SUPPOSED INSCRIPTION UPON THE FONT AT WILNE. 193 
tier consists of seven panels, six of them containing single quadru- 
peds, the seventh a pair of quadrupeds. These animals are beau- 
tifully designed and executed, their bodies deer-shaped, in some 
cases almost resembling the body of a giraffe, legs long, necks very 
long and curved so as to follow the form of the Romanesque arch 
which forms the head of each panel. These proudly arched necks 
had been supposed to be maned, but after careful examination I 
found that the appearance of a mane was due to the fact that they 
were all constrained by halters looped five or six times round the 
neck, and eventually bringing the muzzle close in to the chest. In 
each case one of the forelegs is raised, as with the “worms” at 
Wilne, this foreleg, as also the remaining legs, being hampered and 
fettered by bands. These bands appear—but at the critical point 
the surface has been destroyed—to spring out of the ground, and 
there are several indications that they represent the stems of grow- 
ing plants or creepers. Photo-lithographs from rubbings of one of 
these quadrupeds and the neck of another, in which those parts 
which are fairly clear are filled in, will be found on Plate XIII, fig. 
3, 4. These are the “beasts and all cattle” which are missing at 
Wilne; at Masham there are no “worms and feathered fowls.” 
Each of the single arched panels is about a foot wide, and the tier 
is about 22 inches high. In the arched panels of the two-and-a-half 
tiers above are the figures of men; in one is seen our Lord in the 
attitude of benediction, in another Samson, with a Romanesque 
gate of Gaza hung on his left shoulder and reaching nearly to 
his feet, ‘‘ bar and all,” as the Old Testament is careful to tells us. 
' (Plate XIII, fig. 5). The girth is 80 inches at bottom, 76 at top ; 
height 80 inches. Almost all of the subjects have gone so far to 
decay that imagination has to play a large part in their identi- 
fication. Any one of the tiers would have made a beautiful font, 
if it had occurred to the early ecclesiastical lords of the vast parish 
of Masham to use for that purpose a part of a monument which 
must many centuries ago have been famous in all the vale of 
Yore. 
It is difficult to look at some of the early sétu/e (holy water 
16 
