From: Brad Westervelt
Subject: hippogryph
Date: December 18, 2004
To: Bruce Sterling
"Not every city has funereal hippogryphs.
Most cities don't have hippogryphs at all."
Loved the picture. This week I married a Griffin and thanks to her, have become well acquainted with the definition of the mythical creature. The beautiful, impressive carving you identified as a 'funereal hippogryph' is actually a Griffin, as it has the body and hindquarters of a lion. If it had a horse's ass and cloven hooves it would have been a hippogryph.
I continue to enjoy your travel pix and blogging.
Brad Westervelt
PS Your Dead Media link is dead. ;-} !?!
(((It's a shame, man – but someday they'll
kick up the bandwidth and allow me to
pack in shaky, seven megabyte tourist
home movies. Felicitations on your
marriage and thanks for the comment.)))
"The hippogryph, living far beyond the seas in the Rhiphaean Mountains, is the result of the rare breeding of a male gryphon and a filly. It has the head, wings and front legs of a gryphon, and the back and hind legs of a horse. It is a large powerful creature that can move through the air more swiftly than ligthning. It figured in several of the legends of Charlemagne as a mount for some of the knights."
http://www.gryphonpages.com/literature/literature1.htm
Repair your shocking ignorance of gryphons with the Gryphon Pages
