ANTIQUITIES OF NORMANDY.
107
(plate eighty-eight , Jig. a.) may bear a comparison, in point of singularity, with those of any otherNorman church. The sacred emblem of the Christian faith, the wimpled nun, the whiskered Saxon ,and the wolf, the scourge of Neustria , are found among them, side by side with the Atlas and Cyclopsof heathen mythology; and, as if the legends of Rome and Greece could not furnish sufficient subjectsfor the sculptor’s chisel, he appears to have extended his researches into the more remote regions,bordering upon the Nile , and thence to have imported a rude imitation of the Egyptian head, and onestill more rude of the mystic Scarabeeus.
PLATES LXXXIX. AND XC.
CASTLE OF FALAISE.
Whoever can take pleasure in the wildest extravagancies of absurd fiction, displayed in theoriesdestitute of even the slender basis of tradition, yet raised with plausibility, connected with ingenuity,and supported by learning, may find abundant gratification in the early history of Falaise. The town,as stated in a manuscript gazetteer of Normandy , written in the seventeenth century, was not onlyamong the most ancient in Gaul, but was founded by one of the grandsons of Noah. According toanother yet more grave authority, its antiquity soars still higher, and mounts to the period of the delugeitself. It so far exceeds that of the Roman empire, that, long before the building of the immortal city,colonies were sent from Falaise into Italy , where they were known by the Aborigines, under the namesof Falisci or Falerii. A third writer, M. Langevin, author of the JRecherches Historiques sur Falaise ,assures his readers that Falaise was, from time immemorial, a station consecrated to religion ; and, ina dissertation full of the most recondite information relative to the worship of Belenus and Abrasax ,Isis and Fele, he so connects and intermingles the rites of those deities with the place and its vicinity,that he can scarcely be said to do it less honor than his predecessors.
To turn from historians of this sanguine complexion to those of a more sober temperament, therewill appear no reason for believing that the town of Falaise had existence prior to the incursions of theSaxons, or the establishment of the Normans, in Neustria . No mention of it whatever is to be foundprevious to the latter of these times; and its very name, obviously derived from the German word for arock, fels, whence the French subsequently borrowed their appellation for cliffs, falaise, seems decisiveas to the foundation of the town by some people of Teutonic origin. It is at the same time altogethercharacteristic of its situation.
That Falaise was built by the Saxons , may probably, with justice, be inferred from the fact of itsbeing casually mentioned during the reign of Rollo , as one of the places through which he passed in theyear 912, while visiting the different parts of his duchy. The town cannot but have been of importancein the time of his son, William Longue-Epee; as that prince is stated to have received great assistancefrom the inhabitants of Falaise, and the district of the Hiemois, when engaged in a war with the peopleof Brittanny. It is more than possible that the fortifications were added, and the castle erected, byone or the other of these sovereigns*. Their immediate successor, Richard Sans-Peur , is stated tohave made considerable additions to the works of the place, which, in the early part of the followingcentury, under Richard hi., the fifth of the Norman Dukes,'was unquestionably one of the strongestholds of the province. Not long afterwards, Falaise rose into new importance, as the residence ofRobert, father to the Conqueror, and the birth-place of that sovereign himself, to whom it rendered
* At the same time that no record whatever has been preserved relative to the date of the building of the castle at Falaise,the Norman chroniclers have carefully recorded the aeras of the erection of the other castles in the neighborhood. Thn ofDomfront, according to them, was built a.d. 1011 and 1014, by the Counts of Alenjon; that of Caen, by William the Conqueror ,but much increased by his son, Henry r.; that of Yignats, a league and a half from Falaise, about the year 1096, during thedukedom of Robert, by Robert of Montgomery, Count of Alenfon, and Viscount of IMmes and of Falaise; and that of Argentan ,by Henry i., King of England, by way of protection against his son-in-law, Geoffrey Plantagenet .—Recherches Historiquessur Falaise, p. 22.