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seems to have the right eye obscured by a bunch of hair. If the latter
were a woman’s head, it might be an early example of the contrast
between the Church and the Synagogue. A fully developed example of this
contrast is given in Parker’s Calendar of the Prayer Book, from
painted glass at Bourges. On one side the Church, a female figure crowned
and nimbed, stands upright with a cross in her left hand, and the model of
a Church in her right. On the other side is the Synagogue, a woman with
bandaged eyes, and a crown fallen from her head into her left hand, while
a broken staff is held in the right. The uncertain tuft of hair on the
right hand head at Barfreston seems hardly strong enough as a foundation
for so elaborate a conclusion, especially as the crown is firmly fixed.
The first two of the creatures at the base of the tympanum
are like sphinxes though they lack wings. On the Mappa Mundi at Hereford
is a Sphinx with the inscription: "Spinx avis est penna,
serpens pede, fronte puella." The same creature is on the
perpendicular font at
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Upavon, Wilts., where the only two legs are hindlegs, as distinguished from
the two forelegs on the map.
One of the sphinx-like creatures at Barfreston, that with the
short hair may be male. The two other prodigies on the opposite side are a
fish-siren or mermaid, and a griffin compounded of the foreparts of an
eagle and the hinder parts. of a lion. Both these creatures are common in
the Bestiaries.
I am not able to identify all the animals on the abaci of the
Barfreston capitals. But among them the following are fairly certain. Two
butting rams facing one another on the left of the doorway, and a typical
hedgehog on the right just below medallion (14). There are also dragons
and human headed monsters with perhaps a manticora among them. As Mr.
Druce has shown, the butting rams are a favourite subject on later
misericords, e.g. at Wells, Ely and Beverley Minster.
The hedgehog gathers grapes or apples on its spines and then
goes off to its hole to feed its young. If it be worried
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