A gargoyle of a leopard-like animal with a human face jutting from a wall of Bayeux Cathedral, France
16 October 2020
A gargoyle is a decorative carving of an animal, human, or humanoid on a building with a waterspout to carry rainwater away from the building’s walls. The word enters English from the Anglo-Norman French gargole or gargoule and the medieval Latin, gargola. The word has the same root as gargle and gurgle, an echoic reference to water passing through a pipe.
The word is attested to in English as early as 1286 in a construction inventory that lists two gargurl made for the great gate of Cambridge Castle. And there are many medieval references to gargoyles. As an example, one later use of the word, in John Lydgate’s c.1425 Troy Book, uses it more poetically in this description of the city of Troy:
And euery hous cured was with led;
And many gargoyl & many hidous hed
With spoutis þoruȝ, & pipes as þei ouȝt,
From þe ston-werke to þe canel rauȝt,
Voyding filþes low in-to þe grounde,
Þoruȝ gratis percid of yren percid rounde.(And every house was covered with lead; and many gargoyles and many hideous heads, through spouts and pipes reaching out from the stonework to the canal, voiding filth low into the ground through round grates of pierced iron.)
According to myth, in the seventh century a dragon, named Gargouille rose from the waters of the Seine River in France. Unlike the typical dragons of mythology, this one did not breathe fire, but rather was a water dragon. The monster proceeded to lay waste to the countryside around Paris by drowning it. St. Romanus (Romain), the Archbishop of Rouen, accompanied only by a condemned prisoner, set out to stop the beast. Upon confronting the monster, the saint formed a cross with his two index fingers, taming Gargouille. The dragon was led back to Paris, where it was slain and burned. In some versions, the head, however, was saved and mounted on a building, giving rise to the practice of mounting gargoyles on buildings.
It’s a neat story, but it is not the origin of the word gargoyle. Almost nothing is known of St. Romanus, and the story of Gargouille the dragon doesn’t appear until some seven centuries after his death and after the architectural practice and the term were well established. It’s more likely that the gargoyles on buildings inspired the story rather than the other way around.
Sources:
Butler’s Lives of the Saints, vol. 4 of 4. Herbert Thurson and Donald Attwater, eds. Westminster, Maryland: Christian Classics, 1956, 183. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013, s.v. gargola. Brepols.
Lydgate, John. Troy Book (c. 1425), vol. 1 of 4. Early English Text Society (EETS), Extra Series 97. London: K. Paul, Trench, & Trübner, 1906, lines 2.695–700, 164. HathiTrust Digital Library.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. gargoile, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. gargoyle, n.
Salzman, L.F. Building in England, Down to 1540: A Documentary History. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952, 108. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Photo credit: Jebulon, 2015, public domain image.