Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 4.djvu/315

 12 S. IV. Nov., 1918.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

309

their quarry. But probably the main idea of the demon's horn is that it is a summons to judgment or to the punishment which fol- lows condemnation. The use of the horn as a summons (not necessarily a disagreeable one) was formerly very prevalent. At Canterbury, for instance, it was employed to convene the burgmote court (see Archceo- logia, iii. 11). To this day it may be heard in the Middle Temple as the call to dinner in the Hall.

5. This aspect of the instrument's purpose seems to extend to the angel's tmmpet as well as to the demon's horn :

Tuba, mirum spargens sonum Per sepulchra regionum, Coget omnes ante thronum. ' Dies Irae,' Thomas of Celano (1208-75).

6. In Dante's ' Inferno,' however, the horn is introduced in rather a different way. The ninth and last circle can be reached only by following through the gloom the sound of a tremendous horn, which would appear to be blown by that " robustus venator coram Domino," Nimrod :

So terrible a blast

Orlando blew not, when that dismal rout O'erthrew the host of Charlemain, and quench'd His saintly warfare.

And in the centre of the fourth and final round of the circle there is Satan himself, rising mid-breast from the ice, a shaggy monster, not three -headed like Cerberus, but with three faces to his single head : At every mouth his teeth a sinner champ 'd, Bruised as with ponderous engine : so that three Were in this guise tormented.

Such is the horrible punishment conceived for the traitors Judas Iscariot and Brutus and Cassius.

7. Painters, such as Giotto and Orcagna, have been able to depict so fearful a scene, with the variations that their own fancy suggested, in a very elaborate fashion. But a worker in glass, like Thomas of Oxford, had to be content with a simpler rendering of the theme. He gave us in his " Jesse Window " at Winchester, if Betton and Evans's copy of it can be trusted, a " mon- strous head ' which has small blood-rod eyes and a frightful shaggy pile of blue. Its fiery jaws are distended " without measure," mullion

he raises an inverted ladle, to pour boiling liquid on to the heads of Brutus and Cassius^ Higher up, a third demon is-' bringing in another victim.

8. The " monstrous mouth " is, in its origin, none other than Satan's, as con- ceived from various passages of Scripture^ for example, the Apocalypse, xii. 9 and xx. 2, where he is called TOV SpaKovra, TOV o(j)iv TOV dpxaiov, and Isaiah, v. 14 :

" Propterea dilatavit infernus animam 8uam et aperuit os suum absque ullo termino ; et descendent fortes ejus, et populus ejus, et sub- limes gloriosique ejus, ad eum."

Nevertheless, the head having been con- verted into his habitat, Satan could be located by a mediaeval artist within its jaws. For another example of this, see No. viii. of a series of reproductions pub- lished by the British Museum, this one- being from a " Psalter of St. Swithun's Priory, Winchester English : XII. Cent^ (Cotton MS. Nero C. iv. f. 39)." There,, within a truly monstrous mouth, along with a multitude of demons and their victims, a much bigger fiend appears, his head bristling with horns. He is evidently Satan regulating the tortures.

9. In Thomas's window most of the souls,, if not all, whether saved or lost, are, I believe, of particular personages whom he en- deavoured to portray. For instance, one of the saved is a bishop, and he is un- doubtedly William of Wykeham, who also appears twice in the lowest panes of the window Thomas knew how to gratify his patron. As MB. LE COTJTEUR is making a study of the window, I hope he will be able to identify some of the other souls, including the Pope, the Emperor, and the King. There is also, but on the other side, an Oriental potentate, with a remarkable head-dress,.

who may be Mohammed.

H. C.

thanks partly to an intervening and within the jaws one sees three human beings and also Satan for the sinister flaming face must be Satan's. The red-headed, horn-blowing demon which sits (as MR. LE COUTEUR mentioned) on the dragon's snout is matched by a green- headed one above the beast's lower jaw

Does not the name " Hornie," popularly applied to the devil by the Scotch, refer to* this tradition or legend ?

J. FOSTER PALMER.

3 Royal Avenue, S.W.3.

THE DUTCH IN THE THAMES (12 S. iii. 4"/2 ; iv. Ill, 227). As the origin of the ancient rights or privileges of Dutch fishermen in the Port of London below Bridge has been recently discussed in ' N. & Q.' it may be well to record a pleasing incident of the good feeling which exists between the sailors of the two countries.

The British Admiralty have jiist au~ thorized the publication of Dutch honours-