File:Mazes and labyrinths; a general account of their history and developments (1922) (14761631566).jpg

Identifier: mazeslabyrinthsg1922matt (find matches)
Title: Mazes and labyrinths; a general account of their history and developments
Year: 1922 (1920s)
Authors: Matthews, William Henry, 1882-
Subjects: Labyrinths
Publisher: London, New York, etc. Longmans, Green
Contributing Library: Boston College Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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he Fates will find a way), amotto adopted in England by the Berkshire Vansittarts.Our illustration is copied from an early seventeenth-cen-tury book entitled Devises Heroiques et Emblernes,by Claude Paradin. In the text it is stated that par ce labyrinthe . . .se pourroit entendre que pour rencontrer la voye, &chemin de vie eternelle, la grace de Dieu nous adresse:nous mettant entre les mains le filet de ses saincts com-mandemens. A ce que le tenans & suivans tousiours nousvenions a nous tirer hors des dangereux foruoyemens desdestroits modains. In other words, the device may betaken as emblematical of the temptation-labyrinth of this 96 worldly life, which can only be safely traversed by meansof the Ariadne thread of divine grace. The design in this case is of a peculiar type, but itmay be very easily derived from the simple split-ring orPigs in Clover design (Fig. 144). We have in the two cases just mentioned, as in thecase of the pavement labyrinths, an association with the
Text Appearing After Image:
Fig. 71.—Labyrinth Device of Archbishop of Embrun. (After C. Paradin.) Church or with ecclesiastics. At the same time we knowthat, in England at any rate, the turf mazes were usedfor sportive purposes in the days of Elizabeth, and thereis, so far, a lack of contemporary reference to their em-ployment in a devotional or penitential capacity. * Tread-ing or threading the maze was a favourite game forseveral generations. Seeing that the path in the turfmaze has as a rule no branches or dead-ends, the sport inquestion would appear to have been rather simple in 97 character, unless we imagine the participants to havebeen blindfolded for the purpose or primed with atankard or two of some jocund beverage. Let us refer once more to that chapter of PlinysNatural History in which he says that we must notcompare the Egyptian and other labyrinths with whatwe see traced on our mosaic pavements or to the mazesformed in the fields for the entertainment of children. Theitalicised words clearly show

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