Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/221

 12 S. III. MARCH 17, 1917.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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properties of asbestos. Thus it symbolizes authority to the Earls of Angus) is certainly the Christian who passes unscathed through of a religious kind, signifying spiritual ardour, the fires of passion. Biblical warrant is or faith overcoming trials. Francis I. found in the story of the Three Children, and inherited the badge of the salamander from the words of Isaiah and St. Paul ; and the j his father, the Comte d'Angouleme, and

there are many fine examples of it, in carved stone, wood, and needlework, in his castles at Blois and elsewhere. The treatment of the salamander's tail, wriggling amid the flames, in some of these representations, is especially remarkable for what Mr. Ruskin would have called its " loving reverence for

Physio logus ' is thus the superposition of Scripture on Pliny, who says : ' The sala- mander is a sort of lizard which seeks the hottest fire to breed in, but quenches it with the extreme frigidity of its body."

Salamanders are occasionally found carved on early fonts, as on that of Salehurst, Sussex. .As the salamander was fabled to live in fire, it was taken as an emblem of baptism " with the Holy Ghost and with fire. Mr. Bond says in his book on ' Fonts ' :

"The salamander is emblematic of the virtue of the righteous man, which enables him to pass through the fires of temptation unhurt. There actually does exist a small frog-like reptile with rows of tubercles on its sides, which secretes a milky poisonous fluid sufficient to extinguish a live coal, and slightly to retard the action of fire. Applying their Bibles to the elucidalion of zoology, they arrived at the symbolism."

A. G. KEALY, Chaplain, R.X. (retired)

Bedford.

The belief was current in the Middle Ages that the salamander had the faculty oi living in fire, and it was the symbol of great endurance.

John, King of Aragon, 1458, took salamander in the fire as his device, with Durabo ("I will endure ") for his motto ; and Francis I. had the same device, with the motto Nutrisco et extinguo ("I nourish and -extinguish "), alluding to the belief that the salamander had, besides the faculty of living in the fire, the power of extinguishing it. This device appears on all the palaces of Francis I. At Chambord there are nearly four thousand examples, and at Fontaine- bleau and the chateaux of the Loire it is everywhere to be seen.

The salamander is also supposed to symbolize baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire. The Greeks carried their infants round the fire in order to dedicate them to their gods, after holding a festival called the "" Amphidromia," and therefore it appears on many fonts. The finest examples in England are those on the fonts at Youlgrave and Norton in Derbyshire.

CONSTANCE RUSSELL. Swallowfield Park, Reading.

Heraldic devices have, as often as not, no discoverable meaning whatever. However, the ancient symbolism of the salamander (which is very rare in British heraldry, though Nisbet assigns it on rather dubious

truth."

D. OSWALD HUNTER-BLAIR, O.S.B.

Fort Augustus.

It became the emblem of all things that had to do with fire a soldier exposed to the fire of battle, a fire-eating juggler, and a poker. Falstaff says he has maintained Bardolph's salamander (i.e., his red face) " with fire anv time this two-and-thirty years " ( 1 Hen. IV.,' III. iii. 52-5).

The salamander badge of Francis I. which may be seen upon his buildings in stone and wood, and upon his coins was also borne by his father, Charles, Comte d'Angouleme. It bore the motto Nutrisco et extinguo ("I nourish and extinguish "), for it was believed that the animal could live in fire, which it even extinguished by its coldness. Among other forms of this legend is that of the cavern of everlasting flames where sellat, or satin, was made by the salamanders. Frank Buckland considered it possible that the power possessed by these reptiles of exuding a fluid has given rise to the fable of their incombustibility.

A. R. BAYLEY.

In ' The Symbolisms of Heraldry ' (1898) Mr. W. Cecil Wade does not suggest a significance for this emblem, only saying that "it is very rarely borne in British heraldry," and giving two instances. A third is mentioned in Elvin's ' Synopsis of Heraldry ' (1866), where the salamander is

figured in Plate X. W. B. H.

FROM LIVERPOOL TO WORCESTER A CEN- TURY AND A HALF AGO (12 S. iii. 21, 63, 89, 106, 133, 178). There should surely be no lesitation in identifying the " new church " at Manchester, " built in the Gothic taste," as St. John's, Byrom Street, off Deansgate. As MR. BOWES says, the church was founded Edward Byrom, and consecrated in 1769. It would, therefore, rightly be de- scribed as "new" in 1771, if that is the date of the journal. G. H. R. says " there is (and was) very little suggestion of ' Gothic