Besides the principal subject, which occupies the central portion of the Tapestry, there is an ornamental border at the top and bottom of the field, which is filled with a variety of representations. Here the artist has indulged in a considerable play of fancy. Figures of birds and beasts which certainly never came out of Noah’s ark are admitted into this menagerie. Probably many of these forms represent the griffins, centaurs, and other fabulous creatures which occupy so conspicuous a place in the romances of the period. Others clearly represent animals, such as the camel and lion, with which the people of that age could not be very familiar, but which would, on that account, furnish subjects of thought and conversation all the more exciting. In the lower border of the roll, near the beginning, are some representations of the fables of Æsop. There is the crow and the fox, the wolf and the lamb, the crane and the wolf, the eagle and the tortoise, and some others. Besides these subjects, we have many of the operations of husbandry, such as ploughing, sowing, and harrowing. The sports of the field are not neglected. One man is seen shooting birds with a sling. At this period the sling had quite gone into disuse as a weapon of war, but was probably long afterwards retained for the purposes of the sportsman. In one compartment, a man is seen fighting, sword in hand, with a bear that is chained to a tree. In another, the huntsman summons his dogs to the chase. In some portions of the Tapestry the border has an evident reference to the main subject of the piece; towards the end of the work the whole of the lower margin is filled with the bodies of the slain, thus forming it, as it were, the foreground of the general delineation. The whole picture is divided into seventy-two compartments or scenes, which are generally separated from one another by trees, or what are intended to represent such. The artist, very modestly mistrusting his own powers, has usually affixed an inscription, in Latin, to each subject, the more fully to explain his intention. The letters, like the figures, are stitched in worsted, and are about an inch in length. That the Tapestry should from a period beyond all record have belonged to the church of Bayeux is nothing surprising. Odo, the uterine brother of William, who rendered the Conqueror such efficient assistance in the battle of Hastings, and in the subsequent government of the kingdom, was archbishop of that place. Matilda may, with great propriety have given it to him in acknowledgement of his services, and he with equal probability, for he was very munificent to his church, may have given it to the Chapter. There is no other period at which it could with so much probability have come into the possession of the ecclesiastics of Bayeux as during the episcopate of Odo.[23] II. THE COMMISSION. “All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be king hereafter.” _Macbeth._