CROSS-LEGGED EFFIGIES IN DORSET. I I 



Purbeck marble placed upon stone slabs, without ornament 

 below. 



The conventional animals supporting the feet of these effigies 

 enabled the sculptors to terminate the long flowing lines of the 

 limbs and surcoat with neatness and precision, thus overcoming 

 one of the principal difficulties of the recumbent attitude. It is 

 possible that these animals had an heraldic significance, the lion 

 perhaps denoting courage and the dog faithfulness. These 

 animals are, with few exceptions, very elementary in form, and 

 one sometimes finds the head and body of a dog, to which has 

 been added the mane and tufted tail of a lion, making it difficult 

 to say definitely which animal the artist intended to represent. 

 The only solution which suggests itself in these instances is 

 that, as few, if any, of these early sculptors could have studied 

 the form and anatomy of a real lion, they took as a general 

 model the familiar form of the dog, to which they added sundry 

 lion-like attributes either from their own imagination or from 

 the illuminated missals and heraldic devices of the period. I 

 think we may safely assume from the traces which remain that 

 these effigies were originally coloured and gilded on the body 

 and surcoats, in addition to the coats of arms fully emblazoned 

 on the shields. These colours seem to have been very brilliant 

 and of a thinness which allowed the grain of the stone to show 

 clearly beneath. 



The identification of these effigies is one of universal difficulty, 

 owing to the obliteration of the heraldic insignia once embla- 

 zoned on the shields, surcoats, or jupons, so that the identities 

 of these persons have become altogether obscured. The traces 

 of heraldry which remain, the approximate date of armour, 

 together with the contemporary history and local traditions, are 

 all that the searcher of to-day has to rely on in his endeavour to 

 fashion from these cold stones the once warm bodies of those 

 who worshipped in the sanctuaries that now enshrine them. 

 Amid difficulties of such magnitude one must be satisfied with a 

 probable identification of these effigies since this, for the most 

 part, can be a matter of conjecture only. 



