ANSTHRLD - quick questions

Timothy A. McDaniel tmcd at jump.net
Tue Jul 18 10:39:49 PDT 2000


"Deborah Sweet/soc/cas/Okstate" <dssweet at okstate.edu> wrote:
> 1 - The hedgehog is drawn with an apple & a pear stuck in its spines. Is
> that standard for a hedgehog? And since the fruit isn't mentioned it's the
> same color as the hedgehog?

The Aberdeen Bestiary Project, at
    http://www.clues.abdn.ac.uk:8080/besttest/alt/comment/det_com/h_hogs.html
says
    Hedgehogs, covered in bristles and prone to roll up in a
    ball, carry grapes back to their young by impaling them on
    their spines.
The illustration is gorgeous and excruciatingly cute.  They look
like little stegasauruses, with the fruit all along their
spines.  It's hard to tell what color they are.

    http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~chilton/TheBestiaryProject.htm
has much the same story, specifying grapes in particular, but
gives no source.

    http://pages.ancientsites.com/~Lucius_Aelius/flowers/bestiary.html
mentions the history of bestiaries, but gives no source for
    Ericius the Hedgehog, which at harvest time rolled on the
    ground, gathering grapes on its spins and taking them back to
    its young
and that wording is modern.

    http://www.adh.bton.ac.uk/schoolofdesign/MA.COURSE/LPI02.html
has some fascinating woodcuts, but the rather mournful-looking
hedgehog has no fruit on its spines (perhaps why it's so
mournful).

So I don't know where they got an apple and a pear for their
hedgehog.  I would depict them (based on the one period example I
have to hand) as along the spine, and making them in the same
tincture as the hedgehog would work (since they would then be
visually lying on the field) and I'm not sure about making them
any other tincture.

Daniel de Lincolia
-- 
Tim McDaniel is tmcd at jump.net; if that fail,
    tmcd at us.ibm.com is my work account.
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