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 mediaeval 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 mediaeval times, and it was a function of mediaeval 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 mediaeval 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, Somaraja, 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 mediaeval 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 Saehrimnir,
which eaten up, was every morning found whole again. This seems somewhat
akin to the Hindoo story of Crorasura, 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 mediaeval 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 mediaeval 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 mediaeval
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
mediaeval 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 _Cosmographiae
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.