Wild Imagination

I remember one conversation years back about medieval bestiaries - I was looking at squarish elephant with a trunk like a trumpet, thinking that it wasn't very 'true to life'. A professor recreated a conversation, with someone explaining to an illustrator what the animal should look like. A lion explanation, for example, might be: "It's a beast, like a cat, but a massive cat, with big claws and a regal, almost-human face, and the male lions have a great head of hair, full like a lady's curls..."

It made perfect sense.

And still, when I see such a rendition that we-in-this-century might justifiably term 'loopy', I like to imagine some medieval artist listening carefully, trying to conjure something he had never seen, like a police Identi-sketch artist - "No, the ears were bigger... eyes wider apart..."

Once you got past the basics, the mythic elements awaited. Apart from the whole King o'the Beasts status, the major things to know about lions were: (1) they slept with their eyes open; (2) if they were being hunted, they swished over their pawprints with their swishy tail; (3) their offspring were born dead. Yep, that's right. The mother gave birth and watched over the bodies; after three days the father returned and together they roared, breathed or licked life into the cublets.

A smorgasbord for the imagination!

(British Library, Royal MS 12 C. xix, Folio 6r)

(British Library, Royal MS 2 B. vii, Folio 86v)

(Bodleian Library, MS. Douce 308, Folio 96v)

(Teeny image upper-right: Huntington Library, HM 27523, Folio 228r)