STRANGE REVELATIONS the Catholic faith." He said this in a joking manner truly, but I could see that he jested in earnest: he further assured me as a positive fact that both devil-worship and a belief in witchcraft existed in the county. He said, "I could tell you many strange things of my rural experiences," and he did—how the devil is supposed to haunt the churchyards in the shape of a toad, and how witchcraft is practised, etc. "You may well look astonished," he exclaimed, "at what I tell you, but these things are so; they have come under my notice, and I speak advisedly from personal knowledge."
Presently we reached the village of Osbournby; here the church looked interesting, so we stopped in order to take a glance inside, and were well rewarded for our trouble by discovering a number of very fine and quaintly-carved medieval bench-ends in an excellent state of preservation. Medieval carvings have generally a story to tell, though being without words some people are forgetful of the fact, deeming them merely ornamental features, and so miss the carver's chief aim because they do not look for it; sometimes, by way of relief, they have a joke to make, now and then they are keenly sarcastic: but the stories—not the jokes—mostly need time to elucidate, for they often mean more than meets the eye at a hurried glance; moreover they have to be read in the spirit of the age that produced them. One of the bench-end carvings at Osbournby that is particularly noticeable represents a cunning-looking fox standing up in a pulpit
