A Glossary of Creatures Found on the Tapestry

In 1066 there was no established zoology, let alone any agreed text or taxonomy. There was not even a heraldic connection for the science and art of heraldry was in gestation rather than infancy. So the wild and wonderful world of fabulous creatures we see in Fairbairn’s nineteenth-century lists1 did not exist. In fact it was the demise of the white suit, or full armour, that paradoxically saw the full flowering of heraldry from the sixteenth century onwards as elaboration of achievements (and demand) grew. The origins of our 1066 birds and beasts are to be found, instead, among the writings of scholars, classical texts repeated by authors and copyists who had never seen many of the creatures they listed and who were nevertheless keen to rehabilitate them in a Christian context.

These fabled, fabulous beasts were the most fascinating and readily endowed with human or divine characteristics, especially those confirmed by ancient writers such as Aesop. Yet in 1066, even the compilation of bestiaries was in its infancy and not all of Aesop’s stories were known. Commercial concerns, other than the church, had not yet corrupted the ancient exemplars and illustrations were less common than descriptions, so it is quite dangerous to attempt to confirm eleventh-century depictions by using fourteenth- or fifteenth-century bestiaries. The secular market had not yet been created. Maps were not as we now conceive them, even in the fourteenth century. Instead they were compilations of vignettes intended as aides-memoire for expositions, indices for fabulists like Sir John de Mandeville2 to enlarge upon and so, with this commercial expansion, came the stimulus for even weirder zoology than the church had employed. We have to be very careful not to judge our Tapestry by the very different repertoire of later centuries and certainly not by information from our modern world.

This said, the people of 1066 could see what was around them and they also believed in what religious scholars told them. Such beliefs do not make them fools. As I have been at pains to stress, they were educated to a world we no longer comprehend. Anyone who has read Massingham3 or, more recently and botanically, Rackham4 will know that our ancestors’ agronomics and their systems of learning were very different from our own, but though different they were surprisingly efficient. The final demise of self-sufficiency and peasant agronomics in the early twentieth century was due to the increasing subtlety of taxation rather than to imperfect husbandry, social or land-management. Our present agricultural and social worlds are quite alien to the many centuries that preceded them, to the worlds of Cobbett5 and Massingham and the medieval husbandman.

So it was that zoologically they knew what they could see and what they had experienced and what they had never seen they took on absolute trust from the ‘clever people’ around and above them, just as we accept quantum physics. After all, scholars must know for they have been educated to explain Schroedinger’s cat. What is surprising is that so many people, quite obviously, could then look at a fabulous creature and recognise its significance. The aforementioned cat is rarely so fortunate.

BADGER	A nocturnal, and so less well understood, animal with an almost impenetrable hide, fierce and very dangerous when cornered and its bite said at this time to be fatal.
BEAR	Perhaps the most powerful and ferocious wild animal likely to be encountered ‘in life’, a creature not to be opposed but rather to flee from. So to muzzle a bear, other than one trained as a cub to captivity, was an impossible feat. You would be lucky even to be able to kill one and walk away.
BEAVER	A creature whose testicles were esteemed as a medicine. When cornered by hunters they were said to castrate themselves by biting off their ‘potency’ and so escaping. Later recipe books say the tail is a delicacy.
BOAR	Another fast and ferocious opponent in the wild, capable of inflicting horrific injuries with its tusks and also said to be fatal. Of course, even the domestic boar and sow were far from predictable.
CALADRIUS	Usually shown as a pure white bird, except that on our Tapestry there is no white and outlined blank linen represents the ghostly and speculative. Here they have to have colour, so why not that of the noblest of raptors, the golden eagle? It is positioning that convinces me that these large eagle-birds are such special indicators, yet even as eagles they would have kingly attributes. Everyone knew that only the noblest born in the land could be associated with either gyr-falcons or eagles. Eagles, like absolute monarchs, make the decisions. They do not ‘wait on’ for instructions, but they either rest or pursue their quarry. The caladrius, however, is more of a physician, guarding and consorting with kings yet, when they turn away, it is indicative of sickness and death.
CAMEL	A beast capable of carrying exceptional burdens and with great stamina, dependable in difficult situations and for unusual loads. Few in England would ever have seen one.
CENTAUR	Neither man nor beast, an ungoverned creature in need of superior power to guide it and authority to make it acknowledge the True Faith. I suspect that what lies behind this is an allusion to bestiality, linking abhorrence to pagan worship. The Sagittarian link with archery does not seem to be apparent here on the Tapestry.
CROW	This omnibus classification stands for all carrion birds, especially corvids, for whom I also employ the modern collective vultures. Carrion birds were the harbingers of war and gruesome death, feasters off the battlefield. The intelligent carrion-crow and the raven in particular were hated for pecking out the eyes of the defenceless. Birds of war, rejoicing at death, so readily anthropomorphised on our Tapestry.
DRAGON	A fire-breathing quadruped (in England) with a powerful tail, though whether reptilian at this date is doubtful. A most formidable foe. The Old English drake would seem to be our creature, hence fire-drake. England seems to have divorced the dragon from the wyvern at an early date. The hagiographies of the eleventh century only made Saint George a martyr and the dragon legend appears to have returned to us at a later date with the crusaders. It was not until the fourteenth century that George became the patron saint of England and, by then, English artists had certainly elaborated the reptilian dragon-quadruped. Ours seem quite tame by comparison with the later models.
EAGLE	A raptor of the highest nobility and so, like the lion, terrible to behold. Proud, fierce, strong and with a remarkable overview and very keen eyesight, but also associated with Saint John the Evangelist and scholarship so, by extension, with the wisdom of law-giving and knowledge of right and wrong.
FLAMINGO	Not recorded in any known contemporary source but shown on our Tapestry, the drawing is unmistakeable, so someone had seen them in the Mediterranean. On the Tapestry they are shown as a deep red colour as though confused with the phoenix (see PHOENIX).
FOX	We can thank Aesop for our identification of the wily-fox, a sly and clever creature perfect for politics, never short of promises, schemes and ideas for self-improvement.
GOOSE	Another locus classicus, the legendary watch-dog of ancient Rome, noisy rather than dangerous.
GOAT	According to Isodorus the goat will ‘pursue difficult matters’, which probably agrees with other authorities that he makes a good watchman. In Aesopian fable he is wise enough to know when and where he is safe from his enemies and he stays there. Curiously foresters believed that geese and goats tainted the pastures frequented by deer, causing slinking (abortion), so a goat might also be a nuisance in context.
GRYPHON	A cross between raptor and predator, eagle and big cat. They signify strength and vengeance, as one might expect, are said to tear men to pieces and are often segreant or rampant. Mandeville later elaborated their prowess as equivalent to eight lions and 100 eagles and they certainly became popular in later heraldry.
HARE	Proverbially fast yet timorous, a dweller among fields and arable and so easily associated with peasantry. ‘As wise as a hare’ said Skelton, probably because a hare will flee when pursued, run to cover and then start again in a circle. The rabbit has the sense to run as fast as he can in a straight line and so he escapes his hunters.
HAWKS	Difficult to separate from the eagles on our Tapestry, except by context. Fierce, merciless birds of prey delighting in feeding off the weak, rewarded by their masters for licensed savagery. Nevertheless, as hawks are trained to come to the astringer’s hand, so they can be disciplined for all their love of slaughter. The Old English name of ‘havoc’ is therefore compellingly expressive.
HERON	Perhaps from his habits and habitats a representative of the quiet, solitary life, yet in falconry often employed as the symbol of autumn. Autumn was the season for hawking due to the large flocks of passage birds landing on the south-east and southern English wetlands.
KITE	Especially the now rare red kite, once the ‘dustman of London’, voraciously consuming all sorts of carrion and offal. I think there can be little doubt that the red coloured carrion birds shown here are intended as kites rather than crows.
LION	The noblest of the big cats, probably thanks to Aesop’s treatment as the ‘king of the beasts’, so a very superior form of pard. Terrible to behold, they are also said to show pity to men and so the lion is accorded ferocity tempered with wisdom and also with pride. Of course, the eleventh century did not restrict kingship to existing royal families, so anyone with kingly qualities or relatives might be a lion. Certainly it denoted and denotes high nobility.
MASTIFF	The householder’s guard-dog, his warning and defender against intruders. The scholars said that dogs were more sagacious than other animals and gifted with both courage and speed, though our mastiff is quite distinct from the faster hounds (brachets and liams) used for hunting. His Old English name of ryðð, or ridder, seems appropriate.
OSTRICH	Though known to Pliny as a large bird that cannot fly, and which thrusts its head into a bush in order to hide, neither he nor Isodorus had a proper description. It had obviously been known to the venatores of the Roman circus but was probably only rarely provided and seen even then, except on mosaics in North Africa, so its form and appearance would be quite unknown in Western Europe in 1066.
OX	The universal beast of manual work, patient and stolid, which when in harness (unlike the horse) works until it drops. Nevertheless the bull was also seen as a blindly dangerous, heavyweight opponent.
PARANDRUS	A beast that can change its appearance but of which at this date we have no certain exemplar, a shape-changer, and so akin to the later were-wolf, you never knew for sure who or what they were. Pliny said that the parandrus changed colour, Isodorus said ‘the shapes of the wicked change for their many villainies and they turn bodily into beasts’. I suspect that in England there may at times have been identification with the Old English ‘ferende gæst’ (moving spirit) which, if a swan, as most linguists believe, would change shape when hiding its head or even in its metamorphosis from a cygnus (the sooty-coloured cygnet) to a (white) swan. Para + Andrus means ‘contrary to man’, but Pliny’s ‘Blemyah’ was also acephalous and so that came to mean ‘headless people’. Later, bestiaries made the parandrus into a hairy quadruped. Everything created had its ‘whit’ (identity) and so we can have a double-entendre, swan or parandrus, for the English were later very fond of bestiaries and I see no reason why, even this early, they could not blend riddles with gnomic traditions. Grendel in Beowulf is termed ellen-gǽst or a sinister and powerful ghost, though it is often translated as a mistake for ‘ellogast’ (see Sedgefield’s Beowulf (1913) line 86). There is also the mythical ‘duphon’ of the Hautes-Alpes (probably an eagle owl) to consider.
PARD	A big cat, with all the attributes of such powerful, wild creatures and not to be trifled with. As Isodorus said it ‘likes blood’. As zoological knowledge developed so the later heraldic bestiary eventually distinguished between cat species and elaborated their depictions, but at this date such nuances were unknown. In Old English ‘pandher’ was a spotted big-cat and also the heraldic leopard. No one had a record of a striped big-cat, yet someone embroidering this Tapestry had seen a striped (Bengal tiger) big cat.
PEACOCK	Not, one suspects, commonly encountered in the eleventh century but nevertheless well recorded. Classically Argos ‘panoptes’ (many eyed) was ‘all-seeing’, so what was more natural than an association of the peacock with the omniscient god (Father or Son), just as the phoenix was omnicompetent? Also symbolic of the never sleeping, spiritual watchman.
PHOENIX	Anciently fabled as a bird that lives for 500 years, builds a nest, sets fire to it and then rises from the ashes renewed and empowered. This was an obvious symbol of the Resurrection and so it became the emblem of Christ as the exceptional man. Omnicompetent, one capable of all things physical and spiritual, even rebirth. It is always shown as dark red.
RAM	A beast of metal, stubbornness and fecundity, they will fight in order to be primus inter pares, but they are also destined for sacrifice, so only the victor survives. Old English weðer, though not necessarily meaning gelded.
STAG	The noble yet solitary monarch of the glen and moorland who shelters his household from hunters when woodland is available. A proud fighter, sagacious in his leadership, magnificent in appearance, circumspect enough to know when to flee and, according to Isodorus, ‘deer are the foes of snakes’.
TIGER	The heraldic ‘tyger’ was the only one found in English heraldry until very recent times as the real or Bengal tiger was unknown in the eleventh century. Bestiary tigers were spotted according to Isodorus, in other words indistinguishable from pards. However, someone embroidered a striped pard. Where did this come from? The later heraldic tyger had no stripes either and was given a tusk or tooth protruding from its nose.
VULTURE	A term I have used for all carrion/corvid birds as modern parlance – see CROW. Vultures, of course, are only rarely seen in England, though not unknown.
WINGED LION	Signify destiny, especially amongst noble warriors and men. Fortune favours the bold. It is also the symbol of St Mark, author of the Second Gospel, and so a bringer of truth and enlightenment.
WOLF	A less likeable predator and, in Aesop, not as clever as the fox. Obviously, a Medieval pest, dangerous, bloodthirsty, opportunistic, preying on the weak and vulnerable, often in packs, much like the common mercenary.
WYVERN	A bipedal semi-reptilian and though the apparent origin of the Wessex dragon – and even perhaps the Welsh – not a fire-breather, hence in England it was adopted in heraldry later on as quite distinct from the fire-drake or quadrupedal dragon. The fork-tongue gives away its poisonous nature of lies and bile. Why its tail was nowed, or curled, I have no idea, but it would imply a more sedentary role than the dragon. I think this creature was the Old English ‘wrm’ and thus distinct even then from the drake (draco). In French heraldry the dragon (fire-drake) is usually bipedal and synonymous with the wyvern but we can see that on our Tapestry ‘wrms’ are quite distinctive in appearance and in role. As the English dragon subsequently became more reptilian, so wyverns seem to have become confused in general heraldry and in the bestiaries with ‘vipera’ and ‘hypnalis’ (a sort of asp), but English heraldry maintained their traditional appearance and they remain popular heraldic supporters. The clear distinction on our Tapestry between the fire-drakes and the many wyverns is another clear indicator of English workmanship and thinking.