Ecclesiastical Curiosities Part 10

But to return to the dun cow slain by Guy. That the champion was credited of old with having overcome some such animal is evident from the matter-of-fact fashion in which it is recorded by ancient chroniclers. In Percy's "Reliques of Antient Poetry," occur the following verses in a black-letter ballad which sings the exploits of Guy:--

"On Dunsmore heath I alsoe slewe A monstrous wyld and cruell beast, Called the Dun-Cow of Dunsmore heath, Which manye people had opprest.

Some of her bons in Warwicke yett Still for a monument doe lye; Which unto every lookers viewe As wondrous strange, they may espye."

A circ.u.mstantial account is given in the "n.o.ble and Renowned History of Guy, Earl of Warwick," as translated from the curious old French black-letter volume in Warwick Castle, and of this a somewhat modernised version may be submitted. "Fame made known in every corner of the land that a dun cow of enormous size, 'at least four yards in height, and six in length, and a head proportionable,' was making dreadful devastations, and destroying man and beast. The king was at York when he heard of the havoc and slaughter which this monstrous animal had made. He offered knighthood to anyone who would destroy her, and many lamented the absence in Normandy of Guy, who, hearing of the beast, went privately to give it battle. With bow and sword and axe he came, and found every village desolate, every cottage empty. His heart filled with compa.s.sion, and he waited for the encounter. The furious beast glared at him with her eyes of fire. His arrows flew from her sides as from adamant itself.

Like the wind from the mountain side the beast came on. Her horns pierced his armour of proof, though his mighty battle-axe struck her in the forehead. He wheeled his gallant steed about and struck her again.

He wounded her behind the ear. The monster roared and snorted as she felt the anguish of the wound. At last she fell, and Guy, alighting, hewed at her until she expired, deluged with her blood. He then rode to the next town, and made known the monster's death, and then went to his ship, hoping to sail before the king could know of the deed. Fame was swifter than Guy. The king sent for him, gave him the honour of knighthood, and caused one of the ribs of the cow to be hung up in Warwick Castle, where it remains until this day." Old Dr. Caius, of Cambridge, writes of having seen an enormous head at Warwick Castle in 1552, and also "a vertebra of the neck of the same animal, of such great size that its circ.u.mference is not less than three Roman feet seven inches and a half." He thinks also that "the blade-bone, which is to be seen hung up by chains form the north gate of Coventry, belongs to the same animal. The circ.u.mference of the whole bone is not less than eleven feet four inches and a half." The same authority further states that "in the chapel of the great Guy, Earl of Warwick, which is situated rather more than a mile from the town of Warwick (Guy's Cliff), there is hung up a rib of the same animal, as I suppose, the girth of which in the smallest part is nine inches, the length six feet and a half," and he inclines to a half-belief, at any rate, in the Dun-Cow story.

In connection with the legend it should be mentioned that in the north-west of Shropshire is the Staple Hill, which has a ring of upright stones, about ninety feet in diameter, of the rude pre-historic type.

"Here the voice of fiction declares there formerly dwelt a giant who guarded his cow within this inclosure, like another Apis among the ancient Egyptians, a cow who yielded her milk as miraculously as the bear Oedumla, whom we read of in Icelandic mythology, filling every vessel that could be brought to her, until at length an old crone attempted to catch her milk in a sieve, when, furious at the insult, she broke out of the magical inclosure and wandered into Warwickshire, where her subsequent history and fate are well known under that of the Dun Cow, whose death added another wreath of laurel to the immortal Guy, Earl of Warwick." The presence of bones at Chesterfield and elsewhere is, of course, accounted for by the fact (?) that they were distributed over the country so that in various places Guy's marvellous feat might be commemorated.

In Queen Elizabeth's "fairest and most famous parish church in England,"

St. Mary Redcliff, Bristol, is preserved a bone said to have belonged to a monster cow which once supplied the whole city with milk. Bristolians, proud of their connection with the great discoverer, Cabot, a.s.sert that it is a whalebone brought to the city by the ill.u.s.trious voyager on his return from Newfoundland. But here the story of Guy of Warwick and the cow has also been introduced. The bone, which is now fixed not far from the stair leading to the chamber containing the muniment chest where Chatterton pretended to have found the Rowley poems, was formerly hung within the church, while near to it was suspended a grimy old picture now banished to a position on a staircase just where the room in which the vestry meetings are held is entered. The picture, so far as it can be made out, contains a big figure of a man on the right hand side, while in the foreground lies a prostrate man, behind whom stands a cow.

To the left of the picture are certain human figures in att.i.tudes expressive of surprise. This ancient painting was said to refer to Guy's exploit, and the rib was pointed out as a positive proof that the daring deed was done.

It may be presumed that all, or nearly all, these bones preserved in churches are those of whales, though in some instances they have been supposed to be those of the wild BONASUS or URUS and most are a.s.sociated in some way or other with the legend of Guy and the Dun-Cow. Indeed, it seems almost strange that the story has not been connected even with the bone at Pennant Melangell, especially as on the mountain between Llanwddyn and the parish is a circular inclosure surrounded by a wall called Hen Eglwys, and supposed to be a Druidical relic, which would have been just the spot to have lent itself to the statement that there the animal was confined.

The late Frank Buckland, in his entertaining chapter on "A Hunt on the Sea-Sh.o.r.e," in his second volume of "Curiosities of Natural History,"

says: "Whale-bones get to odd places," and writes of having seen them used for a grotto in Abingdon, and a garden chair in Clapham. Not far from Chesterfield there were, until recently, some whale-jaw gate posts which formed an arch, and in North Lincolnshire such bones, tall and curved, are still to be seen serving similar purposes. But the presence of such bones, carefully preserved in churches, though it may occasion considerable conjecture, cannot, it seems, be properly explained. As yet, at any rate, the riddle remains unsolved.

Samuel Pepys at Church.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys, from 1659 to 1669, presents us with a picture of London in the days of Charles II. that has perhaps not been equalled in any other work dealing with the manners, customs, and the social life of the period. We get a good idea from it how Sunday was spent in an age largely given to pleasure. Samuel Pepys had strong leanings towards the Presbyterians, but was a churchman, and seldom missed going to a place of worship on Sunday, and did not neglect to have family prayers in his own home. He generally attended his own church in the morning, and after dinner in the afternoon would roam about the city, and visit more than one place of worship. Take for an example an account of one Sunday.

After being present at his own church in the forenoon, and dining, he says: "I went and ranged and ranged about to many churches, among the rest to the Temple, where I heard Dr. Wilkins a _little_."

It is to be feared pretty faces and not powerful preachers often induced him to go to the house of prayer. Writing on August 11th, 1661, he says: "To our own church in the forenoon, and in the afternoon to Clerkenwell Church, only to see the two fair Botelers." He managed to obtain a seat where he could have a good view of them, but they did not charm him, for he says: "I am now out of conceit with them." Another Sunday he writes: "By coach to Greenwich Church, where a good sermon, a fine church, and a good company of handsome women." At another church he visited he says that his pretty black girl was present.

Pepys has much to say about the sermons he heard, and when they were dull he went to sleep. Judging from his frequent records of slumbering in church, prosy preachers were by no means rare in his day.

Writing on the 4th August, 1662, he gives us a glimpse of the manners of a rustic church. His cousin Roger himself attended the service, and says Pepys: "At our coming in, the country people all rose with so much reverence; and when the parson begins, he begins, 'Right worshipful and dearly beloved' to us."

Conversation appears to have been freely carried on in city churches.

"In my pew," says Pepys, "both Sir Williams and I had much talk about the death of Sir Robert." Laughter was by no means unusual. "Before sermon," writes Pepys, "I laughed at the reader, who, in his prayer, desired G.o.d that he would imprint his Word on the thumbs of our right hands and on the right toes of our right feet."

When Pepys remained at home on Sunday he frequently cast up his accounts, and there are in his Diary several allusions to this subject.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE END]