ANIMAL CARVINGS IN BRITISH CHURCHES By M. D. Anderson
Everyone interested in mediaeval life, mediaeval sculpture and his own parish church should read Miss M. D. Ander- son's new book, Animal Carvings in British Churches (Cambridge University Press, 5s.). She concerns herself not with the technique of the carvings, or their excellence as sculp- ture, but with their meaning. Grotesques may come simply from a carver's fancy (though there may be, in a general sense, more meaning in mediaeval grotesques than Miss Anderson allows), but animals, real or legendary, were carved for a purpose. Miss Anderson has examined the Bestiary (and its derivatives), the mediaeval animal romances, &c., and has collected an abundance of curious and attractive and rele- vant information. Thus the tail disappearing into the croco- dile's mouth on the gargoyles in the fantastic little Romanesque church at Kiloeck in Herefordshire, is the Tail of a Hydrus, the small serpent which was deemed to cove: itself in mud and slip into the mouth of a slumbering crocodile, the sides of which it then burst ; and the Hydrus symbolised Christ, who put on human shape and descended into Hell. The camel in wood kneeling to take its load is Christ taking upon Him the sins of the world ; and so on. Sermons will no doubt be preached—or certainly should be preached—from this book, which explains so very many things from the Cock (vigilance, and liberality because he calls his hens to share the food he has found) to the Wodewose, the wild man of the woods.
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