GROTESQUE OF HORUS IN THE SHELL.
THE PALMER FOX EXHIBITING HOLY WATER.
NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD.
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.
HELL’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 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.
