WTF Is a Boy Doing Swinging From a Tree....In a Prayer Book
Psalm 5. A prayer for the dead. And a bloke swinging from a tree. What the actual fuck?
This is one of those images I found when I was digging into medieval marginalia.
It's in a French Book of Hours β basically a medieval personal prayer book, packed with prayers and readings β made around 1300β1310 for use in the diocese of Cambrai. It's now held by the Walters Art Museum.
And on one page, someone has drawn this:
a person β possibly a young boy β swinging from a tree.
Which is lovely.
Except...
the page is accompanying Psalm 5, a reading for the dead.
So...
what the fuck is he doing there?
The Walters describes the image as an opportunity for the artist to have some fun β something unrelated to the accompanying text and apparently intended to make us imagine carefree behaviour.
But that's where I'm going to stop pretending I know what was going through the artist's head.
Because there isn't a little medieval speech bubble saying:
βRight, Psalm 5. Reading for the dead. I know β let's put a boy swinging from a tree here.β
We have the image.
We have Psalm 5.
We have the manuscript.
And we have an artist who apparently thought a boy swinging from a tree was worth putting here.
Was it simply a bit of visual fun?
A reminder of carefree childhood?
Did the artist even think about the relationship between the image and the text?
We don't know.
Make of it what you will.