a King marries a chamber-maid by mistake for her mistress, a princess, who is obliged to keep geese. The princess’s horse is killed, and its head set up over the city gate. When the princess drives her geese out of the town she addresses the head, and the head answers and counsels her. So in Norse mythology Odin had a human head embalmed, and had recourse to it for advice when in any doubt. In the tale of the Greek King and Douban, the Physician, in the Arabian Nights’ Tales, the physician’s head, when he is decapitated, is set on a vase, where it rebukes the King. Friar Bacon’s brazen head whereby he conjured is a reminiscence of these oracular heads.
In one of the Icelandic Sagas, the gable ends whistle in the wind, and give oracles according to the tone or manner in which they pipe.
The busts that occupy niches in Italian buildings are far-off remembrances of the real human heads which adorned the fronts of the wigwams of our savage ancestors. So, also, as already said, are the head corbels of Norman buildings.
On old Devonshire houses, the first ridge-tile on the main gable was very commonly moulded to represent a horse and his rider. The popular explanation is that these tiles were put up over the houses where Charles I. slept; but this is a mistake; they are found where Charles I. never was.
At one time they were pretty common. Now some remain, but only a few, at Plymouth, Exeter, Totnes, Tavistock, and at East Looe, and Padstow, in Cornwall. One at Truro represents a horse bearing skins on the back, and is so contrived as to whistle in the wind. None are earlier than the seventeenth century, yet they certainly take the place of more ancient figures, and they carry us back in thought to the period when the horse or horse-head was the ornament proper to every gable. These little tile-horses and men are of divine ancestry. They trace back to Wuotan and his hell-horse.11
The historical existence of the leaders Hengest and Horsa, who led the Anglo-Saxons to the conquest of Britain, has long been disputed. There probably never were such personages. What is more likely is that they were the horse-headed beams of the chief’s house of the invading tribe. Both names indicate horses. When the Norsemen moved their quarters, they took the main beams of their dwellings with them, and they took omens from these beams, when they warped or whistled in wet and wind. The first settlers in Iceland threw their house-beams into the sea off Norway, and colonised at the spot where they were washed ashore on the black volcanic sands of Iceland.
The white horse in the arms of Kent, the white horse on the Hanovarian coat, the white horses on the chalk downs throughout Wessex, have all reference to Woden and his grey hell-horse. The greatest respect was paid to the main principals of the roof with their horse-heads. We can understand how that when the old house in the market-place at Cologne was rebuilt, the old heads were retained; and when the original skulls decayed, they were replaced with painted wooden imitations; just as in the Norman churches the skull-like corbels of stone, and in Gothic churches the monstrous gaping gurgoyles, and on our Elizabethan mansions the stone balls, also the figure-heads on ships, all trace back to real heads of sacrificed beasts and men.
In 1877 it was found necessary to pull down the spire terminating the bell-turret surmounting the western gable of St. Cuthbert’s Church, Elsdon, Northumberland. In the spire, immediately over the bell, was discovered a small chamber, without any opening to it, and within this, nearly filling the cavity, were three horse-heads, or rather skulls, piled in a triangular form, the jaws uppermost. The receptacle had been made for them with some care, and then they had been walled up in it.12
On the tower of the Church of Sorau in Lusatia are two heads, one is that of a woman, the other that of a horse. The story told to account for them is this. A girl was drawing water at the fountain in the market-place, when a horse, filled with madness, rushed at her. She fled round the market-place pursued by the horse, which was gaining on her, when, seeing the door into the tower open, she ran in, and up the winding stair. Arrived at the top, she stopped to breathe, when, to her dismay, she heard the clatter of the horse’s hoofs on the steps; the creature was pursuing her up the tower. In her terror she leaped from the bell window, and the horse leaped after her. Both were dashed to pieces on the pavement. The heads were set up on stone as a memorial of the event.
In 1429 the town of Budissin was besieged by the Hussites. The town notary, Peter Prichwitz, promised to open the gates to the investing forces, but his treachery was discovered in time, and the traitor was executed on December 6th, in the market-place, and when he had been drawn and quartered, his quarters were set up over the bastions, and his head carved in stone above the city gate, and this remains to the present day.
Here we have two instances, and many more could be adduced, of these carved heads being made to represent the heads of certain persons who have died violent deaths.
The first instance is peculiarly interesting. The story, however, as little explains the figures as does that of Richmod of Adocht at Cologne. There is a great deal of evidence to show that till a late period, when a lofty tower or spire was erected, human or animal victims were cast from the top, to ensure the erection from being struck by lightning. The woman and the horse at Sorau had been thus offered. We know that this was a mode of sacrifice to Odin. Victims to him were flung down precipices.
In North Germany, at the close of the last century, on St. James’s day, it was customary to throw a goat with gilt horns and adorned with ribbons from the top of a church or town hall tower. At Ypres, on the second Wednesday in Lent, cats were flung down from the tower. Abraham à Santa Clara says that three illustrious Italian families, those of Torelli, Pieschi, and Gonzaga, have white ladies who appear before death; these are the spirits of three damsels who were falsely accused of incontinence, and were precipitated from the topmost battlements of the towers belonging to these three families. Now it is clear that Abraham à Santa Clara has got his story wrong. The coincidence would be extraordinary in all three families. The real explanation is, that when the several castles of these families were erected, from the highest tower of each a virgin was cast down as a superstitious insurance against lightning, actually – though this was forgotten – because from immemorial times such a sacrifice had been offered.
In 1514 the spire of the Cathedral Church of Copenhagen was erected. A carpenter’s assistant had an altercation with his master, as to which had the steadiest brain. Then the master ran a beam out from the top of the tower, took an axe in his hand, walked out on the beam, and struck the axe into the end of it. “There,” said he to his man, on his return, “go out and recover the axe.”
The assistant instantly obeyed. He walked out; but when he was stooping to take hold of the axe it seemed to him that it was double. Then he asked, “Master, which of them?”
The master saw that he had lost his head, and that it was all up with the man, so he said, “God be with your soul!” At the same moment the man fell, and was dashed to pieces in the market-place at the foot of the tower.
It is possible that this may be the true version of the story; but it is much more likely that the man was flung down by his master, with deliberate purpose, to secure by his death the stability of the spire he had erected.
A very similar story is told of the tower of Assier Church in the Department of Lot. This singular renaissance church was erected by Galiot de Ginouillac, Grand Master of Artillery under Francis I. On the roof of the central tower are three wooden pinnacles. The story goes that De Ginouillac ascended with his son to the top of the tower, and bade the boy affix the cross. The lad walked along the ledge and exclaimed, “Father, which of the pinnacles is in the middle?” When the father heard that, he knew his son had lost his head. Next moment the boy fell and was dashed to pieces. Popular superstition held that so high a tower, with so steep a roof, must be consecrated by the sacrifice of a life.
Countless stories remain concerning spires and towers indicating similar tragedies; but we are not further concerned with them than to point out that
See numerous examples in “The Western Antiquary,” November, 1881.
On a discovery of horse-heads in Elsdon Church, by E. C. Robertson, Alnwick, 1882.
