referred to, says of the Mora:—"In prora ejusdem navis fecit fieri cadem Matildes, infantulum de auro, dextro indice monstrantem Angliam et sinistra mano imprimentem cornu eburneum ori": which, being translated, is: "In the prow of the same ship the said Mathilda caused to be fashioned a golden figure of a boy, pointing with his right fore-finger towards England, and with his left hand pressing an ivory horn to his mouth." The Tapestry shows what is evidently this boy, but places the figure at the stern instead of at the prow, and puts the horn into the right hand, and a gonfanon into the left. This is exactly the kind of not entirely baseless inaccuracy which might be expected in a canvas worked on hearsay evidence by ladies personally unfamiliar with the matters to be celebrated; and
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THE "MORA."
(From the Bayeux Tapestry.)
it possibly affords a fair general measure of the amount of confidence that ought to be placed in the Tapestry.
In the picture of the Mora, the single mast is surmounted by a gold cross,[1] below which appears a banner of white, charged with a gold cross within a blue border. There is a single sail, the sheet of which is held by the steersman; and this sail is of vertical stripes, red, brown,[2] and red. In his right hand, over the starboard quarter, the steersman holds the clavus, which is shaped somewhat like a capital J, with a cross-piece recalling the yoke of a modern boat's rudder. Other vessels in the Tapestry have an anchor hanging at the bows; or are being pulled by rowers; or are being
