inspector of dams on the Elbe, in 1813, in his “Praxis,” relates that, as he was engaged on a peculiarly difficult dyke, an old peasant advised him to get a child, and sink it under the foundations.
As an instance of even later date to which the belief in the necessity of a sacrifice lingered, I may mention that, in 1843, a new bridge was about to be built at Halle, in Germany. The people insisted to the architect and masons that their attempt to make the piers secure was useless, unless they first immured a living child in the basement. We may be very confident that if only fifty years ago people could be found so ignorant and so superstitious as to desire to commit such an atrocious crime, they would not have been restrained in the Middle Ages from carrying their purpose into execution.
I have already said that originally the sacrifice was offered to the Earth goddess, to propitiate her, and obtain her consent to the appropriation of the soil and to bearing the burden imposed on it. But the sacrifice had a further meaning. The world itself, the universe, was a vast fabric, and in almost all cosmogonies the foundations of the world are laid in blood. Creation rises out of death. The Norsemen held that the giant Ymir was slain, that out of his body the world might be built up. His bones formed the rocks, his flesh the soil, his blood the rivers, and his hair the trees and herbage. So among the Greeks Dionysos Zagreus was the Earth deity, slain by the Titans, and from his torn flesh sprang corn and the vine, the grapes were inflated with his blood, and the earth, his flesh, transubstantiated into bread. In India, Brahma gave himself to form the universe. “Purusha is this All; his head is heaven, the sun is fashioned out of his eyes, the moon out of his heart, fire comes from his mouth, the winds are his breath, from his navel is the atmosphere, from his ears the quarters of the world, and the earth is trodden out of his feet” (“Rig. Veda” viii. c. 4, hymn 17–19).
So, in Persia, the Divine Ox, Ahidad, was slain that the world might be fashioned out of him; and the Mithraic figures represent this myth. If we put ourselves back in thought to the period when the Gospel was proclaimed, we shall understand better some of its allusions; with this notion of sacrifice underlying all great undertakings, all constructive work, we shall see how some of the illustrations used by the first preachers would come home to those who heard them. We can see exactly how suitable was the description given of Christ as the Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world. As the World-Lamb, He was the sustainer of the great building, He secured its stability; and just as the sacrifice haunts the building reared on it, so was the idea of Christ to enter into and haunt all history, all mythology, all religion.
We see, moreover, the appropriateness of the symbol of Christ as the chief Corner-stone, and of the Apostles as foundation stones of the Church; they are, as it were, the pise blocks, living stones, on whom the whole superstructure of the spiritual city is reared.
With extraordinary vividness, moreover, does the full significance of the old ecclesiastical hymn for the Dedication of a Church come out when we remember this wide-spread, deeply-rooted, almost ineradicable belief.
“Blessèd city, heavenly Salem,
Vision dear of peace and love,
Who of living stones upbuilded,
Art the joy of heaven above.
Many a blow and biting sculpture
Polished well those stones elect,
In their places now compacted
By the heavenly Architect.
Christ is made the sure foundation
And the precious corner-stone,
Who, the twofold walls uniting,
Binds them closely into one.”
II.
On Gables.
The tourist on the Rhine, as a matter of duty, visits in Cologne three points of interest, in addition to providing himself with a little box of the world-famous Eau, at the real original Maria Farina’s factory. After he has “done” the Cathedral, and the bones of the Eleven Thousand Virgins, he feels it incumbent on him to pay a visit to the horses’ heads in the market-place, looking out of an attic window.
Fig. 2.—THE HORSES’ HEADS, COLOGNE.
Myths attach equally to the Minster, the Ursuline relics, and to the horses’ heads. The devil is said to have prophesied that the cathedral would never be completed, yet lo! it is finished to the last stone of the spires! The bones of the eleven thousand virgins have been proved to have come from an old neglected cemetery, broken into when the mediæval walls of Cologne were erected. It will be shown that the heads of the two grey mares near the Church of the Apostles have a very curious and instructive history attaching to them, and that, though the story that accounts for their presence on top of a house is fabulous, their presence is of extreme interest to the antiquary.
The legend told of these particular heads is shortly this:[4] Richmod of Adocht was a wealthy citizen’s wife at Cologne. She died in 1357, and was buried with her jewelry about her. At night the sexton opened her grave, and, because he could not remove the rings, cut her finger. The blood began to flow, and she awoke from her cataleptic fit. The sexton fled panic-stricken. She then walked home, and knocked at her door, and called up the apprentice, who, without admitting her, ran upstairs to his master, to tell him that his wife stood without. “Pshaw!” said the widower, “as well make me believe that my pair of greys are looking out of the attic window.” Hardly were the words spoken, than, tramp—tramp—and his horses ascended the staircase, passed his door, and entered the garret. Next day every passer-by saw their heads peering from the window. The greatest difficulty was experienced in getting the brutes downstairs again. As a remembrance of this marvel, the horses were stuffed, and placed where they are now to be seen.
Such is the story as we take it from an account published in 1816. I had an opportunity a little while ago of examining the heads. They are of painted wood.
The story of the resuscitation of the lady is a very common one, and we are not concerned with this part of the myth. That which occupies us is the presence of the horses’ heads in the window. Now, singularly enough, precisely the same story is told of other horses’ heads occupying precisely similar positions in other parts of Germany. We know of at least a dozen.[5] It seems therefore probable that the story is of later origin, and grew up to account for the presence of the heads, which the popular mind could not otherwise explain. This conjecture becomes a certainty when we find that pairs of horses’ heads were at one time a very general adornment of gable ends, and that they are so still in many places.
Fig. 3.—GABLE OF A FARM-HOUSE IN MECKLENBURG.
In Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Luneburg, Holstein, it is still customary to affix carved wooden horse-heads to the apex of the principal gable of the house. There are usually two of these, back to back, the heads pointed in opposite directions. In Tyrol, the heads of chamois occupy similar positions. The writer of this article was recently in Silesia, and sketched similar heads on the gables of wooden houses of modern construction in the “Giant Mountains.” They are also found in Russia.
