FICTITIOUS AND SYMBOLIC
CREATURES IN ART
FICTITIOUS & SYMBOLIC
CREATURES IN ART
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THEIR USE
IN BRITISH HERALDRY
By JOHN VINYCOMB
MEMBER OF THE ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY, FELLOW
OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF IRELAND,
A VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE EX-LIBRIS SOCIETY
ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON
ILLUSTRATED
CHAPMAN AND HALL, LIMITED
11 HENRIETTA STREET, LONDON, W. C.
MCMVI
Printed by Ballantyne & Co. Limited
Tavistock Street, London
PREFACE
nder the title of this book it is proposed to describe and illustrateonly those fictitious and symbolic creatures which appear in BritishHeraldry. The list will include all those beings of whose existence wehave not the direct evidence of our senses, and those exaggerations andcombinations of natural forms which have been adopted in the system ofsymbolic heraldry handed down to us from the Middle Ages. Many of theideas of the writers of that period were undoubtedly derived from stillearlier sources, namely, classic story, sacred and legendary art, and themarvellous tales of early travellers; others were the coinage of their ownfancies and their fears.
As these unreal beings are constantly met with in symbolic art, of whichheraldry is the chief exponent, it may be assumed that they have been[Pg vi]adopted in each case with some obvious or latent meaning, as in the caseof real animals; they may, therefore, equally lay claim to ourconsideration as emblems or types, more especially as less attention hasbeen devoted to them and the delineation of their forms by competentartists. The writer has been led into considering and investigating thesubject with some degree of attention, from finding the frequent need ofsome reliable authority, both descriptive and artistic, such as wouldenable any one to depict with accuracy and true heraldic spirit the formsand features of these chimerical beings. Books of reference on heraldryunfortunately give but a meagre description of their shapes, with scarcelya hint as to their history or meaning, while the illustrations are usuallystiff and awkward, representing a soulless state of art.
It cannot be said that artists at any period have succeeded, even in aremote degree, in embodying the highly wrought conceptions of the poetsconcerning these terrible creatures of the imagination. Milton seems tohave carried poetic personification to its utmost limits. Who, forinstance, could depict a being like this:
“Black it stood as night,
Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell!”
[Pg vii]Out of the ambiguous and often conflicting accounts of different authorsand the vagaries of artists it became no easy task to arrive at a clearco