A true gargoyle is a water spout: if water does not pour through a trough in its back and out of its mouth, it is a grotesque, a chimera, a boss, or in some regions a hunky punk. The word comes from the Old French gargouille and the root garg, meaning throat, the same root as gargle. Legend says the seventh century bishop Saint Romanus subdued a winged, fire-breathing dragon called the Gargouille near Rouen and burned it, but its fireproof head and neck would not burn, so townspeople mounted them on a church wall. Long necks were an engineering need, throwing rainwater clear of walls so it would not wash out mortar, and Gothic builders cut channels into flying buttresses to feed them. The idea is ancient: of 102 marble lion-head spouts on the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, only 39 survived.

In the 12th century the Church used gargoyles as visual warnings for illiterate congregations, though Bernard of Clairvaux attacked the monsters placed in cloisters as ridiculous distractions. Carvers turned to symbolic animals and then humans, including sinners spouting water from mouths or backsides. Underpaid stonemasons carved mocking corbel heads of clergy high on buildings like Reims Cathedral, unseen until 20th century photographers climbed the scaffolding. The London Building Act of 1724 required downpipes, ending the functional gargoyle.

• Medieval lions symbolized Christ, from myths of erasing tracks with their tails and reviving cubs after three days
• The hippopotamus and rhinoceros at Laon Cathedral are modern restoration additions with no medieval meaning
• Some gargoyles depicted moneylenders, prostitutes, and even women reading as sinners
• Gutzon Borglum carved grotesques for Princeton, and George B. Post used them in New York City
• John Taylor Arms’s etchings of Notre Dame and Amiens spread their image across America