Christian antiquities -- England; Churches -- England
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, assert that
it is a whalebone brought to the city by the illustrious 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 attitudes
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 associated
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-Shore," 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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