SEA-HORSE DRAGONZED,LINCOLN,14th cent.
Weat 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 serveimages 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 (fromraunento 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 Θεὸς god, from Θεῖν 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 lessclose 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 whoreturned 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 (15⁄22of 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 wasmaking 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 dedicationor 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.
AN IMP ON CUSHIONS, CHRISTCHURCH, HANTS.,early 16th cent.
TTAU CROSS,WELLINGBOROUGH.he 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 furnacein 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 earlyChristians, 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 thereligion 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 ina 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.
THE ALTAR OF LIGHT AND THE BIRDS OF DARKNESS, LINCOLN.
SYMBOLS OF DARKNESS, LINCOLN.
At Exeter, an ingenious grotesque composition of two duck-footed harpies, one on either side of afleur-de-lis, is evidently from the same source. Examples of this could be multiplied very readily.
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 theaptitude 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.
THE WEEKS DANCING TO THE MUSIC OF THE MONTH,BEVERLEY MINSTER.
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. Onthe 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 beoverlooked. It is found on the capitals of pillars at Canterbury and other places; the example given in the initial onpage 34is 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 ChineseTai-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 acrocodile, 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 rootHurlight, connected with the SanscritUshto 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, therainy 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 SunversusDarkness, or the SpringversusWinter 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 fromtarir, to drain. St. Keyne slew the Cornish Dragon, and, to be brief, at least twelve other worthies slew dragons, and doubtless for their respectivedistricts 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 inantiquity, 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.
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 behindhim 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 wordsancha, a sea-shell, used in this connection, is fromsuca, 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.
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 andprecise. 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.
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 ⎛, the Greek ζ, 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.
THE CHILD AND DRAGON, MANCHESTER.
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 asickle of semi-circular blade. In many parts of England, the sickle is spoken of simply as “a hook.”
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.
GROTESQUE OF HORUS IN THE SHELL.THE PALMER FOX EXHIBITING HOLY WATER.NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD.
One other carving which seems to point to the foregoingis 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.
HHELL’S MOUTH,HOLY CROSS,STRATFORD-ON-AVON.ell’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 ofA.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 groundimproves 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.
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 handhe 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 (circa1362), 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 hereBody and soul beth myne both good and illeFor he hyms-self hit seide that Syre is of Helle,That Adam and Eve and al hus issueSholden deye with deol [should die with grief] and here dwell evereYf 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 SalamonAnd 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 andshut 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.
QWINCHESTER COLLEGE,14th century.uaint 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.