Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/399

 Correspondence. 359

the Middle Ages it was the towers of God's house that were especially exposed to the attacks of lightning and tempest, which must therefore be ascribed to his enemies. Doubtless this is the reason why in the ancient plan (ninth century) for the monastery of St. Gall, the two round towers have in summitate altars of St. Michael and St. Gabriel respectively. Those leaders of the heavenly host, it was thought, would defend the church against the assaults of Satan. And in the Norman drawing of Canter- bury Cathedral (twelfth century) the lantern tower is shown sur- mounted by a four-winged creature, which procured for it the name of the " Angel Steeple," still borne by the magnificent structure which replaced it at the close of the fifteenth century. The two St. Michael's Mounts, in Cornwall and in Normandy, and Glas- tonbury Tor, crowned by the tower of St. Michael's Church, are instances of isolated heights placed under the protection of the archangel. I do not know whether Michaelhowe, near Fountains Abbey, is to be classed in the same category. Upon the whole subject Mr. Elworthy's appendix on Gurgoyles {The Evil Eye, p. 229) may be consulted with great advantage. "The same idea which to-day leads to the mounting of a piece of wolf or badger skin upon a horse's bridle to scare the evil glance of the versipelle induced our forefathers to carve in stone, and so to perpetuate their fantastic conceptions of the wicked spirits they wished to scare away from their sacred buildings." He further quotes Pennell on The Devils of Notre Dame, " like an actual body of fiendish visitors caught and turned into stone as they grinned over the city."

But what of the quaint little fellow within the Church of Lincoln, in the very presbytery and in the near neighbourhood of the High Altar and the Shrine of St. Hugh? Surely he is not a fiend? I would rather consider him as an elf or Puck, having regard to his diminutive size and his position, lurking at the apex of the richly-foliaged corbel. At the worst he is such as that innocent little devil who was sitting on a lettuce-leaf, doing no harm, when he was incontinently swallowed by a greedy nun, who ate leaf and all without so much as making the sign of the cross. It should, however, be observed that " Puck, or pouke, is an old word for devil " {Midsummer Night's Dream, ed. Wright, p. 16). Burton {Anat. Mel.), on Terrestrial Devils, writes, " Some put our fairies {Elvas Olaus vocat, fib. 3)