Sticking out along the cornices of many Gothic Cathedrals are little beastly beings with angry madcap faces known as Gargoyles. It is safe to say they are not poised there, eyes outward, gnarly teeth at the ready, for their health. They are certainly meant as sentries, presenting a sort of anti-evil force field to protect the precious and fragile faith of the mighty but not invulnerable Lord. Arising from the Latin word "gurgulio" the word literally means throat and also the sound water makes passing through the throat. It French is comes from the same root as gargle. Thus, a true Gargoyle is a fountain, or at least something that conveys water through itself, sucking it up-and spitting it out. Technically, those serried beasts we see lining up along the highest edges of Gothic structures are not gargoyles, since they don't spout for the most part, but rather they are called Grotesques. Over time the term gargoyles seems to have encompassed these grotesques, and so for the purpose of this entry on the subject, gargoyle may in fact be considered a synonym for a grotesque.
Although there are a vast array of gargoyles out there, with as many faces, expressions, body-types as there are species of bird, there is a common thread that seemed to be modeled on a creature known as the Griffin, a winged lion with an eagle's beak. A mythological creature surely, it has nonetheless been discovered that there was in fact a dinosaur, the protoceratops, that approximated the reality of a griffin. According to Adrienne Mayor, in her book The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontogoly in Greek and Roman Times, nomads, scratching about in the dust hundreds of years before Chirst was even born, much less celebrated, discovered the prehistoric fossilized remains of the protoceratops in central Asia which lived over 65 million years ago. Mayor put the mythological and historical to puzzle together in a wild flash one day while in a museum, checking out bronzed Griffins for the Temple of Samos. There was something about the quality of the bronzed beasts that informed her they were not simply works of fiction, the details were too rich-too consistent-and then it came to her. They were based on the fossils found by these pre-Christian nomads. The dinosaurs were indeed about the size of a lion at maturity, had bird like beaks, as did all dinosaurs, and had little bumps on their backs that, if one squinted could easily morph into majestic wings. Sculptors in the Middle Ages delighted in creating these gnarly fellows as it was the one sure place that imagination was allowed to flourish.
Gargoyles, as has been said, were a varied lot, and it is not sufficient to pin the etymological supposition of one very gifted author on all the nations of these creatures that populate the Cathedrals of the Middle Ages. If one looks at the lizard-like beauties suspended at dangerous angles from Notre Dame, the gargoyles are much more dragonlike than lionlike, and it is therefore prudent to consider dragons over griffins to round out the picture.
Once upon a time a monster dragon lived in a cave near the river Seine, near Paris, whose name was La Gargouille. He had a very long reptilian neck, a hawkish spout and fleshy wings, wings that expanded to an enormous span to carry him through the air as quick as light, with the jittery movements of a bat. Over the years he would douse many a ship to their watery deaths by spouting ungodly amounts of water upon them. Were that not enough, he could also spout long molten-hot strands of fire! Naturally, he caused primordial fear and loathing in the townspeople. A tradition developed in the hamlet known as Rouen whereby the people would offer up a victim to placate the monster. Usually, they would kill two birds by offering a nasty criminal they wanted dead anyhow, but for the best results, sad to say, it was when they offered up maidens that the dragon would back off in earnest. Finally, in around 600 a certain St Romanus came along and promised to do away with the dragon once and for all. The catch was the townspeople had to agree to be baptized and follow the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. This was no biggie and adroitly St. Romanus subdued the beast by inflicting him with what amounted to Cryptonite, the Cross! The beast lost all his powers and was led by his throat by a leash made from the robes of the priests. They could not risk the beast gaining back his strength to seek revenge, so they burned the nasty at the stake. Problem was, because his neck was cured by its own flames, there was no fire hot enough to turn it to ash. Thus, they took these remains, the vastly imposing head and terrifically long neck, and mounted them for all to see on the church. This then, became the prototype for the Gargoyle for hundreds of years, and even until this day.
Historically, it is a known fact that during the Middle Ages when most of the Gothic Cathedrals were built and likewise the gargoyles protruding from their sides were affixed, the vast majority of the people could neither read nor write. This left quite a bit of the lesson teaching left to the sermons of the priests and the visualizations of the church. And what is more visual than the Gargoyle? Some considered Gargoyles biblical in nature, others though considered them something other, something more like manifestations of evil, the devil so to speak. As if to fight fire with fire, the broad belief was that the goodness of God was under constant threat from the Dark side which was forever trying to exploit fissures in the imperfect façade of the Church. Thus, whether your belief was more scientific, believing the gargoyles were replicas of ancient beasts, or mythological, believing the gargoyles were the heads of dragons, no one doubted that they were devised as sentries to protect the goodness of God from the dark seeping fingers of Satin.
Gargoyles hold a place in popular culture as a necessary ingredient of all things Gothic. The terms has become to mean not simply dark, but sexy, and Gargoyles seem to be ushers of this most honest sensation that courses just beneath the surface of even the most mild mannered of us all. But should you want, say, to get your hands on an actual stone gargoyle to keep your garden safe-and fashionable-than a stone cutter is only a phone call away in Chicago. Walter S. Arnold uses them to create the bases of benches are as gags, really, for wives to buy for their husbands to monumentalize their grumpiness. The best example of this is the MacDougal, commissioned by a Scottish woman for her husband. The brute wields a shield which bears the words "BUAIDH NO BAS" (victory or death) which seems to sum up a gargoyle's mindset to a T.