Studia Islandica - 01.07.1966, Blaðsíða 33

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with many sea creatures and some mythological beings.
The signs of the zodiac are depicted on the gates. Phoebus
himself sits on his throne surrounded by the hours, days,
months, years, and ages, and the four seasons. Ovid was well
known and widely read in the middle ages, and many of
the later descriptions of similar buildings could well have
been influenced directly by this passage.
The fourth motive, of the turning of the building, would
seem to be a development of the astrological motives: the
heavens were depicted on the roof, so the roof must be made
to turn according to the positions of the heavenly bodies in
the sky. Staring at the ceiling of a large vaulted building
can sometimes cause giddiness, and give the impression that
the building is revolving. It may be that the motive origi-
nated in garhled travellers’ tales of the wonderful buildings
to be seen in the East.1 Whatever its origin, it is clear that
this motive transfers the building to the realm of romance.
It is not present in Ovid, but it is at least implied in some of
the later Greek descriptions.2 If the tuming was at first
associated with the movement of the heavenly bodies, this
connection was soon forgotten, for in many of the medieval
descriptions belonging to this tradition the building not only
revolves but whirls round. The whirling building soon he-
came a commonplace in the landscape of the Romances and
appears also in Irish literature. It is natural to assume, al-
though it is not altogether certain, that this tradition found
its way into French literature from its ultimate classical
origins via Celtic. In most cases the main point of the whirl-
ing of the building is that it makes the building difficult to
enter (as in the house of Rumour in Chaucer’s House of
1 Cf. E Faral, Recherches sur les sources Latines des contes et ro-
mans courtois du moyen age (Paris 1913), pp. 323—324, note; Jules
Horrent, Le Pélerinage de Charlemagne. Essai d’explication littéraire,
Bibliothéque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l’Université de
Liége, Fasc. CLVIII (Paris 1961), p. 56.
2 See Margaret Schlauch, “The Palace of Hugon de Constantinople,”
p. 511.