ape, 192-3

  Mary, the Virgin, 34, 42, 82, 83

  Masks and Faces, 121-133

  Meaux Abbey, Yorkshire, 10

  Memphis, Trinity of, 178

  Mendes, 72

  Mentu, 177

  Merchant mark, 174

  Mercury, 21, 49, 78, 153, 158, 167

  Merenphtah, 178

  Mermaid, 160

  Messon, 177

  Mexican myth, 157

  Mice, 40, 43, 209

  Michael Angelo, 10, 13

  Midsummer Watch, 77

  Milan, Council of, 36

  Minerva, 21, 74, 177

  Miracle Plays, 70

  _Mirror of Human Salvation, the_, 113

  Misericordes, 24-5, 181, 215, 217

  Mithras, 176

  Monstrosity, 147

  Montflaucon, 197

  Moon worship, 32, 40, 43

  Morris Dance, 144, 147

  Mosaic system, 31;
    Ark, 159, 175;
    not the original of pagan myth, 175-6

  Moses, 62, 74, 175

  Mouth of Hell, 60, 63

  Mowers, 182

  Mumming, 70, 168

  Music, 140, 152

  Monograms, 12

  Mystery Plays, 32, 48, 70, 82, 103, 112, 142-3

  Mythic origin of Church carvings, 34-59


  Nachasch, 73

  Nantwich, Cheshire, 196, 204-5, 208

  Narbonne, the Council of, 30

  Nebhetp, 178

  Nefer-Atum, 178

  Neptune, 21, 178

  Nerites, 50

  Nessus the Centaur, 162

  New College, Oxford, 58-9, 81, 84-5, 98, 106, 149

  Nice, 36

  Nicea, the Council of, 30

  _Nicodemus, the Gospel of_, 60

  Nile, the River, 45, 71, 158

  Nilus, 45, 158;
    St. Nilus, _see_ Saints

  Nobodies, 171

  Non-descripts, 169-172

  Norfolk, 48, 75, 195

  Norman carvings, 49, 125, 127, 129, 163, 211, 213;
    fonts 15

  North Stoke, 119

  Northamptonshire, 14, 22, 81, 84, 86-7, 101, 125

  Norwich, 48, 75, 195

  Notch-heads, 124-5

  Nouvel the Lion, 189

  _Numbers, the Book of_, 176

  Nuns, 106-7

  Nursery Rhymes, 39


  Oak, the, 148, 181

  Odin, 45, 53, 69, 177

  Opas, 177

  Orleans, the Council of, 143

  Ornament, the use of Gothic, 2

  Oromasdes, 176

  Orus (_see_ Horus), 50, 72

  Osiris, 41, 45, 50, 57, 158, 177

  Otkon, 177

  Ox, 71, 73, 160

  Oxford, 58, 59, 71, 76, 81, 84, 85, 97, 104-6, 149, 151, 195

  Oxfordshire, 49, 60, 64-5, 67, 105, 121-2, 133, 159


  Paganism, ingrained among nations, 27

  Pallas, 177

  Palmer Fox, 58

  Pan, 21, 72-3, 105

  Pantheism, 32

  Panther, the, 159

  Paris, Paulin, 197

  Parody, a characteristic of Greek wit, 7

  Pátála, 42

  Pastoral staves, 49

  Pausanius, 44

  Pegasus, 162

  Pepin, 30

  Percy Shrine, 3

  Perpendicular Ornament, 217

  Persephone, 41

  Perseus, 46, 57

  Persian Trinity, 176

  Peterborough, 195

  Philæan Trinity, 176

  _Philippians, the Epistle to the_, 196

  Phipson, Miss, 14, 109, and preface

  Phyrric Dance, the, 147

  _Picture Bible, the_, 113, 197

  Pig and Whistle, 155, 156

  Pig, and other Animal Musicians, the, 110, 152-6

  Piggy-widdy, 154

  _Pilgremage of the Sowle, the_, 170

  Pipes, Double, 155

  Planet symbols, 28

  Plato, 28

  Plutarch, 41

  Pluteresques, 218

  Pluto, 42, 177-8

  _Poor Man's Bible, the_, 113, 197

  Poppy, Assyrian, 182

  Pottery, 35

  Preaching Fox, the, 184, 196-204

  Priapus, 73

  Prideaux, Bishop, 30

  Priest sleeping, 106, 110-1

  Prosperine, 32, 41-2, 177

  Protevan, 82

  Psyche, 176

  Pta, 177-8

  Pulpits, 184, 197-8, 201

  Puránas, 43

  Python, the, 46


  Ra, 168, 177

  Rabbi Maimonides, 27

  Ráhu, 44

  Ram, the, 72, 187, 192

  Ram Bellin, 192-3

  Ram's Head, 19

  Ram, the Hindoo deity, 28

  Rebuses, 12, 173-4

  Recording Imps, 78-9, 81, 84-5, 103

  Red Sea, the, 50

  _Reinche Bos_, 188

  _Renart le Contrefet_, 188

  _Reynard the Fox_, 184

  _Reynard the Fox, the most delectable history of_, 188

  Ripon, 5, 112-3, 124, 136-7, 155, 171, 195-8, 211

  Rochester, 127

  Rogation, 48

  _Roman de Renart_, 188

  Roman Trinity, 177

  Roman, Wit bitter and low, 6-7;
    myth, 42-3

  Roman work for Saxons, 9

  Roscommon, the Poet, 157

  Roslyn Chapel, 128-9

  Rostock, 188

  Rothwell, Northants, 84


  Sabean Idolatry, 28

  Sackville the Poet, 63

  Sacred Marks, 103 (block), 179

  Sæhrimnir, 153

  Sagittarius, 162-5

  Saints--Adrian, 99
    Anthony, 154
    Augustine, 31
    Bartholomew's, Smithfield, 173
    Bernard of Clairvaux, 23, 27, 36-7
    Britius, 81
    Ciaran, 162
    Cross, Hospital of, Winchester, 100
    George, 47-8, 57
    George's Chapel, Windsor, 10, 167, 195-6, 203
    Gertrude, 43
    Helen's, Abingdon, 218
    John, 49, 118
    Katherine's, Regent's Park, 78, 81, 83, 86, 169
    Keyne, 46
    Lucy, 134-5
    Luke, 73
    Martha, 46
    Michael, 47, 76
    Martin's, Leicester, 196
    Martin, 81
    Mary's, Beverley, 123 (_see_ Beverley)
    Mary's, Faversham, 180
    Mary's Minster, Thanet, 97, 122-3, 130-1, 195
    Nessan, 162
    Nicholas's, Lynn, 11-2, 174
    Nicholas, 179
    Nilus, 36
    Paul's, Bedford, 175
    Paul's, London, 32, 109
    Peter's-in-the-East, Oxford, 126
    Romain, 46


  Salus, 178

  Sambar, 50

  Samson, 198

  Sani, 53

  Satan, 48, 62, 70, 104-6, 170

  Satanic Representations, 64-77, 78-105

  Sathanus, 170

  Satire, 185

  Satires without Satan, 106-11

  Satyrs, 69

  Saturn, 21, 57

  Saturnalia, 143

  Saxon work, 9

  Scandinavian mythology, 45, 76, 153, 157;
    Trinity, 177

  Scarabæus, 178

  Scriptural Illustrations, 112-120

  Scylla, 160

  Scythes, 182

  Sea-horse (hippocampus), 26

  Seals, 8, and end of Index

  September, 140, 154

  Seraphim, 74

  Serapis, 42

  Serpent, the, 44-5, 60-1, 73-5, 77

  Sex of the Moon, 43

  Sheep, 72, 142

  Shell, 50-1, 54-5, 57-9, 159

  Shell Child, the, 50-9, 159

  Shepherd, 72, 142

  Sherborne, 134-5, 208

  Shiva, 66

  Sigurd, 46

  Sin series of carvings, 78-111

  Sirius, 42

  Sismondi, 31

  Sistrum, 41, 43

  Situations of Church Grotesques, 213-8

  Siva, 178

  Slanderers, 82

  Sledges, 63

  Smu, 50

  Snail, 57-8

  Solomon, King, 62

  Sources of material for Gothic grotesques, General, 4

  Southleigh, 63

  _Speculum Humanæ Salvationis_, 113

  Sperke, John (1520), 174

  Spinx, the, 158-9

  Springs, 66

  SS., the letter, and Collar of, 57

  Stanford, Berkshire, 18

  Star Worship, 27-8

  Stars and Stripes, 179

  Statute of Labourers, 17

  Stoeffler, 141

  Stowlangcroft, 196

  Stratford-on-Avon, 60, 129

  Suffolk, Duchess of (ob. 1475), 76

  Sun, 167

  Sun Feast, 153

  Sun Worship, 32, 37, 42, 44-59, 71, 153, 158, 162, 175, 210-1

  Superstition, Horn, 73

  Supreme Intellect, the, 74

  Surya, 53, 178

  Sutton Courtney, 128-9

  _Sutton-in-Holderness_, 106

  Swan, 167

  Swar, 42

  Swathing of Infants, 114

  Swarhánu, 53

  Sweden, 153

  Swine, Yorkshire, 106-7, 109, 129-30

  Symbolism and Fable, 186

  Symbols of worship a general source of Gothic ornament, 4, 27

  Syderesys, 170

  Syria, 47


  Tabor (drum), 97

  Tarasque, 46

  Tau Cross, the, 34, 43-4

  Taurus, 73

  Telephorus, 178

  Teraphim, 28

  Teutonic appreciation of humour, 7

  Thanet, Isle of, 97, 122, 130-1, 195

  Theban Trinity, 177

  Theophylact, 143

  Thirlwall, 33

  Thoth, 78, 167

  Three, the number, 162 (_see_ Trinities)

  Three branched rod, 103 (block), 162, 181-2

  Time, Father, 57

  Titian, 42

  Topsey-turveyism, 149

  Torregiano, 10

  Tree of Knowledge, the, 74

  Trefoil, the, 162, 178-9

  _Trial of Mary and Joseph_, 82

  Trigla, 180

  Trinities, 168, 175-183

  Tufton Street Architectural Museum, 12

  Tum, the Setting Sun, 178

  Typhon, 44-57, 64-5


  Unseen Witness, the, 79, 85, 86, 87


  Vali, 114

  Vanity, 97

  Vedie Trinity, 178

  Venus, 21, 53, 111, 148

  Veximiel, 62

  Virgil, the, 160-1

  Virgin Mary, the, 30, 42, 82-3

  Virgo, 158

  Vishnu, 53, 153, 178

  Vulcan, 148, 177


  Wall paintings compared with carvings, 114-117, 119-20

  Wake Knot, 207-8

  Wellingborough, 14, 15, 22, 34, 101, 195, 215

  Wells, 65, 77, 150

  Westminster Abbey, 9, 10, 91-95, 97, 109-110, 123-4, 156, 173

  Wheelbarrows, 135-7, 196

  Whistling Maid, the, 104-5

  Whistling while drawing ale, 105

  White, Wm. (1520), 173-4

  Wich, Bishop de la, 124, 181

  Winchester, 64, 100, 111, 145, 154, 166, 195

  Windsor, 10, 167, 195, 203, 208

  Winking Nun, the, 106-7

  Wolf, the, 187, 189, 192;
    story of the wolf's head, 187

  Wolfius, 196

  Worcester, 113-5, 142, 160, 161, 182-3, 203

  Worm of conscience, the, 170

  Wright, Thomas, 197

  Wyvern, the, 47


  York, 63, 65, 77, 129-30, 140, 148

  Yorkshire, 10, 63, 65, 77, 106-7, 109, 127 (_see_ Beverley)

  Yule, 153


  Zeus, 177

  Zither, 166

  Zodiac, 45, 53




FOOTNOTES:

[1] Early in the thirteenth century unruly converts of the Abbey of Meaux,
Yorkshire, were, to humble their pride, made stonemasons, etc.

[2] Of Christ, the Virgin, and saints only. It is here quoted as evidence
of a tendency. It is plain that the council protected itself, for the
following distich is attributed to it, which sums up the original intent
of all images--

  "Id Deus est, quod Imago docet, sed non deus ipse;
  Hanc Videas, sed mente colas; quod cemis in ipse."

which Prideaux, Bishop of Worcester, translates (1681):

  "A God the Image represents,
    But is no God in kind;
  That's the eye's object, what it shews
    The object of the mind."

[3] Yet the Hindoo signification of Typhon is "the power of destruction by
heat." In this we have another piece of evidence that both the good and
the bad of the fable are referrable to the sun as his varying attributes,
and probably describe his particular effects at various portions of the
zodiacal year. The true, or rather the close, meaning of the various
accounts is obscured and confused; firstly, by imperfect knowledge as to
the geographical situations where the idea of the zodiac was conceived and
developed; secondly, by the gradual precession of the Equinoxes during the
ages which have elapsed since such conception.

[4] Mr. Robert Mann.

[5] "Sutton-in-Holderness."

[6] Roscommon.

[7] Hone.

[8] The Church Treasury, by William Andrews, 1898, p. 193.




Transcriber's Notes:

Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.

The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these
letters have been replaced with transliterations.

The original text contains a hieroglyph. This is noted in this text as
[symbol].