Fig. 88. Acoustic jars.
A. Skittle-shaped specimen from Ashburton church, Devon. The jar is grey, and highly burnt. a, b, are yellow bands, on which are incised chevrons.
B. Small jar (6´´ × 4½´´) from Luppitt, Devonshire. It has some of the characteristics of Celtic pottery, but probably belongs to the fifteenth century.
Jour. Archaeol. Assoc. XXXVIII. p. 220.
ox, is slain and buried under the foundations of the pagan temple. By and by, the skull, representing the most mysterious and sacred part of the animal, is considered to be sufficient by itself. Instead of being uniformly hidden under the building, it is built into the wall or placed in a specially constructed recess. The depositories are not confined to one part of the building. At a later date, a purely practical interpretation is assigned to the skulls. Secular architects, or architects not versed in the mystic lore of their heathen fathers, become prone to substitute an urn or a jar for the skull. The early Christians, adapting, it may be, the old pagan site, and actuated either by necessity or diplomacy, at times prudently permit the old rite and custom. The two practices run side by side, but the motive is weak, and ultimately becomes debatable. Then springs up the explanation that skulls and jars alike are used to produce sonorous beauty, and on this our modern theory is based. Nevertheless, these perversions of the original purpose have not been everywhere co-eval; we have seen, for example, that the architects of the Coliseum had reached the structural stage of the idea, and evidently turned the principle to good account.
Folk-memory weakens according to the degree of civilization and in response to outside influences. As, on the one hand, the imperfectly hollow horse skull is supplanted by jars, vases, and urns; so, on the other, an ox-skull becomes a mere ornament on the frieze of a Roman Doric building. Again, certain builders, apparently misled by the earthenware vessels, and connecting them with traditions or actual experiences of urn-burial, employ a modification of such vessels as pure ornament. The story has several parts. The mingling of the symbolic and the utilitarian idea is difficult to unravel, hence there is room for much speculation, and need for some suspension of final judgement.
CHAPTER XI
“THE LABOUR’D OX”
“Two such I saw, what time the labour’d ox
In his loose traces from the furrow came,
And the swink’t hedger at his supper sate.”
Comus, ll. 291-3.