Norfolk Pilgrim

I was looking for clues to give me a better understanding of what I think of as "my Hautbois font-base." Detail from Hautbois font-base. Bingo! I think I got the chap!  He turns up on a grit stone tomb slab from beneath York Minster (YorkM: 1993.713) I imagine that it is on the basis of the next picture that the scene depicted is interpreted as slaying of the dragon Fafnir by Sigurd as recorded in the Volsunga Saga. At this alarm bells should ring!  The Volsunga Saga is late 13th C. The earliest German versions of the story, in which Sigurd is called Siegfried,  begin in 12th C!  A parallel story is told in the Anglo Saxon epic,  Beowulf -  a text that J.R.R. Tolkien argued must have come from the Conversion period, perhaps some date close to 700 C.E.. The York sculptures above are dated to the 10th C. Consequently they pre-date Scandinavian visual depictions of the story from 11th C onward by 100 years and the Volsunga Saga ...

This font base was recently rescued from the church of Holy Trinity, Hautbois before the redundant church was handed over to the Guides as an extra building for their Hautbois Activities Centre . As far as I know it's providence is as follows : It had been buried and discovered in the 19th C when the nave of , the now ruined, church of St.Mary (a.k.a. St.Theobald) was being cleared. Historic England record the font in these terms: E arly C12 font base, supporting C19 square bawl. Base carved with entwined winged serpents, divided from the foliated base section by double keel moulding. I imagine "bawl" is a typo. What they do not say, although this is true, is,  "the square bowl it is utterly hideous!"  To my mind the lower layer of the font base is not so much foliate as waves of the sea, but perhaps I am reading too much into it. In any case, the meaning of the iconography seems to be clear enough, "We are rescued from chaos, through the wa...