39: A ROMANCE OF THE MARSHES




Introductory: On Gargoyles

Alone at some distance from the wasting walls of a disused
abbey I found half sunken in the grass the grey and goggle-eyed
visage of one of those graven monsters that made the ornamental
water-spouts in the cathedrals of the Middle Ages. It lay there,
scoured by ancient rains or striped by recent fungus, but still
looking like the head of some huge dragon slain by a primeval hero.
And as I looked at it, I thought of the meaning of the grotesque,
and passed into some symbolic reverie of the three great stages of art.





I

Once upon a time there lived upon an island a merry and innocent people,
mostly shepherds and tillers of the earth. They were republicans,
like all primitive and simple souls; they talked over their affairs
under a tree, and the nearest approach they had to a personal ruler
was a sort of priest or white witch who said their prayers for them.
They worshipped the sun, not idolatrously, but as the golden crown
of the god whom all such infants see almost as plainly as the sun.