Fig. 63. Capitals, Seaford church, Sussex, (c. A.D. 1190.) A, from the North arcade, bears the ordinary stiff-leaved foliage of the period. B, from the South arcade, has elaborate carvings representing the Crucifixion, the Stoning of Stephen, and the Baptism of Christ.
But if the arrangement of the cloisters be adjudged a mere matter of economy and convenience, there exist well-rooted superstitions which cannot be so explained. “The front of everything to the South,” is an old Irish maxim, and though, as Mr W. G. Wood-Martin suggests, the saying may have reference to the ceremony of making the deiseal, or right-hand circle, yet the words are pregnant of folk-custom. Formerly the Irish ploughman turned the head of his horses towards the South before yoking or unyoking. Taking an English example, we find that in Suffolk, wherever the churches possessed both a
Fig. 64. Quatrefoil low side window, on the South side of the chancel wall, Tatsfield church, Surrey. c. A.D. 1300. A feature most frequently found on the South side of churches.
North and a South entrance, it was the practice to carry the coffin into the building by the South door, allow it to rest at the West end of the aisle, and then take it out by the North door[846]. In Lincolnshire, the North door was entirely reserved for funerals, the South and West doors being used for weddings and christenings[847]. At baptisms, again, there was a prevalent belief that the Holy Spirit entered the church by the South door, while the devil departed through the opening opposite—the Devil’s Door ([Fig. 65]). Lastly, to abbreviate our list of superstitions, Pennant may be cited, to the effect that in North Wales the mourners used to bring the corpse into the churchyard by means of the South gate only[848]. With this we may compare the Welsh superstition that a healing spring should have an outlet towards the South, and should be visited at midsummer. Girls who wished to know their lovers’ intentions were accustomed to spread a pocket-handkerchief over the water of the well. If the waters pushed the handkerchief towards the South, so Sir John Rhŷs informs us, the lovers were honest and honourable; if the article shifted Northwards, the omen was bad. These marked preferences for the South prove that the motive involved was sentimental as well as physical.
Fig. 65. Devil’s Door (Saxon), Worth church, Sussex. According to legend, the exorcized spirit passed through this door at the time of the baptismal renunciation.
We have referred to the superstitions connected with the East and the South, and we now follow the sun to the region where he descends into the dark underworld. Professor Tylor neatly expresses the symbolism of these three positions: “Man’s life in dawning beauty, in midday glory, in evening death[849].” The West, then, represents the kingdom of the dead, and, by transfer of ideas, the territory of alien peoples. A natural metaphor makes it the abode of shadow, of sleep, of ignorance of the Divine. In sharp contrast to these ideas is the teaching of certain races that the West is the Garden-land, the Earthly Paradise, “the new heaven and the new earth[850].” Such notions, so directly contradictory to the first-mentioned, seem to indicate worship paid to the setting sun (cf. [p. 217], supra).