VI. PUCK
"Do you imagine that Robin Goodfellow--a mere name to you--conveys anything like the meaning to your mind that it did to those for whom the name represented a still living belief, and who had the stories about him at their fingers' ends? Or let me ask you, Why did the fairies dance on moonlight nights? or, Have you ever thought why it is that in English literature, and in English literature alone, the fairy realm finds a place in the highest works of imagination?" --F. S. HARTLAND.
In British Faërie there figures prominently a certain "Man in the Oak": according to Keightley, Puck, alias Robin Goodfellow, was known as this "Man in the Oak," and he considers that the word pixy "is evidently Pucksy, the endearing diminutive sy being added to Puck like Bet_sy_, Nan_cy_, Dix_ie_".[255] It is probable that this adjectival si recurring in _sw_eet, _so_oth, _su_ave, _sw_an, etc., may be equated with the Sanscrit su, which, as in _sw_astika, is a synonym for the Greek eu, meaning soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious. When used as an affix, this "endearing diminutive" yields spook, which was seemingly once "dear little Pook," or "soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious Puck". In Wales the fairies were known as "Mothers' Blessings," and although spook now carries a sinister sense, there is no more reason to suppose that "dear little Pook" was primarily malignant than to suggest that the Holy Ghost was--in the modern sense--essentially ghastly. Skeat suggests that ghost (of uncertain origin) "is perhaps allied to Icelandic geisa, to rage like fire, and to Gothic us-gais-yan, to terrify". Some may be aghast at this suggestion, others, who cannot conceive the Supreme Sprite except as a raging and consuming fury, will commend it. In the preceding chapter I suggested that the elementary derivation of ghost was 'goes, the Great Life or Essence, and as te in Celtic meant good, it may be permissible to modernise ghoste, also Kostey of the egg, into great life good.
That there was a good and a bad Puck is to be inferred from the West of England belief in Bucca Gwidden, the white or good spirit, and Bucca Dhu, the black, malevolent one.[256] Puck, like Dan Cupid, figures in popular estimation as a pawky little pickle; in Brittany the dolmens are known as poukelays or Puck stones, and the particular haunts of Puck were heaths and desert places. The place-name Picktree suggests one of Puck's sacred oaks; Pickthorne was presumably one of Puck's hawthorns, and the various Pickwells, Pickhills, Pickmeres, etc., were once, in all probability, spook-haunted. The highest point at Peckham, near London, is Honor Oak or One Tree Hill, and Peckhams or Puckhomes are plentiful in the South of England. One of them was inferentially near Ockham, at Great and Little Bookham, where the common or forest consists practically solely of the three pre-eminently fairy-trees--oak, hawthorne, and holly. The summit of the Buckland Hills, above Mickleham, is the celebrated, box-planted Boxhill, and at its foot runs Pixham or Pixholme Lane. On the height, nearly opposite Pixham Lane, the Ordnance Map marks Pigdon, but the roadway from Bookham to Boxhill is known, not as Pigdon Hill, but Bagden Hill. In all probability the terms Pigdon and Bagden are the original British forms of the more modern Pixham and Bok's Hill.
In the North of England Puck seems more generally Peg, whence the fairy of the river Ribble was known as Peg O'Nell, and the nymph of the Tees, as Peg Powler.[257] Peg--a synonym for Margaret--is generally interpreted as having meant pearl.
The word puck or peg, which varies in different parts of the country into pug, pouke, pwcca, poake, pucke, puckle, and phooka, becomes elsewhere bucca, bug, bogie, bogle, boggart, buggaboo, and bugbear.
According to all accounts the Pucks, like the Buccas, were divided into two classes, "good and bad," and it was only the clergy who maintained that "one and the same malignant fiend meddled in both". As Scott rightly observes: "Before leaving the subject of fairy superstition in England we may remark that it was of a more playful and gentle, less wild and necromantic character, than that received among the sister people. The amusements of the southern fairies were light and sportive; their resentments were satisfied with pinching or scratching the objects of their displeasure; their peculiar sense of cleanliness rewarded the housewives with the silver token in the shoe; their nicety was extreme concerning any coarseness or negligence which could offend their delicacy; and I cannot discern, except, perhaps, from the insinuations of some scrupulous divines, that they were vassals to or in close alliance with the infernals, as there is too much reason to believe was the case with their North British sisterhood."[258]
The elemental Bog is the Slavonic term for God,[259] and when the early translators of the Bible rendered "terror by night" as "bugs by night" they probably had spooks or bogies in their mind. In Etruria as in Egypt the bug or maybug was revered as the symbol of the Creator Bog, because the Egyptian beetle has a curious habit of creating small pellets or balls of mud. In Welsh bogel means the navel, also centre of a wheel, and hence Margaret or Peggy may be equated with the nave or peg of the white-rayed Marguerite or Day's Eye.[260]
It must constantly be borne in mind that the ancients never stereotyped their Ideal, hence there was invariably a vagueness about the form and features of prehistoric Joy, and Shakespeare's reference to Dan Cupid as a "senior-junior, giant-dwarf," may be equally applied to every Elf and Pixy. It is unquestionable that in England as in Scandinavia and Germany "giants and dwarfs were originally identical phenomenon".[261]
In the words of an Orphic Hymn "Jove is both male and an immortal maid": Venus was sometimes represented with a beard, and as the Supreme Parent was indiscriminately regarded as either male or female, or as both combined, an occasional contradiction of form is not to be unexpected. The authorities attribute the contrariety of sex which is sometimes assigned to the Cornish saints as being due to carelessness on the part of transcribers, but in this case the monks may be exonerated, as the greater probability is that they faithfully transmitted the pagan legends. The Moon, which, speaking generally, was essentially a symbol of the Mother, was among some races, e.g., the Teutons and the Egyptians, regarded as masculine. In Italy at certain festivals the men dressed in women's garments, worshipped the Moon as Lunus, and the women dressed like men, as Luna. In Wales the Cadi, as we have seen, was dressed partially as a woman, partially as a man, and in all probability the cassock of the modern priest is a survival of the ambiguous duality of Kate or Good. In Irish the adjective mo--derived seemingly from Mo or Ma, the Great Mother--meant greatest, and was thus used irrespective of sex.
The French word lune, like moon and choon, is radically une, the initial consonants being merely adjectival, and is just as sexless as our one, Scotch ane. In Germany hunne means giant, and the term "Hun," meant radically anyone formidable or gigantic.
The Cornish for full moon is cann, which is a slightly decayed form of ak ann or great one, and this word can, or khan, meaning prince, ruler, king or great one, is traceable in numerous parts of the world. Can or chan was Egyptian for lord or prince; can was a title of the kings of ancient Mexico; khan is still used to-day by the kings of Tartary and Burmah and by the governors of provinces in Persia, Afghanistan, and other countries of Central Asia. In China kong means king, and in modern England king is a slightly decayed form of the Teutonic konig or kinig. The ancient British word for mighty chief was chun or cun, and we meet with this infinitely older word than king as a participle of royal titles such as _Cun_obelinus, _Cun_oval, _Cun_omor and the like. The same affix was used in a similar sense by the Greeks, whence Apollo was styled _Cun_ades and also _Cun_nins. The Cornish for prince was kyn, and this term, as also the Irish cun, meaning chief, is evidently far more primitive than the modern king, which seems to have returned to us through Saxon channels. Prof. Skeat expresses his opinion that the term king meant "literally a man of good birth," and he identifies it with the old High German chunig. Other authorities equate it with the Sanscrit janaka, meaning father, whence it is maintained that the original meaning of the word was "father of a tribe". Similarly the word queen is derived by our dictionaries from the Greek gyne, a woman, or the Sanscrit jani, "all from root gan, to produce, from which are genus, kin, king, etc."
The word chen in Cornish meant cause, and there is no doubt a connection between this term and kyn, the Cornish for prince; the connection, however, is principally in the second syllable, and I see no reason to doubt my previous conclusions formulated elsewhere, that kyn or king originally meant great one, or high one, whereas chun, jani, gyne, etc., meant aged one.
One of the first kings of the Isle of Man was Hacon or Hakon, a name which the dictionaries define as having meant high kin. In this etymology ha is evidently equated with high and con or kon with kin, but it is equally likely that Hakon or Haakon meant originally uch on the high one. In Cornish the adjective ughan or aughan meant supreme: the Icelandic for queen is kona, and there is no more radical distinction between king and the disyllabic kween, than there is between the Christian names Ion, Ian, and the monosyllabic Han.
Janaka, the Sanscrit for father, is seemingly allied to the English adjective jannock or jonnack, which may be equated more or less with canny. _Un_canny means something unwholesome, unpleasant, disagreeable; in Cornish cun meant sweet or affable, and we still speak of sweets as candies.
In Gaelic cenn or ken meant head, the highest peak in the Himalayas is Mount Kun; one of the supreme summits of Africa is Mount Kenia, and in Genesis (14-19) the Hebrew word Konah is translated into English as "the Most High God". Of this Supreme Sprite the cone or pyramid was a symbol, and the reverence in which this form was held at Albano in Etruria may be estimated from the monument here depicted.[262] In times gone by khans, cuns, or kings were not only deemed to be moral and intellectual gods, but in some localities bigness of person was cultivated. The Maoris of New Zealand, whose tattooings are identical in certain respects with the complicated spirals found on megaliths in Brittany and Ireland, and who in all their wide wanderings have carried with them a totemic dove, used to believe bigness to be a royal essence. "Every means were used to acquire this dignity; a large person was thought to be of the highest importance; to acquire this extra size, the child of a chief was generally provided with many nurses, each contributing to his support by robbing their own offspring of their natural sustenance; thus, whilst they were half-starved, miserable-looking little creatures, the chief's child was the contrary, and early became remarkable by its good appearance."[263]
The British adjective big is of unknown origin and has no Anglo-Saxon equivalent. In Norway bugge means a strong man, but in Germany bigge denoted a little child--as also a pig. The site of Troy--the famous Troy--is marked on modern maps Bigha, the Basque for eye is beguia; bega is Celtic for life. A fabulous St. Bega is the patron-saint of Cumberland; there is a Baggy Point near Barnstaple, and a Bigbury near Totnes--the alleged landing place of the Trojans. Close to Canterbury are some highlands also known as Bigbury, and it is probable that all these sites were named after beguia, the Big Eye, or Buggaboo, the Big Father.
At Canterbury paleolithic implements have been found which supply proof of human occupation at a time when the British Islands formed part of the Continent, and, according to a scholarly but anonymous chronology exhibited in a Canterbury Hotel, "Neolithic, bronze, and iron ages show continuous occupation during the whole prehistoric period. The configuration of the city boundaries and the still existing traces of the ancient road in connection with the stronghold at Bigbury indicate that a populous community was settled on the site of the present Canterbury at least as early as the Iron Age."
The branching antlers of the buck were regarded as the rays of the uprising sun or Big Eye, and a sacred procession, headed by the antlers of a buck raised upon a pole, was continued by the clergy of St. Paul's Cathedral as late as the seventeenth century.[264] A scandalised observer of this ceremony in 1726 describes "the whole company blowing hunters' horns in a sort of hideous manner, and with this rude pomp they go up to the High Altar and offer it there. You would think them all the mad votaries of Diana!" On this occasion, evidently in accordance with immemorial wont, the Dean and Chapter wore special vestments, the one embroidered with bucks, the other with does. The buck was seemingly associated with Puck, for it was popularly supposed that a spectre appeared periodically in Herne's Oak at Windsor headed with the horns of a buck. So too was Father Christmas or St. Nicholas represented as riding Diana-like in a chariot drawn by bucks.
The Greek for buck or stag is elaphos, which is radically elaf, and it is a singular coincidence that among the Cretan paleolithic folk in the Fourth Glacial Period "Certain signs carved on a fragment of reindeer horn are specially interesting from the primitive anticipation that they present of the Phoenician letter alef".[265]
Peg or Peggy is the same word as pig, and it is generally supposed that the pig was regarded as an incarnation of the "Man in the Oak," i.e., Puck or Buck, because the bacco or bacon lived on acorns. There is little doubt that the Saint Baccho of the Church Calendar is connected with the worship of the earlier Bacchus, for the date of St. Baccho's festival coincides with the vintage festival of Bacchus. The symbolism of the pig or bacco will be discussed in a subsequent chapter, meanwhile one may here note that hog is the same as oak, and swine is identical with swan. So also Meg is connected with muc or moch which were the Celtic terms for hog. Among the appellations of ancient Ireland was Muc Inis,[266] or Hog Island and Moccus, or the pig, was one of the Celtic sobriquets for Mercury. The Druids termed themselves "Swine of Mon,"[267] the Phoenician priests were also self-styled Swine, and there is a Welsh poem in which the bard's opening advice to his disciples is--"Give ear little pigs".
The pig figures so frequently upon Gaulish coins that M. de la Saussaye supposed it with great reason to have been a national symbol. That the hog was also a venerated British emblem is evident from the coins here illustrated, and that CUNO was the Spook King is obvious from Figs. 52 and 57, where the features face fore and aft like those of Janus. The word Cunobeline, Cunbelin, or Cymbeline, described by the dictionaries as a Cornish name meaning "lord of the Sun," is composed seemingly of King Belin. Belin, a title of the Sun God, is found also in Gaul, notably on the coinage of the Belindi: Belin is featured as in Fig. 58, and that the sacred Horse of Belin was associated with the ded pillar is evident from Fig. 59.
Commenting upon Fig. 52 a numismatist has observed: "This seems made for two young women's faces," but whether Cunobelin's wives, sisters, or children, he knows not. In Britain doubtless there were many kings who assumed the title of Cunobelin, just as in Egypt there were many Pharoahs; but it is no more rational to suppose that the designs on ancient coins are the portraits of historic kings, their wives, their sisters, their cousins, or their aunts, than it would be for an archæologist to imagine that the dragon incident on our modern sovereigns was an episode in the career of his present Majesty King George.
We shall subsequently connect George, whose name means ploughman, with the Blue or Celestial Boar, which, because it ploughed with its snout along the earth, was termed boar, i.e., boer or farmer. With bacco or bacon may be connoted boukolos, the Greek for cowherd, whence bucolic. The cattle of Apollo, or the Sun, are a familiar feature of Greek mythology.
The female bacon, which inter alia was the symbol of fecundity, was credited with a mystic thirty teats. The sow figures prominently in British mythology as an emblem of Ked, and was seemingly venerated as a symbol of the Universal Feeder. The little pig in Fig. 60, a coin of the Santones, whose capital is marked by the modern town of Saintes, is associated with a fleur-de-lis, the emblem of purity. The word lily is all holy; the porker was associated with the notoriously pure St. Antony as well as with Ked or Kate, the immaculate Magna Mater, and although beyond these indications I have no evidence for the suggestion, I strongly suspect that the scavenging habits of the moch caused it, like the fly or mouche, to be reverenced as a symbol of Ked, Cadi, Katy, or Katerina, whose name means the Pure one or the All Pure. The connection between hog and cock is apparent in the French coche or cochon (origin unknown). Cochon is allied to cigne, the French for swan, Latin, cygnus, Greek, kuknos; the voice of the goose or swan is said to be its cackle, and the Egyptians gave to their All Father Goose a sobriquet which the authorities translate into "The Great Cackler".
Among the meanings assigned to the Hebrew og is "long necked," and it is not improbable that the mysterious Inn sign of the "Swan with two necks" was originally an emblem of Mother and Father Goose. In Fig. 61 the geis or swan is facing fore and aft, like Cuno, which is radically the same Great Uno as Juno or Megale, to whom the goose was sacred. Geyser, a gush or spring, is the same word as geeser, and there was a famous swan with two necks at Goswell Road, where the word Goswell implies an erstwhile well of Gos, Goose, or the Gush.[268] A Wayz_goose_ is a jovial holiday or festival, gust or gusto means enjoyment, and the Greengoose Fair, which used to be held at Stratford, may be connoted with the "Goose-Intentos," a festival which was customarily held on the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost. Pentecost, the time when the Holy Ghost descended in the form of "cloven tongues," resolves into Universal Good Ghost.
The Santones, whose emblem was the Pig and Fleur-de-lis, were neighbours of the Pictones. Our British Picts, the first British tribe known by name to history, are generally supposed to have derived their title because they de_pict_ed pictures on their bodies. In West Cornwall there are rude stone huts known locally as Picts' Houses, but whether these are attributed to the Picts or the Pixies it is difficult to say. In Scotland the "Pechs" were obviously elves, for they are supposed to have been short, wee men with long arms, and such huge feet that on rainy days they stood upside down and used their feet as umbrellas. That the Picts' Houses of Cornwall were attributed to the Pechs is probable from the Scottish belief, "Oh, ay, they were great builders the Pechs; they built a' the auld castles in the country. They stood a' in a row from the quarry to the building stance, and elka ane handed forward the stanes to his neighbour till the hale was bigget."
That the pig and the bogie were intimately associated is evidenced by a Welsh saying quoted by Sir John Rhys:--
A cutty black sow on every style Spinning and carding each November eve.
In Ireland Pooka was essentially a November spirit, and elsewhere November was pre-eminently the time of All Hallows or All Angels. Hallow is the same word as elle the Scandinavian for elf or fairy, and at Michaelmas or Hallowe'en, pixies, spooks, and bogies were notoriously all-abroad:--
On November eve A Bogie on every stile.
The time of All Hallows, or Michaelmas used to be known as Hoketide, a festival which in England was more particularly held upon St. Blaze's Day; and at that cheerless period the people used to light bonfires or make blazes for the purpose of "lighting souls out of Purgatory". In Wales a huge fire was lighted by each household and into the ashes of this _bon_fire, this alban or elphin fire,[269] every member of the family threw a white or "Alban," or an elphin stone, kneeling in prayer around the dying fire.[270] In the Isle of Man Hallowtide was known as Hollantide,[271] which again permits the equation of St. Hellen or Elen and her train with Long Meg and her daughters. On the occasion of the Hallow or Ellie-time saffron or yellow cakes, said to be emblematical of the fires of purgatory, used to be eaten. To run amok in the East means a fiery fury--the words are the same; and that bake (or beeak as in Yorkshire dialect) meant fire is obvious from the synonymous cook. Coch is Welsh for red, and the flaming red poppy or corn_cock_le, French--coquelicot, was no doubt the symbol of the solar poppy, pope, or pap. The Irish for pap or breast is cich, and in Welsh cycho means a hive, or anything of concave or hivelike shape. Possibly here we have the origin of quick in its sense of living or alive.
One of the features of Michaelmas in Scotland was the concoction and cooking of a giant cake, bun, or bannock. According to Martin this was "enormously large, and compounded of different ingredients. This cake belonged to the Archangel, and had its name from him. Every one in each family, whether strangers or domestics, had his portion of this kind of shew-bread, and had of course some tithe to the friendship and protection of Michael."[272] In Hertfordshire during a corresponding period of "joy, plenty, and universal benevolence," the young men assembled in the fields choosing a very active leader who then led them a Puck-like chase through bush and through briar, for the sake of diversion selecting a route through ponds, ditches, and places of difficult passage.[273] The term Ganging Day applied to this festival may be connoted with the Singin 'een of the Scotch Hogmanay, and with the leader of St. Micah's rout may be connoted demagog. This word, meaning popular leader, is attributed to demos, people, and agogos, leading, but more seemingly it is Dame Gog or Good Mother Gog.
In Durham is a Pickburn or Pigburn; beck is a generic term for a small stream; in Devon is a river Becky, and in Monmouthshire a river Beeg. In Kent is Bekesbourne, and Pegwell Bay near St. Margarets in Kent, may be connoted with Backwell or Bachwell in Somerset. In Herefordshire is a British earthwork, known as Bach Camp, and on Bucton Moor in Northumberland there are two earth circles. In Devonshire is Buckland-Egg, or Egg-Buckland, and with the various Boxmoors, Boxgroves, Boxdales, and Boxleys may be connoted the Box river which passes Keynton and crosses Akeman Street. A Christmas box is a boon or a gift, a box or receptacle is the same word as pyx; and that the evergreen undying box-tree was esteemed sacred, is evident from the words of Isaiah: "I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine tree, and the box tree together".[274]
Bacon, radically bac, in neighbouring tongues varies into baco, bakke, bak, and bache. Bacon is a family name immortally associated with St. Albans, and it is probable that Trebiggan--a vast man with arms so long that he could take men out of the ships passing by Land's End, and place them on the Long Ships--was the Eternal Biggan or Beginning. In British Romance there figures a mystic Lady Tryamour, whose name is obviously Tri or Three Love, and it is probable that Giant Trebiggan was the pagan Trinity, or Triton, whose emblem was the three-spiked trident. Triton alias Neptune was the reputed Father of Giant Albion, and the shell-haired deity represented on Figs. 62 to 64 is probably Albon, for the inscription in Iberian characters reads BLBAN. In the East Bel was a generic term meaning lord: in the West it seemingly meant, just as it does to-day, fine or beautiful. The city of BLBAN or beautiful Ban is now Bilbao, and the three fish on this coin are analogous to the trident, and to numberless other emblems of the Triune.
The radiating fan of the cockle shell connects it with the Corn-cockle as the Dawn, standing jocund on the misty mountain tops, is related to the flaming midday Sun. All conchas, particularly the echinea or "St. Cuthbert's Bead," were symbols of St. Katherine or Cuddy, and in Art St. Jacques or St. Jack was always represented with a shell. Coquille, the French for shell, is the same word as goggle, and in England the cockle was popularly connected with a strange custom known as Hot Cockles or Cockle Bread. Full particulars of this practice are given by Hazlitt, who observes: "I entertain a conviction that with respect to these hot cockles, and likewise to leap-candle, we are merely on the threshhold of the enquiry ... the question stands at present much as if one had picked up by accident the husk of some lost substance.... Speaking conjecturally, but with certain sidelights to encourage, this seems a case of the insensible degradation of rite into custom."[275]
Shells are one of the most common deposits in prehistoric graves, and at Boston in Lincolnshire stone coffins have been found completely filled with cockle-shells. There would thus seem to be some connection between Ickanhoe, the ancient name for Boston, a town of the Iceni, situated on the Ichenield Way, and the echinea or concha. As the cockle was particularly the symbol of Birth, the presence of these shells in coffins may be attributed to a hope of New Birth and a belief that Death was the yoni or Gate of Life.
The word inimical implies un-amicable, or unfriendly, whence Michael was seemingly the Friend of Man. Maculate means spotted, and the coins here illustrated, believed to have been minted at St. Albans, obviously feature no physical King but rather the Kaadman or Good Man of St. Albans in his dual aspect of age and youth. The starry, spotted, or maculate effigy is apparently an attempt to depict the astral or spiritual King, for it was an ancient idea that the spirit-body and the spirit-world were made of a so-called stellar-matter--a notion which has recently been revived by the Theosophists who speak of the astral body and the astral plane. Our modern breath, old English breeth, is evidently the Welsh brith which means spotted, and it is to this root that Sir John Rhys attributes the term Brython or Britain, finding in it a reference to that painting or tattooing of the body which distinguished the Picts.[276] The word tattoo, Maori tatau, is the Celtic tata meaning father, and the implication seems to follow that the custom of tattooing arose from picking, dotting, or maculating the tribal totem or caste-mark.
In the Old English representation here illustrated either St. Peter or God the Father is conspicuously tattooed or spotted; Pan was always assigned a _pan_ther's skin, or spotted cloak.
A speck is a minute spot, and among the ancients a speck or dot within a circle was the symbol of the central Spook or Spectre. This, like all other emblems, was understood in a personal and a cosmic sense, the little speck and circle representing the soul surrounded by its round of influence and duties; the Cosmic speck, the Supreme Spirit, and the circle the entire Universe. In many instances the dot and ring seems to have stood for the pupil in the iris of the eye. In addition it is evident that [circled dot] was an emblem of the Breast, and hieroglyphed the speck in the centre of the zone or sein, for the Greek letter theta written--[circled dot] is identical with teta, teat, tada, dot or dad. The dotted effigy on the coins supposedly minted at St. Albans may be connoted with the curious fact that in Welsh the word alban meant a primary point.[277]
Speck is the root of speculum, a mirror, and it might be suggested by the materialist that the first reflection in a metal mirror was assumed to be a spook. The mirror is an attribute of nearly every ancient Deity, and the British Druids seem to have had some system of flashing the sunlight on to the crowd by means of what was termed by the Bards, the Speculum of the Pervading Glance. Specula means a watch-tower, and spectrum means vision. Speech, speak, and spoke, point to the probability that speech was deemed to be the voice of the indwelling spook or spectre, which etymology is at any rate preferable to the official surmise "all, perhaps, from Teutonic base sprek--to make a noise".
The Egyptian hieroglyph here illustrated depicts the speculum of Thoth, a deity whom the Phoenicians rendered Taut, and to whom they attributed the invention of the alphabet and all other arts. The whole land of Egypt was known among other designations as "the land of the Eye," and by the Egyptians as also by the Etrurians, the symbolic blue Eye of Horus was carried constantly as an amulet against bad luck. Fig. 69 is an Egyptian die-stamp, and Figs. 70 to 72 are British coins of which the intricate symbolism will be considered in due course. The arms of Fig. 73 are extended into the act of benediction, and utat, the Egyptian word for this symbol, resolves into the soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious Tat. That the utat or eye was familiar in Europe is evidenced by the Kio coin here illustrated.
Spica, which is also the same word as spook, meant ear of corn; the wheatear is proverbially the Staff of Life, and loaf, old English loof, is the same word as life. Not infrequently the Bona Dea was represented holding a loaf in her extended hand, and the same idea was doubtless expressed by the two breasts upon a dish with which St. Agatha, whose name means Good, is represented. Christianity accounts for this curious emblem by a legend that St. Agatha was tortured by having her breasts cut off, and it is quite possible that this nasty tale is correctly translated; the original tyrant or torturer being probably Winter, or the reaper Death, which cuts short the fruit fulness of Spring. In the Tartar emblem herewith the Phrygian-capped Deity is holding, like St. Agatha, the symbol of the teat or feeder, or fodder.[278]
The wheatear or spica, or buck-wheat was a frequent emblem on our British coins, and to account for this it has been suggested that the British did a considerable export trade in corn; but unfortunately for this theory the spica figures frequently upon the coins of Spain and Gaul. As a symbol the buckwheat typified plenty, but in addition to the wheatear proper there appear kindred objects which have been surmised to be, perhaps, fishbones, perhaps fern-leaves. There is no doubt that these mysterious objects are variants of the so-called "ded" amulet, which in Egypt was the symbol of the backbone of the God of Life. This amulet, of which the hieroglyph has been rendered variously as ded, didu, tet, and tat, has an ancestry of amazing antiquity, and according to Mackenzie, "in Paleolithic times, at least 20,000 years ago, the spine of the fish was laid on the corpse when it was entombed, just as the 'ded,' amulet, which was the symbol of the backbone of Osiris, was laid on the neck of the Egyptian mummy".[279] Frequently this "ded" emblem took the form of a column or pillar, which symbolised the eternal support and stability of the universe. On the summit of Fig. 85 is a bug, _cock_roach, or _cock_chafer: in Etruria as in Egypt the bug amulet or scarabeus was as popular as the Eye of Horus.
In Fig. 68 the spectral Eye was supported by Thoth, whose name varies into Thot, Taut, and numerous intermediate forms, which equate it with ded or dad: similarly it will be found that practically every place-name constituted from Tot or Tat varies into Dot or Dad, e.g., Llan_dud_no, where is found the cradle of St. _Tud_no. Sometimes the Egyptians represented two or more pillars termed deddu, and this word is traceable in Trinidad, an island which, on account of its three great peaks, was named after trinidad, the Spanish for trinity. But trinidad is evidently a very old Iberian word, for its British form was drindod, as in the place-name Llandrindod or "Holy Enclosure of the Trinity". The three great mounts on Trinidad, and the three famous medicinal springs at Llandrindod Wells render it probable that the site of Llan_drindod_ was originally a pagan dedication to the trine teat, or triune dad.
Amid numerous hut circles at Llandudno is a rocking stone known as Cryd-Tudno, or the Cradle of Tudno. Who was the St. Tudno of Llandudno whose cradle or cot, like Kit's Coty in Kent, has been thus preserved in folk-memory? The few facts related of him are manifestly fabulous, but the name itself seemingly preserves one of the numerous sites where the Almighty Child of Christmas Day was worshipped, and the no of Tudno may be connoted with new, Greek, neo, Danish, ny, allied to Sanscrit, no, hence new, "that which is now".
At Llanamlleck in Wales there is a cromlech known as St. Illtyd's House, near which is a rude upright stone known as Maen-Illtyd, or Illtyd-stone. We may connote this _Ill_tyd with All-tyd or All Father, in which respect Illtyd corresponds with the Scandinavian Ilmatar, Almatar, or All Mother.
It is told of Saint Illtyd that he befriended a hunted stag, and that like Semele, the wife of Jove, his wife was stricken with blindness for daring to approach too near him. The association of Illtyd with a stag is peculiarly significant in view of the fact that at Llandudno, leading to the cot or cradle of St. Tudno, are the remains of an avenue of standing stones called by a name which signifies "the High Road of the Deer". The branching antlers of the deer being emblems of the dayspring, the rising or new sun, is a fact somewhat confirmatory of the supposition that the Cradle of Tudno was the shrine of the new or Rising Tud, and in all probability the High Road of the Deer was once the scene of some very curious ceremonies.
Many of our old churches even to-day contain in their lofts antlers which formed part of the wardrobe of the ancient mummers or guise dancers.
In the Ephesian coin herewith Diana--the divine Ana--the many-breasted Alma Mater, is depicted in the form of a pillar-palm tree between two stags. Among the golden treasures found by Schliemann at Mykenæ, were ornaments representing two stags on the top of a date palm tree with three fronds.[280] The date palm may be connoted with the ded pillar, and the triple-fronded date of Mykenæ with the trindod or drindod of Britain.
The honeysuckle, termed conventionally a palmette, is classically represented as either seven or nine-lobed, and this symbol of the Dayspring or of Wisdom was common alike both East and West. The palm branch is merely another form of the fern or fish-bone, and the word palm is radically alma, the all nourisher. The palm leaf appears on one of the stones at New Grange, but as Fergusson remarks, "how a knowledge of this Eastern plant reached New Grange is by no means clear".[281] The feather was a further emblem of the same spiritual father, feeder, or fodder, and in Egypt Ma or Truth was represented with a single-feather headdress (ante, p. 136). From the mistletoe to the fern, a sprig of any kind was regarded as the spright, spirit, or spurt of new life or new Thought (Thaut?), and the forms of this young sprig are innumerable. The gist, ghost, or essence of the Maypole was that it should be a sprout well budded out, whence to this day at Saffron Walden the children on Mayday sing:--
A branch of May we have brought you, And at your door it stands; It is a sprout that is well budded out, The work of our Lord's hands.
Teat may be equated with the Gaulish tout, the whole or All, and it is probable that the Pelasgian shrine of Dodona was dedicated to that All One or Father One. It is noteworthy that the sway of the pre-Grecian Pelasgians extended over the whole of the Ionian coast "beginning from Mykale":[282] this Mykale (Megale or Michael?) district is now Albania, and its capital is Janina, query Queen Ina?
It is probable that Kenna, the fairy princess of Kensington who is reputed to have loved Albion, was can_na_, the New King or New Queen. On the river Canna in Wales is Llan_gan_ or Llanganna: Llan_gan_ on the river Taff is dedicated to St. Canna, and Llan_gain_ to St. Synin. All these dedications are seemingly survivals of King, Queen, or Saint, Ina, Una, Une, ain or one. In Cornwall there are several St. Euny's Wells: near Evesham is Honeybourne, and in Sussex is a Honey Child. Upon Honeychurch the authorities comment, "The connection between a church and honey is not very obvious, and this is probably Church of Huna". Quite likely, but not, I think, a Saxon settler.
The ancients supposed that the world was shaped like a bun, and they imagined it as supported by the tet or pillar of the Almighty. It is therefore possible that the Toadstool or Mushroom derived its name not because toads never sit upon it, but because it was held to be a perfect emblem of the earth. In some districts the Mushroom is named "Pooka's foot,"[283] and as the earth is proverbially God's footstool, the Toad-stool was held seemingly to be the stool of earth supported on the ded, or pillar of Titan. The Fairy Titania, who probably once held sway in Tottenham Court Road, may be connoted with the French teton, a teat; tetine, an udder; teter, to milk; and tetin, a nipple.
It is probable that "The Five Wells" at Taddington, "the Five Kings at Doddington," where also is "the Duddo Stone," likewise Dod Law at Doddington; Dowdeswell, Dudsbury, and the Cornish Dodman, are all referable originally to the fairy Titan or the celestial Daddy.
In accordance with universal wont this Titan or Almighty, "this senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid," was conceived as anon a tiny toddling tot or Tom-tit-tot, anon as Old Tithonus, the doddering dotard: the Swedish for death or dead is dod; the German is tod. Tod is an English term for a fox, and Thot was the fox or jackal-headed maker-of-tracts or guide: thought is invariably the guide to every action, and Divine Thought is the final bar to which the human soul comes up for judgment. It has already been seen that in Europe the holder of the sword and scales was Michael, and there is reason to suppose that the Dog-headed titanic Christopher, who is said to have ferried travellers pick-a-back across a river, was at one time an exquisite conception of Great Puck or Father Death carrying his children over the mystic river. By the pagans--the unsophisticated villagers among whom Pucca mostly survived--Death was conceived as not invariably or necessarily frightful, but sometimes as a lovely youth. In Fig. 91 Death is Amor or Young Love, and in Fig. 90 an angel occupies the place of Giant Christopher: the words death and dead are identical with dad and tod.
The Christian emblems herewith represent Christ supported by the Father or Mother upon a veil or scarf, which is probably intended for the rainbow or spectrum: the pagan Europa was represented, vide Fig. 93, holding a similar emblem. According to mythology, Iris or the Rainbow was like Thot or Mercury, the Messenger of the Gods, and the symbolists delighted to blend into their hieroglyphs that same elusive ambiguity as separates Iris from Eros and the blend of colours in the spectrum.
In the ninth century a learned monk expressed the opinion that only two words of the old Iberian language had then survived: one of these was fern, meaning anything good, and with it we may connote the Fern Islands among which stands the Megstone. Ferns, the ancient capital of Leinster, attributes its foundation to a St. Mogue, and St. Mogue's Well is still existing in the precincts of Ferns Abbey. The equation of Long Meg and her Daughters with Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins is supported by the tradition that the original name of St. Ursula's husband was Holofernes,[284] seemingly Holy Ferns or Holy Phoroneus. What is described as "the highest term in Grecian history" was the ancestral Inachus, the father of a certain Phoroneus. The fabulous Inachus[285]--probably the Gaelic divinity Oengus[286]--is the Ancient Mighty Life, and Phoroneus is radically fern or frond. There figures in Irish mythology "a very ancient deity" whose name, judging from inscriptions, was Feron or Vorenn, and it is noteworthy that Oengus is associated particularly with New Grange, where the fern palm leaf emblem has been preserved. The Dutch for fern is varen, and the root of all these terms is fer or ver: the Latin ferre is the root of fertile, etc., and in connection with the Welsh ver, which means essence, may be noted ver the Spring and vert, green, whence verdant, verdure, vernal, and infernal(?).
Among the ferns whose spine-like fishbone fronds seemingly caused them to be accepted as emblems of the fertile Dayspring or the permeating Spirit of all Life, the osmunda was particularly associated with the Saints and Gods: in the Tyrol it is still placed over doors for Good Luck, and one species of Osmunda (Crispa) is in Norway called St. Olaf's Beard. This is termed by Gerarde the Herb Christopher, and the Latin crispa somewhat connects it with Christopher. The name Osmund is Teutonic for divine protector, but more radically Osmunda was oes munda, or the Life of the World. In Devonshire the Pennyroyal is also known as organ, organy, organie, or origane, all of which are radically the same as origin.
The British coins inscribed Ver are believed to have emanated from Verulam or St. Albans, but the same VER, VIR, or kindred legend is found upon the coins of Iberia and Gaul. It is not improbable that Verulam was at one time the chief city in Albion, but the place which now claims to be the mother city is Canterbury or Duro_vern_. The ancient name of Canterbury is supposed to have been bestowed upon it by the Romans, and to have denoted evergreen; but Canterbury is not physically more evergreen than every other spot in verdant England: Canterbury is, however, permeated with relics, memories, and traditions of St. George; and St. George is still addressed in Palestine as the "evergreen green one". Green was the symbol of rejuvenescence and immortality, and "the Green Man" of our English Inn Signs, as also the Jack-in-Green who used to figure along with Maid Marian and the Hobby Horse in the festivities of May Day, was representative of the May King or the Lord of Life. The colour green, according to the Ecclesiastical authorities, still signifies "hope, plenty, mirth, youth, and prosperity": as the colour of living vegetation, it was adopted as a symbol of life, and Angels and Saints, particularly St. John, are represented clad in green. In Gaul the Green Man was evidently conceived as Ver Galant, and the two cups, one inverted, in all probability implied Life and Death. According to Christian Legend, St. George was tortured by being forced to drink two cups, whereof the one was prepared to make him mad, the other to kill him by poison. The prosperity of an emblem lies entirely in the Eye, and it is probable that all the alleged dolours to which George was subjected are nothing more than the morbid misconceptions of men whose minds dwelt normally on things most miserable and conceived little higher. Thus seemingly the light-shod Mercury was degraded into George's alleged torture of being "made to run in red hot shoes": the heavy pillars laid upon him suggest that he was once depicted bearing up the pillars of the world: the wheel covered with razors and knives to which he was attached imply the solar wheel of Kate or Catarina: the posts to which he was fastened by the feet and hands were seemingly a variant of the deddu, and the sledge hammers with which he was beaten were, like many other of the excruciating torments of the "saint," merely and inoffensively the emblems of the Heavenly Hercules or Invictus.
Maid Marion, who was not infrequently associated with St. George, is radically Maid Big Ion, or Fairy Ion, and that St. George was also a marine saint is obvious from the various Channels which still bear his name. The ensign of the Navy is the red cross on a white ground, known originally as the Christofer or Jack, and in Fig. 106 the Green Man is represented with the scales of a Merman, or Blue John. The Italian for blue is vera; vera means true; "true blue" is proverbial; and that Old George was Trajan, Tarchon, Tarragone, or Dragon is obvious from the dragon-slaying incident. Little George has already been identified by Baring-Gould with Tammuz, the Adonis, or Beauty, who is identified with the Sun:[287] "Thou shining and vanishing in the beauteous circle of the Horæ, dwelling at one time in gloomy Tartarus, at another elevating thyself to Olympus, giving ripeness to the fruits".[288]
The St. George of Diospolis, the City of Light, who by the early Christians was hailed as "the Mighty Man," the "Star of the Morning," and the "Sun of Truth," figures in Cornwall, particularly at Helston, where there is still danced the so-called Furry dance: Helston, moreover, claims to show the great granite stone which was intended to cover the mouth of the Nether Regions, but St. Michael met Satan carrying it and made him drop it.
It is unnecessary to labour the obvious identity between Saints George and Michael: "George," meaning husbandman, i.e., the Almighty in a bucolic aspect, is merely another title for the archangel, but more radically it may be traced to geo (as in _ge_ology, _ge_ography, _ge_ometry) and urge, i.e., earth urge. It is physically true that farmers urge the earth to yield her increase, and until quite recently, relics of the festival of the sacred plough survived in Britain. Within living memory farmers in Cornwall turned the first sod to the formula "In the name of God let us begin":[289] in China, where the Emperor himself turns the first sod, much of the ancient ceremonies still survive.
The legend of St. George and the dragon has had its local habitation fixed in many districts notably in Berkshire at the vale of the White Horse. The famous George of Cappadocia is first heard of as "a purveyor of provisions for the Army of Constantinople," and he was subsequently associated with a certain Dracontius (i.e., dragon), "Master of the Mint". The same legend is assigned at Lambton in England not to George but to "John that slew ye worm": in Turkey St. George is known as Oros, which is obviously Horus or Eros, the Lord of the Horæ or hours, and the English dragon-slayer Conyers of Sockburn is presumably King Yers, whose burn or brook was presumably named after Shock or Jock. In some parts of England a bogey dog is known under the title of "Old Shock," and in connection with Conyers and John that slew ye worm may be noted near Conway the famous Llandudno headlands, Great and Little Orme or Worm.
The St. George of Scandinavia is named Gest: that Gest was the great Gust or Mighty Wind is probable, and it is more likely that Windsor, a world-famous seat of St. George, meant, not as is assumed winding shore, but wind sire. That St. George was the Ruler of the gusts or winds is implied by the fact that among the Finns, anyone brawling on St. George's Day was in danger of suffering from storms and tempests. The murmuring of the wind in the oak groves of Dodona was held to be the voice of Zeus, and the will of the All Father was there further deduced by means of a three-chained whip hanging over a metal basin from the hand of the statue of a boy. From the movements of these chains, agitated by the wind and blown by the gusts till they tinkled against the bowl, the will of the Ghost was guessed, and the word guess seemingly implies that guessing was regarded as the operation of the good or bad geis within. In Windsor Great Forest stood the famous Oak or Picktree, where Puck, alias Herne the Hunter, appeared occasionally in the form of an antlered Buck. The supposition that St. George was the great Gush or geyser is strengthened by the fact that near the Cornish Padstow, Petrock-Stowe, or the stowe of the Great Pater, there is a well called St. George's Well. This well is described as a "mere spring which gushes from a rock," and the legend states that the water gushed forth immediately St. George had trodden on the spot and has ne'er since ceased to flow.
The Italian for blue--the colour of the deep water and of the high Heavens--is also turchino, and on 23rd April (French Avril), blue coats used to be worn in England in honour of the national saint whose red cross on a white ground has immemorially been our Naval Ensign.[290] St. George figured particularly in the Furry or Flora dance at Helston, and the month of Avril, a period when the earth is opening up its treasures, seemingly derives its name from Ver or Vera, the "daughter deare" of Flora. On 23rd April "the riding of the George" was a principal solemnity in certain parts of England: on St. George's Day a White Horse used to stand harnessed at the end of St. George's Chapel in St. Martin's Church, Strand, and the Duncannon Street, which now runs along the south side of this church, argues the erstwhile existence either here or somewhere of a dun or down of cannon. A cannon is a gun, and our Dragoon guards are supposed to have derived their title from the dragons or fire-arms with which they were armed. The inference is that the first inventors of the gun, cannon, or dragon, entertained the pleasing fancy that their weapon was the fire-spouting worm.[291] The dragon was the emblem of the _Cyn_bro or Kymry: associated with the red cross of St. George it is the cognisance of London, and a fearsome dragon stands to-day at the boundary of the city on the site of Temple Bar.
In the reign of Elizabeth an injunction was issued that "there shall be neither George nor Margaret," an implication that Margaret was once the recognised Consort of St. George, and the expression "riding of the George," points to the probability that the White Horse, even if riderless, was known as "the George". The White Horse of Kent with its legend INVICTA implies--unless Heraldry is weak in its grammar--not a horse but a mare: George was Invictus or the Unconquerable, and, as will be seen, there are good reasons to suppose that the White Horse and White Mare were indigenous to Britain long before the times of the Saxon Hengist and Horsa. It is now generally accepted that Hengist, which meant horse, and Horsa, which meant mare, were mythical characters. With the coming of the Saxons no doubt the worship of the White Horse revived for it was an emblem of Hanover, and in Hanover cream-coloured horses were reserved for the use of royalty alone. With the notorious Hanoverian Georges may be connoted the fact that opposite St. George's Island at Looe (Cornwall) is a strand or market-place named Hannafore: at Hinover in Sussex a white horse was carved into the hillside.
The White Horse--which subsequently became the Hobby Horse, or the Hob's Horse, of our popular revels--has been carved upon certain downs in England and Scotland for untold centuries. That these animals were designedly white is implied by an example on the brown heather hills of Mormond in Aberdeenshire: here the subsoil is black and the required white has been obtained by filling in the figure with white felspar stones.[292] It will be noticed that the White Horse at Uffington as reproduced overleaf is beaked like a bird, and has a remarkable dot-and-circle eye: in Figs. 110 to 113 the animal is similarly beaked, and in Fig. 111 the object in the bill is seemingly an egg. The designer of Fig. 109 has introduced apparently a goose or swan's head, and also a sprig or branch. The word BODUOC may or may not have a relation to Boudicca or Boadicea of the Ikeni--whose territories are marked by the Ichnield Way of to-day--but in any case Boudig in Welsh meant victory or Victorina, whence the "very peculiar horse" on this coin may be regarded as a prehistoric Invicta. The St. George of Persia there known as Mithras was similarly worshipped under the guise of a white horse, and Mithras was similarly "Invictus". The winged genius surmounting the horse on Fig. 114, a coin of the Tarragona, Tarchon, or dragon district--is described as "Victory flying," and there is little doubt that the idea of White Horse or Invictus was far spread. At Edgehill there used to be a Red Horse carved into the soil, and the tenancy of the neighbouring Red Horse Farm was held on the condition that the tenant scoured the Red Horse annually on Palm Sunday: the palm is the emblem of Invictus, and it will be noticed how frequently the palm branch appears in conjunction with the horse on our British coinage.
The story of St. George treading on the Padstow Rock, and the subsequent gush of water, is immediately suggestive of the Pegasus legend. Pegasus, the winged steed of the Muses, which, with a stroke of its hoof, caused a fountain to gush forth, is supposed to have been thus named because he made his first appearance near the sources--Greek pegai--of Oceanus. It is obvious, however, from the coins of Britain, Spain, and Gaul, that Pegasus--occasionally astral-winged and hawk-headed--was very much at home in these regions, and it is not improbable that pegasus was originally the Celtic Peg Esus. The god Esus of Western Europe--one of whose portraits is here given--was not only King Death, but he is identified by De Jubainville with Cuchulainn, the Achilles or Young Sun God of Ireland.[293] Esus, the counterpart of Isis, was probably the divinity worshipped at Uzes in Gaul, a coin of which town, representing a seven-rayed sprig springing from a brute, is here reproduced, and that King Esus or King Osis was the Lord of profound speculation, is somewhat implied by gnosis, the Greek word for knowledge. Tacitus mentions that the neighing of the sacred white horse of the Druids was regarded as oracular; the voice of a horse is termed its neigh, from which it would seem horses were regarded as super-intelligent animals which knew.[294] The inscription CUN or CUNO which occurs so frequently on the horse coins of Western Europe is seemingly akin to ken, the root of know, knew, canny, and cunning. In India the elephant Ganesa--seemingly a feminine form of Genesis and Gnosis--was deemed to be the Lord of all knowledge.
In connection with Pegasus may be noted Buk_ephalus_, the famed steed of Alexander. The Inscriptions EPPILLUS and EPPI[295] occur on the Kentish coins, Figs. 122 and 123; hipha or hippa was the Phoenician for a mare; in Scotland the nightmare is known as _ephi_altus; a _hippo_drome is a horse course, whence, perhaps, Bukephalus may be translated Big Eppilus. The little elf or elve under a bent sprig is presumably Bog or Puck, and in connection with the Eagle-headed Pegasus of Fig. 164 may be noted the Puckstone by the megalithic Aggle Stone at Pur_beck_, where is a St. Alban's Head.[296]
Whether or not Pegasus was Big Esus or Peg or Puck Esus is immaterial, but it is quite beyond controversy that the animals now under consideration are Elphin Steeds and that they are not the "deplorable abortions" which numismatists imagine. The recognised authorities are utterly contemptuous towards our coinage, to which they apply terms such as "very rude," "an attempt to represent a horse," "barbarous imitation," and so forth; but I am persuaded that the craftsmen who fabricated these archaic coins were quite competent to draw straightforward objects had such been their intent. Akerman is seriously indignant at the indefiniteness of the object which resembles a fishbone and "has been called a fern leaf," and he sums up his feelings by opining that this uncouth representation may be as much the result of incompetent workmanship as of successive fruitless attempts at imitation.[297]
Incompetent comprehension would condemn Figs. 124 to 129, particularly the draughtsmanship of the head: it is hardly credible, yet, says Akerman, the small winged elf in these coins "apparently escaped the observation of M. de Saulcy". They emanated from the Tarragonian town of Ana or Ona, and are somewhat suggestive of the mythic tale that Minerva sprang from the head of Jove: the horses on the Gaulish coin illustrated in Fig. 130, which is attributed either to Verdun or Vermandois, are inscribed VERO IOVE and that Jou was the White Horse is, to some extent, implied by our elementary words Gee and Geho. According to Hazlitt "the exclamation Geho! Geho! which carmen use to their horses is not peculiar to this country, as I have heard it used in France":[298] it is probable that the Jehu who drove furiously was a memory of the solar charioteer; it is further probable that the story of Io, the divinely fair daughter of Inachus, who was said to have been pursued over the world by a malignant gadfly, originated in the lumpish imagination of some one who had in front of him just such elfin emblems as the pixy horse now under consideration. That in reality the gadfly was a good mouche is implied by the term gad: the inscription KIO on Fig. 74 (p. 253) reads Great Io or Great Eye, and in connection with the remarkable optic of the White Horse at Uffington may be connoted the place-name Horse Eye near _Bex_hill. The curious place-name Beckjay in Shropshire is suggestive of Big Jew or Joy: the blue-crested monarch of the woods we call a jay (Spanish, gayo, "of doubtful origin") was probably the bird of Jay or Joy--just as picus or the crested woodpecker was admittedly Jupiter's bird--and the Jaye's Park in Surrey, which is in the immediate neighbourhood of Godstone, Gadbrooke, and Kitlands, was seemingly associated at some period with Good Jay or Joy.
We speak ironically to-day of our "Jehus," and the word hack still survives: in Chaucer's time English carters encouraged their horses with the exclamation Heck![299] the Irish for horse was ech, and the inscription beneath the effigy on Fig. 131, a Tarragonian coin, reads, according to Akerman, EKK. That the hack was connected in idea with the oak is somewhat implied by a horse ornament in my possession, the eye or centre of which is represented by an oak corn or _ac_orn. In the North of England the elves seem to have been known as hags, for fairy rings are there known as hag tracks. The word hackney is identical with Boudicca's tribe the Ikeni, and it is believed that Cæsar's reference to the Cenimagni or Cenomagni refers to the Ikeni: whence it is probable that the Ikeni, like the Cantii, were worshippers of Invicta, the Great Hackney, the Ceni Magna or Hackney Magna.
The water horse which figures overleaf may be connoted with the Scotch kelpie, which is radically ek Elpi or Elfi: the kelpie or water horse of Scotch fairy lore is a ghastly spook, just as Alpa in Scandinavia is a ghoul and Ephialtes in Albany or Scotland is a nightmare: but there must almost certainly have been a White Kelpie, for the Greeks held a national horse race which they termed the Calpe, and Calpe is the name of the mountain which forms the European side of the Pillars of Hercules. From the surnames Killbye and Gilbey one may perhaps deduce a tribe who were followers of 'K Alpe the Great All Feeder: that the kelpie was regarded as the fourfold feeder is obvious from the four most unnatural teats depicted on the Pixtil coin of Fig. 133.
The Welsh form of Alphin is Elphin, and the Cornish height known as Godolphin--whence the family name Godolphin--implies, like Robin Goodfellow, Good Elphin. With Elphin, Alban, and Hobany may be connected the Celtic Goddess Epona, "the tutelar deity of horses and probably originally a horse totem". To Epona may safely be assigned the word pony; Irish poni; Scotch powney, all of which the authorities connect with pullus, the Latin for foal: it is quite true there is a p in both. We have already traced a connection between neighing, knowing, kenning, and cunning, and there is seemingly a further connection between Epona, the Goddess of Horses, and opine, for according to Plato the horse signified "reason and opinion coursing about through natural things".[300]
British horses used to be known familiarly as Joan, and the term jennet presumably meant Little Joan: the Italian for a hackney is chinea. At Hackney, which now forms part of London, there is an Abney Park which was once, it may be, associated with Hobany or Epona: the main street of Hackney or Haconey (which originally contained the Manor of Hoxton) is Mare Street; and this mare was seemingly the Ken_mure_ whose traces are perpetuated in Kenmure Road, Hackney. At the corner of Seven Sisters Road is the church of St. Olave, and the neighbouring Alvington Street suggests that this Kingsland Road district was once a town or down of Alvin the Elphin King. Godolphin Hill in Cornwall was alternatively known as Godolcan, and there is every reason to suppose that Elphin was the good old king, the good all-king, and the good holy king.
Hackney was seemingly once one of the many congregating "Londons," and we may recognise Elen or Ollan in London Fields, London Lane, Lyne Grove, Olinda (or Good Olin) Road, Londesborough Road, Ellingfort (or Strong Ellin) Road, Lenthall (or Tall Elen) Road. In Linscott Street there stood probably at one time a Cot, Cromlech, or "Kit's Coty," and at the neighbouring Dalston[301] was very possibly a Tallstone, equivalent to the Cornish tal carn or high rock.
The adjective long or lanky is probably of Hellenic origin, and the giants or long men sometimes carved in hill-sides (as at Cerne Abbas) were like all Longstones once perhaps representations of Helen.
The Town Hall at Hackney stands on a plot of ground known as Hackney Grove, and the neighbouring Mildmay Park and Mildmay Grove suggest a grove or sanctuary of the Mild May or Mary. That Pegasus was known familiarly in this district is implied by the White Horse Inn on Hackney Marshes and by its neighbour "The Flying Horse": Hackney neighbours Homerton, and that the national Hackney or mare was Homer or Amour is obvious from Fig. 135, where a heart, the universal emblem of amour, is represented at its Hub, navel, or bogel. According to Sir John Evans the "principal characteristic" of Fig. 136 is "the heart-shaped figure between the forelegs of the horse, the meaning of which I am at a loss to discover":[302] but any yokel could have told Sir John the meaning of the heart or hearts which are still carved into tree trunks, and were rarely anything else than the emblems of Amor. The observant Londoner will not fail to notice particularly on May Day--the Mary or Mother Day--when our Cockney horses parade in much of their immemorial finery and pomp--that golden hearts, stringed in long sequences over the harness, are conspicuous among the half-moons, stars, and other prehistoric emblems of the Bona dea or pre-Christian Mary.
Hackney includes the churches of St. Mary, St. Michael, and St. Jude: Jude is the same word as good, and the St. Jude of Scripture who was surnamed Thadee, and was said to be the son of Alpheus, is apparently Good Tadi or Daddy, alias St. Alban the All Good, the Kaadman. St. Jude is also St. Chad, and there was a celebrated Chadwell[303] at the end of the Marylebone Road now known as St. Pancras or King's Cross: at King's Cross there is a locality still known as Alpha Place.
At Hackney is a Gayhurst Road, which may imply an erstwhile hurst or wood of Gay or Jay, and "at the south end of Springfield Road there is a curious and interesting little hamlet lying on the water's edge. The streets are very steep, and some of them extremely narrow--mere passages like the wynds in Edinburgh."[304] This little hamlet is "encircled" by Mount Pleasant Lane, whence one may assume that the eminence itself was known at some time or other as Mount Pleasant.
The "Mount Pleasant" at Hackney may be connoted with the more famous "Mount Pleasant" at Dun Ainy, Knock Ainy, or the Hill of Aine in Limerick. The "pleasant hills" of Ireland were defined as "ceremonial hills," and it was particularly on the night of All Hallows that the immemorial ceremonies were there observed. To this day Aine or Ana, a beautiful and gracious water-spirit, "the best-natured of women," is reverenced at Knockainy, and the legend persists that "Aine promised to save bloodshed if the hill were given to her till the end of the world".[305] That Mount Pleasant at Hackney or Hackoney was similarly dedicated to High Aine or Ana is an inference to which the facts seem clearly to point.
It would also be permissible to interpret Hackney as Oaken Island, in which light it may be connoted with Glastonbury, the word glaston being generally supposed to be glasten, the British for oak. Glastonbury, the celebrated Avalon, Apple Island, Apollo Island, or Isle of Rest, was a world-famous "Mount Pleasant," and on its most elevated height there stands St. Michael's Tower. Glastonbury itself,[306] "its two streets forming a perfect cross," is almost engirdled by a little river named the Brue. The French town Bray is in the so-called Santerre or Holy-land district: the remains of a megalithic santerre, saintuarie or sanctuary are still standing at Abury or Aubury in Wiltshire, and we may equate this place-name with abri, a generic term in French, "origin unknown," for sanctuary or refuge.
Near Bray, Santerre, is Auber's Ridge, which may be connoted with Aubrey Walk, the highest spot in Kensington, and it would seem that Abury's, abris, or "Mount Pleasants" were once plentiful in the bundle of communities, townships, parishes, and lordships which have now merged into the Greater London: Ebury Square in the South-West may mark one, and Highbury in the North, with its neighbouring "Mount Pleasant," another.
The immortal Mount Pleasant of the Muses was named Helicon, and from here sprang the celebrated fountains Aganippe and Hippocrene. At Holywell in Wales there is a village called Halkin lying at the foot of a hill named Helygen: there is a Heligan Hill in Cornwall, and a river Olcan in Hereford: there is an Alconbury in Hunts, and an Elkington (Domesday Alchinton) at Louth. An Elk is a gigantic buck whose radiating antlers are so fern-like that a genus has appropriately been designated the Elk fern. Ilkley in Yorkshire is thought to be the Olicana of Ptolemy, and there is standing to-day at Ramsgate a Holy Cone or Helicon modernised into "Hallicondane". The dane here probably implies a dun or hill-fort, and the Hallicon itself consists of a peak crossed by four roads.[307] This Ramsgate Hallicondane, which stands by Allington Park, may have been a dun of the Elle or Elf King: in France Hellequin is associated with Columbine, and the little figure labelled CUIN (infra, p. 397 Fig. 336), may be identified with this virgin. The Alcantara district to which this Cuin coin has been attributed was, it may safely be assumed, a tara, tre, or troy of Alcan.
On the top of Tory Hill in Kilkenny, i.e., Kenny's Church, stood a pagan altar: the more famous Tara or Temair is associated primarily with a "son of Ollcain"; it is said next to have passed into the possession of a certain Cain, and to have been known as Druim Cain or "Cain's Ridge".[308]
Halcyon days mean blissful, pleasant, radiant, ideal, days, and of the Holy King or All King the blue jewelled King-fisher or Halcyon seems to have been a symbol. Whether there be any connection between Elgin and the Irish Hooligans, or whether these trace their origin to the "son of Ollcain," I do not know. From the colossal Kinia and Acongagua down to the humblest peg, every peak seems to have been similarly named. The pimple is a diminutive hill or pock, and the pykes of Cumberland are the peaks of Derbyshire. At the summit of the Peak District stands Buxton, claiming to be the highest market-town in England: around Buxton, formerly written "Bawkestanes," still stand cromlechs and other Poukelays or Buk stones: Backhouse is a surname in the Buxton district, and the original Backhouses may well have worshipped either Bacchus, i.e., St. Baccho, or the gentle Baucis who merged into a Linden tree.
Near Buxton are the sources of the river Wye, and by Wye in Kent, near Kennington, we find Olantigh Park, St. Alban's Court, Mount Pleasant, Little London, and Trey Town: by the church at Wye are two inns, named respectively "The Old Flying Horse," and "The New Flying Horse"; Wye races are still held upon an egg-shaped course, and close to Kennington Oval--which I am unable to trace beyond its earlier condition of a market-garden--stands a celebrated "White Horse Inn". At Kennington by Wye a roadside inn sign is "The Golden Ball," which once presumably implied the Sun or Sol, for in the immediate neighbourhood is Soles Court.
The horse was a constantly recurring emblem in the coins of Hispania, and the object on the Iberian coin here illustrated is defined by Akerman as "an apex": the appearance of this symbol, seemingly a spike or peg posed upon a teathill, on an Iberian or Aubreyan coin is evidence of its sanctity in West Europe. Theologians of the Dark Ages have been ridiculed for debating the number of angels that could stand upon a pin-point, but it is more than probable that the question was a subject of discussion long before their time: the Chinese believe that "at the beginning of Creation the chaos floated as a fish skims along the surface of a river; from whence arose something like a thorn or pickle, which, being capable of motion and variation, became a soul or spirit".[309] The fairy sanctity of the thorn bush would therefore seem to have arisen from its spikes, and the abundance of these emblems would naturally elevate it into the house or abode of spooks: the burning bush, in which form the Almighty is said to have appeared before Moses, was, according to Rabbinical tradition, a thorn bush: the Elluf and the Alvah trees--the aleph or the alpha trees?--are described as large thorned species of Acacia; and the spiky acacia, Greek Akakia, is related to akis, a point or thorn.
One of the attributes of the Man-in-the-Moon is a Thorn Bush, whence Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Moonshine, "This thorn bush is my thorn bush; and this dog my dog". The Man-in-the-Moon being identified with Cain, it becomes interesting to note that the surname Kennett is accepted as a Norman diminutive of chien, a dog.[310] On p. 149--a mediæval papermark--the Wanderer is surmounted by a bush; a bush is a little tree, and the word bush (of unknown origin) is a variant of Bogie--also of bougie, the French for candle: bushes and briars were the acknowledged haunts of Bogie, alias Hobany or Hob-with-a-canstick or bougie.
Bouche used to be an English word meaning meat and drink, whence Stow, referring to the English archers, says they had bouch of court (to wit, meat and drink) and great wages of sixpence by the day.[311] In Rome and elsewhere a suspended bush was the sign of an inn, whence the expression "Good wine needs no bush": the bouche or mouth is where meat and drink goes in, similarly mouth may be connoted with the British meath, meaning nourishment. Peck is also an old word for provender, and we still speak of feeling peckish.[312]
The word bucket--allied to Anglo-Saxon buc, meaning a pitcher--implies that this variety of large can or mug was used for peck purposes: the illustration herewith, representing the decoration on a bronze bucket found at Lake Maggiore, consists of speck-centred circles, and dotted, spectral, or maculate geese, bucks, and horses.
It is unnecessary to dilate on the great importance played in civic life by inns: numberless place-names are directly traceable to inn-signs; and the brewing of church ales, considered in conjunction with facts which will be noted in a subsequent chapter, make it almost certain that churches once dispensed food and drink and that inn was originally an earlier name for church. Among the inscriptions of the catacombs is one which the authorities believe marks the sepulchre of a brewer: but these pictographs are without exception emblems, and it is more likely that the design in question (Fig. 140) stands for "that Brewer,"[313] the Lord of the Vineyard, or the Vinedresser. The Green Man with his Still implies a brewer; the distilling of Benedictine is still an ecclesiastical occupation, and the word brew suggests that brewing was once the peculiar privilege of the pères or priests who brewed the sacred ales. The word keg is the same as the familiar Black Jack, and under jug Skeat writes: "Drinking vessels of all kinds were formerly called jocks, jills, and jugs, all of which represent Christian names. Jug and Judge were usual as pet female names, and equivalent to Jenny or Joan."
The Hackney inn known as "The Flying Horse" may possibly owe its foundation and sign to the Templars, who possessed property in Hackney: the Templars' badge of Pegasus still persists in the Temple at Whitefriars, and the circular churches of the Templars had certainly some symbolic connection with Sun or Golden Ball. At Jerusalem, the ideal city which was always deemed to be the hub, bogel, or navel of the world, there are some extraordinary rock-hewn water tanks, known as the stables of King Solomon: Jerusalem was known as Hierosolyma or Holy Solyma, and that Solyma, Salem, or Peace was associated in Europe with the horse is clear from the coin of the Gaulish tribe known as the Solmariaca (Fig. 141). The animal here represented is treading under foot a dragon or scorpion, and the Solmariaca, whose city is now Soulosse, were seemingly followers of Solmariak, the Sol Mary, or Fairy. The aim of the _Free_masons is the rebuilding of the Temple of Solomon or Wisdom, and it is quite evident that the front view of a temple on Fig. 142 is not the representation of a material building such as the Houses of Parliament now depicted on our modern paper-money. The centre of Fig. 142 is a four-specked cross, the centre-piece of Fig. 143 is the six-breasted Virgin, and Fig. 144 is a very elaborated pantheon, hierarchy, or habitation of All Hallows: the inscription reads BASILICA ULPIA, i.e., The Church Ulpia.
Abdera, now Adra, is a Spanish town on the shores of the Mediterranean, founded, according to Strabo, by the Tyrians, and the name thus seems to connote a tre of Ab or Hob. I have elsewhere endeavoured to prove that King Solomon, the Mighty Controller of the Jinns, was the Eye of Heaven or the Sun, and this emblem appears in the triangle or delta of Fig. 145: the corresponding inscription on Fig. 145 are Phoenician characters, reading THE SUN,[314] and the curious fish-pillars are almost certainly a variant of the deddu. In Ireland a Salmon of Wisdom enters largely into Folklore: the word salmon is Solomon or Wisdom, as also is solemn: in Latin solemn is solennis, upon which Skeat comments: "Annual, occurring yearly, like a religious rite, religious, solemn, Latin sollus, entire, complete: annus, a year. Hence solemn--returning at the end of a complete year. The old Latin sollus is cognate with Welsh holl, whole, entire." The cognomen Solomon occurs several times in the lists of British Kings, and one may see it figuring to-day on Cornish shop-fronts in the form of variants such as Sleeman, Slyman, etc. Solomon may be resolved into the Sol man, the Seul man, the Silly[315] (innocent) man, or the Sly man, the Cunning man, or Magus. The "Sea horse" to the right, illustrated by Akerman on Plate XX, No. 8, is a coin of the Gaulish Magusa, and bears the inscription Magus which, as will be remembered, was a title of the Wandering Jew.
Maundrell, the English traveller, describing his journey in the seventeenth century to Jerusalem, has recorded that, "Our quarters, this first night, we took up at the Honeykhan, a place of but indifferent accommodation, about one hour and a half west of Aleppo". He goes on to say: "It must here be noted that, in travelling this country, a man does not meet with a market-town and inns every night, as in England. The best reception you can find here is either under your own tent, if the season permit, or else in certain public lodgments, founded in charity for the use of travellers. These are called by the Turks khani; and are seated sometimes in the towns and villages, sometimes at convenient distances upon the open road. They are built in fashion of a cloister, encompassing a court of 30 or 40 yards square, more or less, according to the measure of the founder's ability or charity. At these places all comers are free to take shelter, paying only a small fee to the khan-keeper (khanji), and very often without that acknowledgment; but one must expect nothing here but bare walls. As for other accommodations of meat, drink, bed, fire, provender, with these it must be every one's care to furnish himself."[316]
The main roads of Britain were once seemingly furnished with similar shelters which were known as Coldharbours, and the Coldharbour Lanes of Peckham and elsewhere mark the sites of such refuges.
The Eastern khans, "built in fashion of a cloister," find their parallel in the enclosed form of all primitive shelters, and the words close and cloister are radically eccles, eglos, or eglise. Whence the authorities suppose Beccles in Silly Suffolk to be a corruption of beau eglise or Beautiful Church: but to whom was this "beautiful church" first reared and dedicated, and by what name did the inhabitants of Beccles know their village? The surname Clowes, which may be connoted with Santa Claus, is still prevalent at Beccles, a town which belonged anciently to Bury Abbey.
The patron saint of English inns, travellers, and cross-roads, was the Canaanitish Christopher, and the earliest block prints representing Kit were "evidently made for pasting against the walls in inns, and other places frequented by travellers and pilgrims."[317] Kit's intercession was thought efficacious against all dangers, either by fire, flood, or earthquake, hence his picture was sometimes painted in colossal size and occupied the whole height of the building whether church or inn. The red cross of St. John of Jerusalem was the Christopher; travellers carried images of Cuddy as charms, and the equation of St. John with Canaanitish Christopher will account for Christopher's Houses being entitled Inns,[318] or Johns, or Khans. Under the travellers' images of Christopher used to be printed the inscription, "Whosoever sees the image of St. Christopher shall that day not feel any sickness," or alternatively, "The day that you see St. Christopher's face, that day shall you not die an evil death". The emblem on page 262, was, I think, wrongly guessed by Didron as "the spirit of youth": it is more probably a variant of Christopher, or the Spirit of Love, helping the palmer or pilgrim of life.
Fig. 146, a coin of the Turones, whose ancient capital is now Tours, consists of a specky or spectral horse accompanied by an urn: this urn was the symbol of the Virgin, and the reader will be familiar with a well-known modern picture in which La Source is ambiguously represented as a maiden standing with a pitcher at a spring. Yver is Norse for a warm bubbling spring, and on the coins of Vergingetorix we find the pitcher and the horse: the word virgin is equivalent to Spring Queen, and as ceto figures largely in British mythology as the ark, box, or womb of Ked, it is probable that Virgingetorix may be interpreted King Virgin Keto. In Gaul rex meant King or Queen, but this word is less radical than the Spanish rey, French roi, British rhi: according to Sir John Rhys, "the old Irish ri, genitive rig, king, and rigan queen would be somewhat analogous, although the Welsh rhian, the equivalent of the Irish rigan, differs in being mostly a poetic term for a lady who need not be royal".[319] The name Maria, which in Spain is bestowed indiscriminately upon men and women, would therefore seem to be Mother Queen, and Rhea, the Great Mother of Candia, might be interpreted as the Princess or the Queen.
Among inscriptions to the Gaulish Apollo the most common are those in which he is entitled Albiorix and Toutiorix: these are understood by the authorities as having meant respectively "King of the World," and "King of the People".
With the Cornish Well known as Joan's Pitcher may be connoted the variety of large bottle called a demijohn: according to Skeat this curious term is from the French damejeanne, Spanish damajuana--"Much disputed but not of Eastern origin. The French form is right as it stands though often much perverted. From French dame (Spanish dama), lady; and Jeanne (Spanish Juana), Joan, Jane." In our word pitcher the t has been wrongly inserted, the French picher is the German becher, Greek bikos, and all these terms including beaker are radically Peggy, Puck or Big. Pitchers are one of the commonest sepulchral offerings, and we are told that the Iberian bronze-working brachycephalic invaders of Britain introduced the type of sepulchral ceramic known as the beaker or drinking cup: "This vessel," says Dr. Munro, "was almost invariably deposited beside the body, and supposed to have contained food for the soul of the departed on its way to the other world."[320]
The German form of Peggy or Margaret is Gretchen, which resolves into Great Chun or Great Mighty Chief: Margot and Marghet may be rendered Big God or Fairy God or Mother Good.
That the pitcher, demijohn, or jug was regarded in some connection with the Big Mother or Great Queen is obvious from the examples illustrated, and the apparition of this emblem on the coins of Tours may be connoted with the female-breasted jugs which were described by Schliemann as "very frequent" in the ruins of Troy. Similar objects were found at Mykenæ in connection with which Schliemann observes: "With regard to this vase with the female breasts similar vases were found on the islands of Thera (Santorin) and Therassia in the ruins of the prehistoric cities which, as before stated, were covered by an eruption of that great central volcano which is believed by competent geologists to have sunk and disappeared about 1700 to 1800 B.C.".[321] It is peculiarly noticeable that the dame Jeanne or jug is thus associated in particular with Troy, Etruria, Therassia, Thera (Santorin), the Turones, and Tours.
The centre stone of megalithic circles constituted the speck or dot within the circle of the feeder or pap, and not infrequently one finds a Longstone termed either The Fiddler or The Piper. The incident of the Pied Piper is said to have occurred at Hamelyn on June 26th, 1284, during the feast of St. John and St. Paul. The street known as Bungen Strasse through which the Piper went followed by the enraptured children is still sacred to the extent that bridal and other processions are compelled to cease their music as they traverse it: Bungen of Bungen Street may thus seemingly be equated with bon John or St. John on whose feast day the miracle is said to have happened. The Hamelyn Piper who--
... blew three notes, such sweet Soft notes as never yet musician's cunning Gave to the enraptured air,
may be connoted with Pan or Father An, and the mountain now called Koppenberg, into which the Hamelyn children were allured, was obviously Arcadia or the happy land of Pan: the berg of Koppenberg is no doubt relatively modern, and the original name, Koppen, resolves into cop, kopje, or hill-top of Pan. The Land of the Pied Piper was manifestly Himmel, which is the German for heaven, and it may also be the source of the place-name Hamelyn.
He led us, he said, to a joyous land Joining the town and just at hand, Where waters gushed and fruit trees grew, And flowers put forth a fairer hue, And everything was strange and new.
The story of the Piper and the children is found also in Abyssinia, and likewise among the Minussinchen Tartars: the word Minnusinchen looks very like small Sinchen or beloved Sinchen, and with this Sinchen or bungen may be connoted the Tartar panshen or pope, and also Gian Ben Gian, the Arabian name for the All Ruler of the Golden Age. That Cupid was known among the Tartars is somewhat implied by the divinity illustrated on p. 699.
The Tartar story makes the mysterious Piper a foal which courses round the world, and with our pony may be connoted tarpon, the Tartar word for the wild horse of the Asiatic steppes. Cano is the Latin for I sing, and on Figs. 152 and 153 the Great Enchantress or Incantatrice is represented with the Pipes of Pan: among the wonders in the land of Hamelyn's Piper were horses with eagles' wings and these, together with the celestial foal and other elphin marvels, are to be found depicted on the tokens of prehistoric Albion. The tale of the Pied Piper may be connoted with the emblem of Ogmius leading his tongue-tied willing captives, and in Fig. 158 the mighty Muse is playing in human form upon his lute. In Fig. 160 the story of St. Michael or St. George is being played by a Pegasus, and in Fig. 158 CUNO is represented as a radiant elf. The arrow on Fig. 163 connects the exquisitely executed little figure with Cupid, Eros, or Amor--the oldest of the Gods--and probably this particular cherub was known as Puck, for his coin was issued in the Channel Islands by a people who inscribed their tokens _Pooc_tika, _Buc_ato, _Pix_til, and _Pich_til, i.e., Pich tall or chief(?).
It is not improbable that this young sprig was known as the Little Leaf Man, for in Thuringia as soon as the trees began to bud out, the children used to assemble on a Sunday and dress one of their playmates with shoots and sprigs: he was covered so thoroughly as to be rendered blind, whereupon two of his companions, taking him by the hand lest he should stumble, led him dancing and singing from home to home. Amor, like Homer, was reputed blind, and the what-nots on Fig. 167 may possibly be leaves, the symbols of the living, loving Elf, or Life--"this senior-junior, giant-dwarf Dan Cupid".
It was practically a universal pagan custom to celebrate the return of Spring by carrying away and destroying a rude idol of the old Dad or Death:--
Now carry we Death out of the village, The new Summer into the village, Welcome, dear Summer, Green little corn.
In other parts of Bohemia--and the curious reader will find several Bohemias on the Ordnance maps of England--the song varies; it is not Summer that comes back but Life:--
We have carried away Death, And brought back Life.[322]
At the feast of the Ascension in Transylvania, the image of Death is clothed gaudily in the dress of a girl: having wound throughout the village supported by two girls the image is stripped of its finery and flung into the river; the dress, however, is assumed by one of the girls and the procession returns singing a hymn. "Thus," says Miss Harrison, "it is clear that the girl is a sort of resuscitated Death." In other words, like the May Queen she symbolised the Virgin or Fairy Queen--Vera or Una, the Spirit, Sprout, or Spirit of the Universe, the Fair Ovary of Everything who is represented on the summit of the Christmas Tree: in Latin virgo means not only a virgin but also a sprig or sprout.
FOOTNOTES:
[255] Fairy Mythology, p. 298.
[256] Courtney, Miss, Cornish Feasts and Folklore, p. 129.
[257] Hope, R. C., Sacred Wells.
[258] Demonology and Witchcraft.
[259] At the time of writing the Servians say they are putting their trust in "Bog and Britannia".
[260] This is an official etymology. It is the one and only poetic idea admitted into Skeat's Dictionary.
[261] Cf. Johnson, W., Folk Memory, p. 159.
[262] Pliny relates Varro's description as follows: "King Porsenna was buried beneath the city of Clusium, in a place where he left a monument of himself in rectangular stone. Each side was 300 feet long and 50 feet high, and within the basement he made an inextricable labyrinth, into which if anyone ventured without a clue, there he must remain, for he never could find the way out again. Above this base stood five pyramids, one in the centre and four at the angles, each of them 75 feet in circumference at the base, and 150 feet high, tapering to the top so as to be covered by a cupola of bronze. From this there hung by chains a peal of bells, which, when agitated by the wind, sounded to a great distance. Above this cupola rose four other pyramids, each 100 feet high, and above these again, another story of five pyramids, which towered to a height so marvellous and improbable, that Varro hesitates to affirm their altitude." And in this he was wise, for he had already said more upon the subject than was credible. However, any one who has seen the tomb of Aruns, the son of Porsenna, near the gate of Albano, will be struck with the similarity of style, which, comparing small things with great, existed between the monuments of father and son. Those who have never been in Italy may like to know that this tomb of Aruns is said to have been built by Porsenna, for the young Prince who fell there in battle with the Latins, and with the Greeks from Cuma, and it is certainly the work of Etruscan masons. Five pyramids rise from a base of 55 sq. feet, and the centre one contains a small chamber, in which was found, about fifty years since, an urn full of ashes.--Gray, Mrs. Hamilton, Sepulchres of Etruria, p. 450.
[263] Taylor, R., Te Ika A Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants, p. 352.
[264] Cf. Stow, London.
[265] Evans, Sir Arthur, quoted in Crete of Pre-hellenic Europe, p. 32.
[266] Bonwick Irish Druids and Old Irish Religion, p. 230.
[267] Anwyl, E.
[268] It is not unlikely that the Goss and Cass families of to-day are the descendants of the British tribe referred to by the Romans as the Cassi.
[269] The Welsh for alban or alpin is elphin.
[270] Urlin, Miss Ethel M., _Festivals, Holy Days, and Saints' Days_, p. 192.
[271] Ibid., p. 196.
[272] Cf. Hone, W., Everyday Book, vol. i., col. 1340.
[273] Cf. Hone, W., Everyday Book, vol. i., col. 1340.
[274] xli. 19.
[275] Faiths and Folklore, i., 332.
[276] Celtic Britain, p. 211. Sir John frequently changed his mind.
[277] Barddas, p. 416.
[278] The Phrygian Cap was symbolic.
[279] Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe, p. xxxii.
[280] Mykenæ, p. 179.
[281] Rude Stone Monuments, p. 207.
[282] Baldwin, J. G., Prehistoric Nations, p. 162.
[283] Keightley, Fairy Mythology, p. 317.
[284] Hazlitt, W. Carew, Faiths and Folklore, ii., 608.
[285] Rhys, Sir J., Celtic Britain, p. 271.
[286] The Celtic Angus is translated excellent virtue.
[287] Cf. Baring-Gould, Rev. S., Curious Myths, pp. 266-316.
[288] Orphic Hymn, lv., 5, 10, and 11.
[289] Courtney, Miss M. L., Cornish Feasts and Folklore, p. 136.
[290] From prehistoric times this ensign seems to have been known as "the Jack," and the immutability of the fabulous element was evidenced anew during the present year when on 23rd April the Admiral on shore wirelessed to the Zeebrugge raiding force: "England and St. George". To this was returned the reply: "We'll give a twist to the dragon's tail".
[291] Since writing I find this surmise to be well founded. At the present moment there is a Persian cannon (A.D. 1547) captured at Bagdad, now on exhibition in London. It bears an inscription to the effect:--
"'Succour is from God, and victory is at hand.' The Commander of Victory and Help, the Shah, Desiring to blot out all trace of the Turks, Ordered Dglev to make this gun. Wherever it goes it burns up lives, It spits forth flames like a dragon. It sets the world of the Turks on fire."
[292] Wise, T. A., History of Paganism in Caledonia, p. 114.
[293] Irish Mytho. Cycle, p. 229.
[294] The Norwegian for neigh is _kn_eggya, the Danish, _gn_egge.
[295] There is no evidence to support the supposition that Eppillus may have been an English king.
[296] An omniscient eagle was associated with Achill (Ireland).
[297] Ancient Coins of the Romans Relating to Britain, p. 197.
[298] Faiths and Folklore, vol. i., p. 329.
[299] Faiths and Folklore, vol. i., p. 329.
[300] Madeley, E., The Science of Correspondence, p. 194.
[301] Dalston in Cumberland is assumed to have been a town in the dale or dale's town. But surely "towns" were never thus anonymous?
[302] P. 299.
[303] Compare also Shadwell in East London, "said to be St. Chad's Well".
[304] Mitton, G. E., Hackney, p. 11.
[305] Cf. Westropp, T. J., Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy, vol. xxxiv., Sec. C., Nos. 3 and 4.
[306] Walters, J. Cuming, The Lost Land of King Arthur, p. 219.
[307] One of these has been slightly diverted by the exigencies of the railway station.
[308] Macalister, R. A. S., _Temair Breg: A Study of the Remains and Traditions of Tara, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy_, sec. C., Nos. 10 and 11, p. 284.
[309] Picard, Ceremonies of Idolatrous People, vol. iv., p. 291.
[310] Weekley, E., Romance of Names, p. 224.
[311] Survey of London (Everyman's Library), p. 416.
[312] The Peck family may have been inn-keepers or dealers in peck or fodder, but more probably, like the Bucks and the Boggs, they may trace their descent much farther.
[313] See infra, p. 689.
[314] Akerman, J. Y., Ancient Coins, p. 17.
[315] There is a river Slee or Slea in Lincolnshire.
[316] Travels in the East (Bohn's Library), p. 384.
[317] Larwood & Hotten, The History of Signboards, p. 285.
[318] It is simply futile to refer the word inn to "within, indoors" (see Skeat).
[319] Celtic Britain, p. 66. It is therefore feasible that Wrens Park, by Mildmay Park, Hackney, was primarily reines Park.
[320] Prehistoric Britain, p. 247.
[321] Mykenæ, p. 293.
[322] Ancient Art and Ritual, pp. 70 and 71.
VII. OBERON
"O queen, whom Jove hath willed To found this new-born city, here to reign, And stubborn tribes with justice to refrain, We, Troy's poor fugitives, implore thy grace, Storm-tost and wandering over every main,-- Forbid the flames our vessels to deface, Mark our afflicted plight, and spare a pious race.
"We come not hither with the sword to rend Your Libyan homes, and shoreward drive the prey. Nay, no such violence our thoughts intend." --VIRGIL, Æneid, I., lxix., 57.
The old Welsh poets commemorate what they term Three National Pillars of the Island of Britain, to wit: "First--Hu, the vast of size, first brought the nation of the Cymry to the Isle of Britain; and from the summer land called Deffrobani they came (namely, the place where Constantinople now is), and through Mor Tawch, the placid or pacific sea, they came up to the Isle of Britain and Armorica, where they remained. Second--Prydain, son of Aedd the Great, first erected a government and a kingdom over Ynys Prydain, and previous to that time there was but little gentleness and ordinance, save a superiority of oppression. Third--Dyfnwal Moelmud--and he was the first that made a discrimination of mutual rights and statute law, and customs, and privileges of land and nation, and on account of these things were they called the three pillars of the Cymry."[323]
The Kymbri of Cambria claim themselves to be of the same race as the Kimmeroi, from whom the Crimea takes its name, also that Cumberland is likewise a land of the Cumbers. The authorities now usually explain the term Kymbri as meaning fellow countrymen, and when occurring in place-names such as Kemper, Quimper, Comber, Kember, Cymner, etc., it is invariably expounded to mean confluence: the word would thus seem to have had imposed upon it precisely the same meaning as synagogue, i.e., a coming together or congregation, and it remains to inquire why this was so.
The _Kym_bri were also known as _Cyn_bro, and the interchangeability of kym and kin is seemingly universal: the Khan of Tartary was synonymously the Cham of Tartary; our _Cam_bridge is still academically _Can_tabrigia, a _com_pact is a _con_tract, and the identity between cum and con might be demonstrated by innumerable instances. This being so, it is highly likely that the Kymbri were followers of King Bri, otherwise King Aubrey, of the Iberii or Iberian race. In Celtic aber or ebyr--as at _Aber_deen, _Aber_ystwith, etc.--meant a place of confluence of streams, burns, or brooks; and aber seems thus to have been synonymous with _cam_ber.
Ireland, or _Iber_nia, as it figures in old maps, now _Hiber_nia, traces its title to a certain Heber, and until the time of Henry VII., when the custom was prohibited, the Hibernians used to rush into battle with perfervid cries of Aber![324] It is a recognised peculiarity of the Gaelic language to stress the first of any two syllables, whereas in Welsh the accent falls invariably upon the second: given therefore one and the same word "Aubrey," a Welshman should theoretically pronounce it 'Brey, and an Irishman Aubr'; that is precisely what seems to have happened, whence there is a probability that the Heber and "St. Ibar" of Hibernia and the Bri of Cambria are references to one and the same immigrants.
Having "cambred" Heber with Bri, or Bru, and finding them both assigned traditionally to the Ægean, it is permissible to read the preliminary vowels of Heber or Huber, as the Greek eu, and to assume that Aubrey was the soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious Brey. _Bri_tain is the Welsh _Pry_dain, Hu was pronounced He, and it is thus not improbable that Pry was originally Pere He, or Father Hu, and that the traditions of Hu and Bru referred originally to the same race.
Hyper, the Greek for upper, is radically the same word as Iupiter or Iu pere, and if it be true that the French pere is a phonetically decayed form of pater, then again, 'Pry or 'Bru may be regarded as a corrosion of Iupiter.
Hu the Mighty, the National Pillar or ded, who has survived as the "I'll be He" of children's games, was indubitably the Jupiter of Great Britain, and he was probably the "Hooper" of Hooper's Blind, or Blind Man's Buff. According to the Triads, Hu obtained his dominion over Britain not by war or bloodshed, but by justice and peace: he instructed his people in the art of agriculture; divided them into federated tribes as a first step towards civil government, and laid the foundations of literature and history by the institution of Bardism.[325] In Celtic, barra meant a Court of Justice, in which sense it has survived in London, at Loth_bury_ and Alderman_bury_. The pious Trojans claimed "the stubborn tribes with justice to refrain," and it is possible that barri the Cornish for divide or separate also owes its origin to Bri or pere He, who was the first to divide them into federated tribes. Among the Iberians berri meant a city, and this word is no doubt akin to our borough.
In Hibernia, the Land of Heber, Aubrey or Oberon, it is said that every parish has its green and thorn, where the little people are believed to hold their merry meetings, and to dance in frolic rounds.[326] A _pari_sh, Greek paroika, is an orderly division, and as often as not the civic centre was a fairy stone: according to Sir Laurence Gomme, who made a special study of the primitive communities, when and where a village was established a stone was ceremoniously set up, and to this pierre the headman of the village made an offering once a year.[327]
Situated in Fore Street, Totnes, there stands to-day the so-called Brutus Stone, from which the Mayor of Totnes still reads official proclamations. At Brightlingsea we have noted the existence of a _Broad_moot: there is a _Brad_stone in Devon, a Bradeston in Norfolk, and elsewhere these Brude or Brutus stones were evidently known as pre stones. The innumerable "Prestons" of this country were originally, I am convinced, not as is supposed "Priests Towns," but Pre Stones i.e., Perry or Fairy Stones. King James in his book on Demonology spells fairy--Phairy; in Kent the cirrhus cloudlets of a summer day are termed the "Perry Dancers," and the phairies of Britain probably differed but slightly, if at all, from the _per_ii or _per_is of _Per_sia.[328]
Among the Greeks every town and village had its so-called "Luck," or protecting Goddess who specially controlled its fortunes, and by Pindar this Presiding Care is entitled pherepolis, i.e., the peri or phairy of the city.
The various Purleys and Purtons of England are assigned by the authorities to peru a pear, and supposed to have been pear-tree meadows or pear-tree hills, but I question whether pear-growing was ever the national industry that the persistent prevalence of peru in place-names would thus imply.
Around the pre-stones of each village our forerunners indubitably used to pray, and in the memoirs of a certain St. Sampson we have an interesting account of an interrupted Pray-meeting--"Now it came to pass, on a certain day as he journeyed through a certain district which they call Tricurius (the hundred of Trigg), he heard, on his left hand to be exact, men worshipping (at) a certain shrine, after the custom of the Bacchantes, by means of a play in honour of an image. Thereupon he beckoned to his brothers that they should stand still and be silent while he himself, quietly descending from his chariot to the ground, and standing upon his feet and observing those who worshipped the idol, saw in front of them, resting on the summit of a certain hill an abominable image. On this hill I myself have been, and have adored, and with my hand have traced the sign of the cross which St. Sampson, with his own hand, carved by means of an iron instrument on a standing stone. When St. Sampson saw it (the image), selecting two only of the brothers to be with him, he hastened quickly towards them, their chief, Guedianus, standing at their head, and gently admonished them that they ought not to forsake the one God who created all things and worship an idol. And when they pleaded as an excuse that it was not wrong to keep the festival of their progenitors in a play, some being furious, some mocking, but some being of saner mind strongly urging him to go away, straightway the power of God was made clearly manifest. For a certain boy driving horses at full speed fell from a swift horse to the ground, and twisting his head under him as he fell headlong, remained, just as he was flung, little else than a lifeless corpse." The "corpse" was seemingly but a severe stun, for an hour or so later, St. Sampson by the power of prayer successfully restored the patient to life, in view of which miracle Guedianus and all his tribe prostrated themselves at St. Sampson's feet, and "utterly destroyed the idol".[329]
The idol here mentioned if not itself a standing stone, was admittedly associated with one, and happily many of these Aubrey or Bryanstones are still standing. One of the most celebrated antiquities of Cornwall is the so-named men scryfa or "inscribed rock," and the inscription running from top to bottom reads--RIALOBRAN CUNOVAL FIL.
As history knows nothing of any "Rialobran, son of Cunoval," one may suggest that Rialobran was the Ryall or Royal Obran, Obreon or Oberon, the bren or Prince of Phairyland who figures so largely in the Romance of mediæval Europe. The Rialobran stone of Cornwall may be connoted with the ceremonial perron du roy still standing in the Channel Islands, and with the numerous Browny stones of Scotland. In Cornwall the phairy brownies seem to have been as familiar as in Scotland[330]: in the Hebrides--and as the Saint of this neighbourhood is St. Bride, the word Hebrides may perhaps be rendered eu Bride--every family of any importance once possessed a most obliging household Browny. Martin, writing in the eighteenth century, says: "A spirit by the country people called Browny was frequently seen in all the most considerable families in these Isles and North of Scotland in the shape of a tall man, but within these twenty or thirty years past he is seen but rarely." As the cromlechs of Brittany are termed poukelays or "puck stones," it is possible that the dolmens or tolmens of there and elsewhere were associated with the fairy tall man. Still speaking of the Hebrides Martin goes on to say: "Below the chapels there is a flat thin stone called Brownie's stone, upon which the ancient inhabitants offered a cow's milk every Sunday, but this custom is now quite abolished". The official interpretation of dolmen is daul or table stone, but it is quite likely that the word tolmen is capable of more than one correct explanation.
The Cornish Rialobran was in all probability originally the same as the local St. Perran or St. Piran, whose sanctuary was marked by the parish of Lan_bron_ or Lam_borne_. There is a Cornish circle known as Perran Round and the celebrated Saint who figures as, Perran, Piran, Bron, and Borne,[331] is probably the same as Perun the Slav Jupiter. From a stone held in the hand of Perun's image the sacred fire used annually to be struck and endeavours have been made to equate this Western Jupiter with the Indian Varuna. That there was a large Perran family is obvious from the statement that "till within the last fifty years the registers of the parish from the earliest period bear the Christian name of 'Perran,' which was transmitted from father to son; but now the custom has ceased".[332] Thus possibly St. Perran was not only the original of the modern Perrin family, but also of the far larger Byrons and Brownes. Further inquiry will probably permit the equation of Rialobran or St. Bron or Borne with St. Bruno, and as Oberon figures in the traditions of Kensington it is possible that the Bryanstone Square in that district, into which leads Brawn Street, marks the site of another Brownie or Rialobran stone. This Bryanstone district was the home of the Byron family, and the surname Brinsmead implies the existence here or elsewhere a Brin's mead or meadow.
The Brownies are occasionally known as "knockers," whence the "knocking stone" which still stands in Brahan Wood, Dingwall, might no doubt be rightly entitled a Brahan, Bryan, or Brownie Stone.[333]
Legend at Kensington--in which neighbourhood is not only Bryanstone Square but also on the summit of Campden Hill an Aubrey Walk--relates that Kenna, the fairy princess of Kensington Gardens, was beloved by Albion the Son of Oberon; hence we may probably relate young Kenna with Morgana the Fay, or big Gana, the alleged Mother of Oberon.[334] Mediæval tales represent the radiant Oberon not only as splendid, as a meteor, and as a raiser of storms, but likewise as the childlike God of Love and beauteous as an angel newly born.
At once the storm is fled; serenely mild Heav'n smiles around, bright rays the sky adorn While beauteous as an angel newly born Beams in the roseate day spring, glow'd the child A lily stalk his graceful limbs, sustain'd Round his smooth neck an ivory horn was chain'd Yet lovely as he was on all around Strange horror stole, for stern the fairy frown'd.[335]
It is not unlikely that the Princess Kenna was Ken new or the Crescent Moon, and the consociation at Kensington of Kenna with Oberon, permits not only the connotation of Oberon with his Fay mother Morgana, but also permits the supposition that Cuneval, the parent of Rialobran, was either Cune strong or valiant. It is obvious that the most valiant and most valorous would inevitably become rulers, whence perhaps why in Celtic bren became a generic term for prince: the words bren and prince are radically the same, and stand in the same relation to one another as St. Bron to his variant St. Piran.
Oberon or Obreon, the leader of the Brownies, Elves, or Alpes, may I think be further traced in Cornwall at Carn Galva, for this Carn of Galva, Mighty Elf or Alva, was, it is said, once the seat of a benignant giant named Holi_burn_. The existence of Alva or Ellie-stones is implied by the fairly common surnames Alvastone, Allistone, and Ellistone, and it is probable that Livingstone was originally the same name as Elphinstone.
From the Aubry, Obrean, Peron stones, or Brownlows were probably promulgated the celebrated Brehon laws:[336] as is well known the primitive Prince or Baron sat or stood in the centre of his barrow, burra, or bury, and ranged around him each at his particular stone stood the subordinate peers, brehons (lawyers), and barons of the realm. A peer means an equal, and it is therefore quite likely that the _Pre_stons of Britain mark circles where the village peers held their parish or parochial meetings.
With the English Preston the Rev. J. B. Johnston connotes Presteign, and he adds: "In Welsh Presteign is Llanandras, or Church of St. Andrews".[337] This illuminating fact enables us to connect the Perry stones with the cross of St. Andrew or Ancient Troy, and as Troy was an offshoot of Khandia we may reasonably accept Crete as the starting-point of Aubrey's worldwide tours. That Candia was the home of the gentle magna mater is implied by the ubiquitous dove: in Hibernia the name Caindea is translated as being Gaelic for gentle goddess, and we shall later connect this lady with "Kate Kennedy," whose festival is still commemorated at St. Andrews.
To the East of Cape Khondhro in Crete, and directly opposite the town of Candia or Herakleion, lies the islet of Dhia: in Celtic dia, dieu, or duw meant God,[338] and as in Celtic Hugh meant mind, we may translate dieu as having primarily implied good Hu, the good Mind or Brain. In a personal sense the Brain is the Lord of Wits, whence perhaps why Obreon--as Keightley spells Oberon--was said to be the Emperor of Fairyland, attended by a court and special courtiers, among whom are mentioned _Perri_wiggen, _Perri_winkle, and Puck.
At the south-eastern extremity of Dhia is a colossal spike, peak, or pier, entitled Cape Apiri, and we may connote Apiri with the Iberian town named Ipareo. The coinage of Ipareo pourtrays "a sphinx walking to the left," at other times it depicted the Trinacria or walking legs of Sicily and the Isle of Man. The Three Legs of Sicily were represented with the face of Apollo, as the hub or bogel, and the ancient name of Sicily was _Hyper_eia. On the Feast Day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Sicilians or Hypereians hold what they still term the "Festival of the Bara". An immense machine of about 50 feet high is constructed, designing to represent heaven; and in the midst is placed a young female personating the Virgin, with an image of Jesus on her right hand; round the Virgin twelve little children turn vertically, representing so many seraphim, and below them twelve more children turn horizontally, as cherubim; lower down in the machine a sun turns vertically, with a child at the extremity of each of the four principal radii of his circle, who ascend and descend with his rotation, yet always in an erect posture; and still lower, reaching within about 7 feet of the ground, are placed twelve boys who turn horizontally without intermission around the principal figure, designing thereby to exhibit the twelve apostles, who were collected from all corners of the earth, to be present at the decease of the Virgin, and witness her miraculous assumption. This huge machine is drawn about the principal streets by sturdy monks, and it is regarded as a particular favour to any family to admit their children in this divine exhibition, although the poor infants themselves do not seem long to enjoy the honours they receive as seraphim, cherubim, and apostles; the constant twirling they receive in the air making some of them fall asleep, many of them sick, and others more grievously ill.[339]
Not only this Hypereian Feast but the machine itself is termed the Bara, whence it is evident that, like St. Michael, Aubrey or Aber the Confluence, was regarded as the Camber, Synagogue, Yule or Holy Whole, and the fact that the Sicilian Bara is held upon the day of St. Alipius indicates some intimate connection with St. Alf or Alpi. The Walking Sphinx of the Iparean coins is identified by M. Lenormant as the Phoenician deity Aion, and according to Akerman the type was doubtless chosen in compliment to Albinus, who was born at Hadrumetum, a town not far from Carthage.[340] What was the precise connection between this Aion and Albinus I am unaware.
Among the coins of Iberia some bear the inscriptions ILIBERI, ILIBEREKEN, and ILIBERINEKEN, which accord with Pliny's reference to the Iliberi or Liberini. Liber was the Latin title of the God of Plenty, whence liberal, liberty, labour, etc., and seemingly the Elibers or Liberins deified these virtues as attributes of the Holy Aubrey or the Holy Brain-King.
Directly opposite Albania, the country of the Epirotes--known anciently as Epirus--is Cantabria at the heel of Italy, and we meet again with the Cantabares in Iberia where they occupied Cantabria which comprised Alava. It may be noted in passing that in Epirus the olive was a supersacred tree: according to Miss Harrison--some of whose words I have italicised--this Moria, or Fate Tree, was the very life of Athens; the life of the olive which fed her and lighted her was the very life of the city. When the Persian host sacked the Acropolis they burnt the holy olive, and it seemed that all was over. But next day it put forth a new shoot and the people knew that the city's life still lived. Sophocles sang of the glory of the wondrous life-tree of Athens:--
The untended, the self-planted, self-defended from the foe, Sea-grey, children-nurturing olive tree that here delights to grow, None may take nor touch nor harm it, headstrong youth nor age grown bold For the round of Morian Zeus has been its watcher from of old; He beholds it, and, Athene, thy own sea-grey eyes behold.
From Epirus one is attracted to the river Iberus or Ebro which is bounded by the Pyrenees, and had the town of Hibera towards its mouth. Of the Iberian people in general Dr. Lardner states: "They are represented as tenacious of freedom, but those who inhabited the coasts were probably still more so of gain". I am at a loss to know why this offensive suggestion is gratuitously put forward, as the Iberians are said to have been remarkably slender and active and to have held corpulency in much abhorrence.[341] Of the Spanish Cantabres we are told that the consciousness of their strength gave them an air of calm dignity and a decision in their purposes not found in any other people of the Peninsula. "Their loud wailings at funerals, and many other of their customs strongly resemble those of the Irish."[342]
Pere and parent are radically the same word, and that the Iberians reverenced their peres is obvious from the fact that parricides were conducted beyond the bounds of the Kingdom and there slain; their very bones being considered too polluted to repose in their native soil.[343]
Lardner refers to the unbending resolution, persevering energy, and native grandeur of the Cantabrians, but he contemptuously rejects Strabo's "precious information" that some of the Spanish tribes had for 6000 years possessed writing, metrical poems, and even laws. In view of the superior number of Druidical remains which are found in certain parts of Spain it is not improbable that the Barduti of Iberia corresponded with the Bards or Boreadæ of Britain.
There are many references in the classics to certain so-called Hyperboreans, in particular the oft-quoted passage from Diodorus of Sicily or Hypereia: "Hecataeus and some other ancient writers report that there is an island about the bigness of Sicily, situated in the ocean, opposite to the northern coast of Celtica (Gaul), inhabited by a people called Hyperboreans, because they are 'beyond the north wind'. The climate is excellent, and the soil is fertile, yielding double crops. The inhabitants are great worshippers of Apollo, to whom they sing many, many hymns. To this god they have consecrated a large territory, in the midst of which they have a magnificent round temple, replenished with the richest offerings. Their very city is dedicated to him, and is full of musicians and players on various instruments, who every day celebrate his benefits and perfections."
Claims to being the original Hyperborea have been put in by scholars from time to time on behalf of Stonehenge, the Hebrides, Hibernia, Scythia, Tartary, and Muscovy, "stretching quite to Scandinavia or Sweden and Norway": the locality is still unsettled and will probably remain so, for there is some reason to suppose that the Hyperboreans were a sect or order akin perhaps to the Albigenses, Cathari, Bridge Builders, Comacine Masters, Templars, and other Gnostic organizations of the Dark Ages.
The chief Primary Bard of the West was entitled Taliesin, which Welsh scholars translate into Radiant Brow: the brow is the seat of the brain, and the two words stand to each other in the same relation as Aubrey to Auberon.
Commenting upon the Elphin bairn, illustrated in Fig. 162, Akerman observes that it is supposed to illustrate the Gaulish myth of the Druid Abaris to whom Apollo is said to have given an arrow on which he travelled magically through the air. It is an historic fact that a physical Abaris visited Athens where he created a most favourable impression; it is likewise a fact that Irish literature possesses the account of a person called Abhras, which perfectly agrees with the description of the Hyperborean Abaris of Diodorus and Himerius. The classic Abaris went to Greece to whip up subscriptions for a temple: the Irish Abhras is said to have gone to distant parts in quest of knowledge, returning by way of Scotland where he remained seven years and founded a new system of religion. In Irish Abar means "God the first Cause," and as in Ireland cad (which is our good) meant holy, the magic word Abracadabra may be reasonably resolved into Abra, Good Abra. As already mentioned the Irish cried Aber! when rushing into battle, and the word was no doubt used likewise at peaceful feasts and festivals. The inference would thus seem that the title of Abaris was assumed by the chief Druid or High Priest who personified during his tenure of office the archetypal Abaris. It is well known that the priest or king enacted in his own person the mysteries of the faith; and it is not improbable that chief Guedianus, whose sacred play was so rudely disturbed by St. Sampson, was personifying at the time the Good Janus or Genius.
If my suggestion that Taliesin or Radiant Brow was a generic title assumed by every Primary-Chief-Bard in Britain for the time being be correct, it is likely that the same principle applied elsewhere than in Wales. The first bard mentioned in Ireland was Amergin, which resolves into Love King, and may thus be equated with Homer the blind old man of Chios. The supposedly staid and gloomy Etrurians attributed all their laws and wisdom to an elphin child who was unexpectedly thrown up from the soil by a plough. As the Etrurian name for Cupid was Epeur, in all probability the aged child on Fig. 171 represents this elphin high-brow, and with Epeur may be connoted the Etrurian _Per_ugia--probably the same word as Phrygia. The local saint of Peru_gia_, the land of Peru (?) was known as Good John of Perugia: in Hibernia St. Ibar is mentioned as being "like John the Baptist".[344]
It was the custom in Etruria to represent good genii as birds: birds sporting amid foliage are even to-day accepted and understood as symbolic of good genii in Paradise, and birds or brids, as we used to spell them, are of course Nature's little singing men, i.e., bards or boreadæ. A percipient observer of the Pictish inscriptions found in Scotland has recently pointed out that, "With the exception of the eagle which conveys a special meaning, shown in many early Scottish stones, the image of a bird is a sign of good omen. Winged creatures, indeed, almost always stand for angelic and spiritual things, whether in pagan or Christian times. The bird symbol involved the conception of ethereality or spirituality. The bird motif occurs in the decoration of metallic objects in the British Islands during the early centuries in this era. I have found in Wigtownshire the image of a bird in bronze. It belongs to a time early in this era. It occurs within the pentacle symbol engraved on a pebble from the Broch of Burrian, Orkney. Birds are shown within the pedestal of a cross at Farr. Birds with a similar symbolism are found on the Shandwick stone, and on a stone at St. Vigeans. They are of frequent occurrence in foliageous work, often with the three-berried branch or with the three-lobed leaf, as at Closeburn. The pagan conception, absorbed into the early Christian ideas, was that the bird represented the disembodied spirit which was reputed to voyage here and there with a lightning celerity, like the flash of a swallow on the wing."[345]
The Bards of Britain attributed the foundation of their order to Hu the First Pillar of the Island, and to unravel the personality of the early Bards will no doubt prove as impracticable as the disclosure of Homer, Amergin, Old Moore, and Old Parr.
No bird has ever uttered note That was not in some first bird's throat, Since Eden's freshness and man's fall No rose has been original.
As St. Bride, whose name may be connoted with brid or bird, was the goddess of eloquence and poetry, the Welsh term Prydain is no doubt cognate with prydu the Welsh for "to compose poetry". Probably prate, mediæval praten, meant originally to preach in a fervid, voluble, and sententious manner, but in any case it is impossible to agree with Skeat that prate was "of imitative origin". Imitative of what--a parrot?
The hyper of Hyperborean is our word upper; over, German uber, means aloft, which is radically alof, and exuberant and exhuberance resolve into, from or out of Auberon: the bryony is a creeper of notoriously exuberant growth, in Greek bruein means to teem or grow luxuriantly.
With the river Ebro may be connoted the South Spanish town of Ebora or Epora which is within a few miles of Andura. The coins of this city are inscribed EPORA, AIPORA, and IIPORA, and the "bare bearded head to the right within a laurel garland" may here no doubt be identified with Hyperion, the father of Helios the Sun. In Homer, Helios himself is alluded to as Hyperion, which is the same name as our Auberon: the coins of the Tarragonensian town of Pria, which has been sometimes confused with Baria, in the south of Spain, figure a bull and are inscribed Prianen.
There are in existence certain coins figuring an ear of corn, a pellet, a crescent, the head of Hercules, and a club, inscribed ABRA: the site of this city is unknown, but is believed to have been near Cadiz.
On the banks of the Tagus there was a city named Libora and its coins pourtrayed a horse: in the opinion of Akerman the unbridled horse was the symbol of liberty, and it is quite likely that among other interpretations this was one, for it is beyond question that symbolism was never fettered into one solitary and stereotyped form.
The ancient Libora is now known as Talavera la Reyna which may seemingly be modernised into Tall Vera, the Queen. The Tarraconensian town of Barea--whose emblem was the thistle--is now known as Vera: the old Portuguese Ebora is now Evora, uber is the German for over; Varvara is the Cretan form of Barbara, and it is quite obvious that in various directions Vera and Bera with their derivatives were synonymous terms.
It would seem that Aubrey or Avery toured with his cross into Helvetia, planting it particularly at Ginevra, now Geneva, and there for the moment we may leave him amid the Alpine Oberland at Berne.
The ancient town of Berne memorises in its museum a famed St. Bernard dog named "Barry," which saved the lives of forty travellers: this "Barry" associated with Oberthal may be connoted with "Perro," a shepherd's dog in Wales, whose curious name Borrow was surprised to find corresponded with perro, the generic term for dog in Spain.[346]
Berne still maintains its erstwhile sacred Bruin or bears in their bear-pit, but the Gaulish Eburs or Iburii seemingly reverenced not Bruin but the boar, vide the EBUR coin here illustrated. The capital of the ancient Eburii is now Evreux, and they seem, no doubt for some excellent reason, to have been confused with the Cenomani, a people seemingly akin to our British Cenomagni, Iceni, or Cantii.
Fig. 174, bearing the inscription EBURO, is a coin of the Eburones who inhabited the neighbourhood of Liége. It is a noteworthy fact that the people of Liége are admittedly conspicuous as the most courteous and charming of all Belgians. Their coins were inscribed EBUR, EBURO, and sometimes COM--a curious and unexplained legend which occurs frequently upon the tokens of Britain.
The Celtiberian town of Cunbaria is now known as La Maria, the Kimmeroi were synonymously the Kymbri, and it is not improbable that these dual terms have survived in the compère and commère of modern France. The pères or priests of France, like the parsons, priests, and presbyters of Britain, assign to infants at Baptism a God-Father and a God-Mother, which the French term respectively parrain and marrain. Compère and commère figure not only in the Church but also in the Theatre, and it is more than likely that the commère and compère of the modern Revue are the direct descendants of the patriarchal Abaris, Abhras, Priest, and Presbyter of prehistoric times.
On the Sierra de Elvira near Granada used to stand Ilibiris whose coins are inscribed ILIBERI, ILBRS, ILIBERRIS, LIBER, ILBERNEN, ILBRNAKN, ILBREKN, and these legends may be connoted with the famous Irish Leprechaun, Lobaircin, or Lubarkin who figures less prominently in England as the Lubrican or Lubberkin. Sometimes the Irish knock off the holy and refer simply to "a little prechaun," but the more usual form is Lubarkin:[347] this most remarkable of the fairy tribe in Ireland is supposed to be peculiar to that island, but one would probably have once met with him at Brecon, or Brychain at Brecknock, at Brechin in Forfarshire, at Birchington in Kent, at Barking near London, and in many more directions. In connection with Iberia in the West there occur references to a giant Bergyon, who may be connoted with Burchun of the Asiatic Buratys. The religion of these Buratys was, said Bell, downright paganism of the grossest kind: he adds the information, "they talk, indeed, of an Almighty and Good Being who created all things, whom they call Burchun; but seem bewildered in obscure and fabulous notions concerning His nature and government".[348] Inquiries may prove that these Burchun-worshipping Buratys were of the Asiatic Iberian race which Strabo supposed were descendants of the Western Iberi.[349]
In addition to Barking near London (Domesday Berchinges) there is a Birchin Lane, and buried away in obscurity, opposite the Old Bailey in London, there is standing to-day a small open court entitled Prujean Square. In connection with this may be connoted the tradition that the origin of the societies of the inns of court is to be found in the law schools existing in the city: the first of these legal institutions entitled Johnstone's Inn,[350] was situated in Newgate; and the vulgarity of the name Johnstone raises a suspicion that Johnstones were as plentiful in Scotland as Prestons in England, both alike being Aubry or Bryanstones, where the Brehon laws were enunciated and administered. Whether the present Prujean Square marks the site of the original Johnstone, whence Johnstone's Inn, is a matter which may possibly be settled by future inquiry, but the word Prujean, which is père John, renders it extremely likely that the original Johnstone of Johnstone's Inn, Newgate, was alternatively père Johnstone. If this were so, Prujean Square marks the primary Law Court of the Old Bailey, and at some remote period the officers of the Law merely stepped across the road into more commodious premises.
The Governors of Gray's Inn, another most ancient Law School, are entitled "the Ancients"; equity is radically the same word as equus, a horse; and the Mayors, or Mares, of Britain and Brittany seemingly represented the mare-headed Demeter or Good Mother. Juge is geegee, our judges still wear horse-hair wigs of office, and the figure on the British coin here illustrated looks singularly like a brehon or barrister who has been called to the Bar.
It is common knowledge that the primitive Bar was a barrow, from the summit of which the Druid, King, or Abaris administered justice, and around which presumably were ranged each at his stone the prehistoric barristers or abaristers? Even until the eighteenth century the lawyers were assigned each a pillar in St. Paul's Church, and at their respective pillars the Men of Law administered advice. On the summit of Prestonbury Rings in Devonshire evidently once stood a phairie stone, and the name of Prestonpans in Scotland suggests that Prestons were not unknown in Albany.
The laws of Greece were admittedly derived from Crete, and such was the reputation of King Minos that the mythologists made him the Judge of the Under-world. Lycurgus, the Cretan, would not permit his Code to be committed to writing, deeming it more permanent if engraved upon the brain: the Brehon laws of Ireland were enunciated in rhymed triplets termed Celestial Judgments, and the most ancient Law Codes of all nations are assigned without exception to Bards and a divine origin.
Not only were laws enunciated from barrows, but the dead were buried in a barrow, and the knees of the deceased were tucked up under his chin so that the body assumed the position of an unborn child: in Welsh bru meant the belly or matrix, in Cornish bry meant breast, and the notion seems to have been that the body of the deceased was restored as it were into Abraham's bosom whence it had sprung.[351]
It is a remarkable fact that neither in the Greek nor Latin language is there any equivalent to the word barrow, whence it would seem, judging also from the immense number of round and oval barrows found in Britain, that these islands were pre-eminently the home of the barrow, and that the barrow was essentially a British institution.
Connected with barrow is the civic borough, also the berg or hill: in Cornish bre, bar, or per meant hill,[352] and bar meant top or summit; birua is the Basque for head, and in Gaelic barra meant supposedly mount of the circle.[353]
In Cornish bron meant breast or pap, and one of the most popular heroines of Welsh Romance is the beautiful Bronwen or Branwen, a name which the authorities translate as meaning Bosom White. In old English bosom was written bosen, and as en was our ancient plural, as in brethr_en_, childr_en_, etc., it is probable that not only did bosen mean the bosses but that bron or breast was originally bru en, bre en or bar en, i.e., the tops or hills. This symbol of the Great Mother was represented frequently by two hills--from the Paps of Anu down to twin barrows, and it was also represented mathematically by two circles.
In Celtic bryn meant hillock or hill, in Cornish bern meant a hayrick, and that the mows or hayricks were made in the form of bron, the breast, may be implied from ancient Inn Signs of the Barley Mow. Bara was Cornish for bread; in the same language barn meant to judge, barner a judge, and there is good reason to suppose that the tithe barns connected with Monasteries and Churches served originally not merely as store-houses, but as Courts of Justice, theatres, and centres of religion. In Cornish bronter meant priest, priest is the same word as breast, and the notion of _par_sons being pastors, feeders, or fathers is commemorated in the words themselves. In Cornish brein or brenn meant royal and supreme; the sacred centre stone of King's County in Ireland was situated at Birr, and birua has already been noted as being the Basque for head. The probability of these words being connected is strengthened by Keightley's observation: "There must by the way some time or other have been an intimate connection between Spain and England, so many of our familiar words seem to have a Spanish origin".[354]
In addition to the famous earthwork at Abury in Wilts there is a less familiar one at Eubury in Gloucestershire: at Redbourne in Herts is a "camp" known as "Aubrey's" or "Aubury," whence it would seem that abri, the generic term for a shelter or refuge, might also have originated in Britain.[355] The colossal abri at Abury, or Aubrey, consisted of two circles within a greater one, and at the head of the avenue facing due east it will be noticed that Aubrey, the seventeenth-century antiquary, records twin barrows situated on what is now _Over_ton Hill.
Lying in the sea a mile or so off the Cornish town of St. Just are a pair of conical _ber_gs or _pyr_amids known as the Brisons, and opposite these is a little bay named Priest's Cove. There is no known etymology for Brisons, but it has been suggested that these remarkable burgs were once used as prisons: probably they were, for the stocks were frequently placed at the church door, and without doubt the ancient holy places served on necessity as prisons as well as Courts of St. Just. In the vicarage garden at St. Just was found a small bronze bull, and as the Phoenicians have been washed out of reckoning we may assign this idol either to the Britons who, until recently wassailed under the guise of a bull termed "the Broad,"[356] or to the Bronze-age Cretans, among whom the Bull or Minotaur was sacred. Perhaps instead of "Cretans" it would be more just to say Hellenes, for the headland opposite the Brisons was known originally as Cape Helenus, and there are the ruins of St. Hellen's Chapel still upon it.
Hellen, the mythical ancestor from whom the Hellenes attributed their national descent, may possibly be recognised not only as the Long Man or Lanky Man of country superstition but also in Parth_olon_ or Barth_olon_, the alleged son of Terah (Troy?), who is said to have landed with an expedition at Imber Scene in Ireland within 300 years after the Flood. Partholon, Father Good Holon (?) or Pure Good Holon (?) is said to have had three sons "whose names having been conferred on localities where they are still extant their memories have been thus perpetuated so that they seem still to live among us". This passage, quoted from Silvester Giraldus,[357] who was surnamed Cambrensis because he was a Welshman, permits the assumption that a similar practice prevailed also elsewhere, and if in the time of Giraldus (1146) place-names had survived since the Flood, there is no reason to suppose that they have since ceased to exist.
Hellen was the son of Deucalion and Pyrrha, who correspond to the Noah and Alpha of our British mythology: after floating for nine days during the Flood the world was said to have been re-peopled by these twain, two-one, giant or joint pair, who created men by casting stones over their shoulders. In the Christian emblem here illustrated the divine Père or Parent, is being assisted by an angel, peri, or phairy, and it is possible that the Prestons of Britain were at one time Pyrrha stones. As the syllable zance of Penzance is always understood as san, holy, possibly the two Brisons may be translated into Pair Holy: with the Greek Pyrrha-Flood story may be connoted Peirun the name of the Chinese Noah.
The church of St. Just was originally known as Lafroodha, which is understood to have meant laf church and rhooda,[358] "a corruption of the Saxon word rood or cross". Rhooda is, however, much older than Saxon, rhoda is the Greek for rose, and the Rhodian Greeks used the rose as their national symbol. The immediate surroundings of the Dane John at Durovernum are known to this day as Rodau's Town, and we shall consider Rhoda at greater length in subsequent chapters.
In the church of Roodha or St. Just there is standing a so-called "Silus stone" which was discovered in 1834, during alterations to the chancel: this object has carved upon it SILUS HIC JACET, the Greek letters [Greek: Ch.R.], and a crosier, whence it has been surmised that Silus was a priest or pastor. Mr. J. Harris Stone inquires: "Who was Silus? No one has yet discovered," and he adds: "It is a reasonable conjecture that he was one of those early British bishops who preached the Gospel before the mission of Augustine."
I agree that he was British, but I am inclined to place him still farther back, and to assign his name at any rate to the Selli, under which title the priests of Epirus were known. The Selli were pre-eminently the custodians at Dodona, whence Homer's reference:--
Great King, Dodona's Lord, Pelasgian Jove, Who dwell'st on high, and rul'st with sov'reign sway, Dodona's wintry heights; where dwell around Thy Sellian priests, men of unwashen feet, That on the bare ground sleep.
The Spartan courage and simplicity of the British papas is sufficiently exemplified by their voyages to Iceland and to the storm-tossed islands of the Hebrides, where they have left names such as Papa Stour, Papa Westray, etc. One may assume that the selli of Dodona--as probably also the salii or augurs of Etruria--lived originally in cells either single or in clusters which became the foundations of later monasteries: Silus may thus be connoted with solus, and the word celibate suggests that the selli led _soli_tary lives.
Close to Perry Court, in Kent, is Selgrove, and the numerous Selstons, Seldens, Selsdens, Selwoods, and Selhursts, were in all probability hills, woods, denes, and groves where the Selli congregated, and celebrated the benefits and perfections of the Solus or Alone. Near Birmingham is Selly Oak, which may be connoted with allon, the Hebrew for oak, and with the fact that the oak groves of the selli at Dodona were universally renowned. The Scilly Islands and Selsea or Sels Island in Hampshire may be connoted with Selby or Selebi, the abode of the selli (?), in Yorkshire, now Selby Abbey. In Devonshire is Zeal Monachorum, and judging by what was accomplished we may define the selli as _zeal_ous and celestial-minded souls. In Welsh celli means a grove; in Latin sylva means a wood; it is notorious that the Druids worshipped in groves, and it is not unlikely that Silbury Hill was particularly the selli's hill or barrow. On the other hand the pervasiveness of Bury at Abury as exemplified in the immediately adjacent _Bar_bury Castle, _Bore_ham Downs, _Brad_enstoke, _Over_ton Hill, and Oli_vers_ Castle, makes it likely that the Sil of Silbury may have been the Sol of Solway and Salisbury Crags.
In Ireland our soft cell is kil, whence Kilkenny, Kilbride, and upwards of 1400 place-names, all meaning cell of, or holy to so and so. The enormous prevalence of this hard kil in Ireland renders it probable that the word carried the same meaning in many other directions, notably at Cal_abria_ in Etruria: the wandering priests of Asia Minor and the near East were known as Calanders, a word probably equivalent to Santander, and as has been seen every Welsh Preston was a Llanandras or church of Andrew.
At Haverfordwest there is a place named Berea, upon which the Rev. J. B. Johnston comments: "Welsh Non-conformists love to name their chapels and villages around them so": among the Hebrew Pharisees there existed a mystic haburah or fellowship;[359] and the Welsh word Berea, probably connected with abri, meaning a sanctuary, is associated by Mr. Johnston with the passage in Acts xvii., i.e.: "And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night into Berea". That Paul preached from an abri, or Mount Pleasant, is implied by the statement that he stood in the midst of Mars Hill, whence he admonished his listeners against their altars to the Unknown God. It was traditionally believed that St. Paul preached not only to the people of Cornwall, but also to Londoners from Parliament Hill, where a prehistoric stone still stands.
That Hellen was once a familiar name at Abury is implied by _Lans_down, _Lyn_ham, and perhaps Calne or uch alne the Great Alone. Both the river Colne in Lancashire and the village of Calne near Abury are attributed as possibly to calon, the Welsh for heart or centre: the word centre is radically San Troy, as also is saintuary or sanctuary. Stukeley speaks particularly of Overton Hill as being the sanctuary, but the entire district was traditionally sacrosanct, and it was popularly supposed that reptiles died on entering the precincts: of the Hyperboreans, Diodorus expressly records they had consecrated a large territory.
The village of Abury was occasionally spelled Avereberie, at other times Albury, and with this latter form may be connoted Alberich,[360] the German equivalent to Auberon. Chilperic, a variant of Alberich, is stated by Camden to be due to a German custom of prefacing certain names with ch or k, a contracted form of king: I was unaware of this fact when first formulating my theory that an initial K meant great.
It is considered that Alberich meant Elf rich, and the official supposition is that the French Alberon, or Auberon, was made in Germany: according to Keightley, the German Albs or Elves have fallen from the popular creed, but in most of the traditions respecting them we recognise benevolence as one of the principal traits of their character.[361]
Alberich may, as is generally supposed, have meant Albe_rich_, or Albe wealthy, but brich, brick, brook, etc., are fundamental terms and are radically ber uch. Brightlingsea--of which there are 193 variants of spelling--is pronounced by the natives Bricklesea, and there are innumerable British Brockleas, Brixtons, Brixhams, Brockhursts, etc.
Among the many unsolved problems of archæology are the Hebridean brochs, which are hollow towers of dry built masonry formed like truncated cones. These erections, peculiar to Scotland, are found mainly in the Hebrides, and there is a surprising uniformity in their design and construction. Among the most notable brochs are those situated at Burray, Borrowston, Burrafirth, Burraness, Birstane, Burgar, Brindister, Birsay and in _Ber_wickshire, at Cockburnlaw, and the remarkable recurrence of Bur, or Burra, in these place-names is obviously due to something more than chance.
At _Brook_land Church in Kent--within a few miles of Camber Castle--a triplex conical belfrey or berg of wooden construction is standing, not on the tower, but on the ground in the immediate neighbourhood of the sacred edifice. The amazing cone-tomb illustrated on page 237 is that of Lars Porsenna, which means Lord Porsenna, and the bergs or conical pair of Brison rocks lying off Priest's Cove at St. Just may be connoted not only with the word parson but with Parsons and Porsenna. Malory, in Morte d'Arthur, mentions an eminent Dame Brisen, adding that: "This Brisen was one of the greatest enchantresses that was at that time in the world living."[362]
There is a famous broch at Burrian in the Orkneys; near St. Just are the parishes of St. Buryan and St. Veryan, both of which are identified with an ancient Eglosberrie, i.e., the eglise, close, or cloister of Berrie. A berry is a diminutive egg, and in some parts of the country gooseberries are known as deberries.[363] De berry seemingly means good or divine berry, and the _pick_ly character of the gooseberry bush no doubt added to the sanctity: from the word goosegog gog was seemingly once a term equivalent to berry; a goose is often termed a _barn_acle, and the phantom dog--sometimes a bear--entitled the bargeist or barguest was no doubt a popular degradation of the Hound of Heaven. Two hounds in leash are known as a brache, which is the same word as brace, meaning pair: in connection with the supposition that the Brisons were originally prisons may be noted that barnacles were primarily a pair of curbs or handcuffs.
From the typical ground plan of two brochs here given it will be seen that their form was that of a wheel, and it is possible that the flanged spokes of these essential abris were based upon the svastika notion of a rolling, running trinacria such as that of Hyperea and of the Isle of Man. Brochs are in some directions known as peels, and at Peel Castle, in the Isle of Man, legend points to a grave 30 yards long as being that of Eubonia's first king: a curious tradition, says Squire, credits him with three legs, and it is these limbs arranged like the spokes of a wheel that appear on the arms of the Island.[364]
In connection with the giant's grave at Peel may be connoted the legend in Rome that St. Paul was there beheaded "at the Three Fountains". The exact spot is there shown where the milk spouted from his apostolic arteries, and where moreover his head, after it had done preaching, took three jumps to the honour of the Holy Trinity, and at each spot on which it jumped there instantly sprang up a spring of living water which retains to this day a plain and distinct taste of milk.[365] This story of three jumps is paralleled in Leicester by a legend of Giant Bell who took three mighty leaps and is said to be buried at Belgrave:[366] Bell is the same word as Paul and Peel.
The Lord of the Isle of Man is said to have swept swift as the spring wind over land and sea upon a horse named Splendid Mane: the Mahommedans tell of a milk-white steed named Al Borak, each of whose strides were equal to the furthest range of human vision: in Chaucer's time English carmen addressed their steeds as brok, and in Arabic el boraka means the blessing. Broch is the same word as brooch, and upon ancient brooches a brok, as in Fig. 187, was sometimes represented: the magnificent ancestral brooches of the Highland families will be found on investigation frequently to be replete with ancient symbolism, the centre jewel representing the All-seeing Eye. Broch or broca means a pin or spike, and prick means dot or speck: prick, like brok, also meant horse, and every one is familiar with the gallant knight who "pricks," i.e., rides on horseback o'er the plain. Prick and brok thus obviously stand in the same relation to each other as Chil_peric_ and Al_beric_.
The phairy first king of the Isle of Man was regarded as the special patron of sea-faring men, by whom he was invoked as "Lord of Headlands," and in this connection Berry Head at Brixham, Barras Head at Tintagel, and Barham or Barenham Down in Kent are interesting. The southern coast of Wales is sprinkled liberally with Bru place-names from St. Bride's Bay wherein is Ramsey Island, known anciently as ynis y Bru, the Isle of Bru, to Burry river and Barry Isle next Sulli Isle (the selli isle?).
Aubrey or Auberon may be said almost to pervade the West and South of England: at Barnstaple or Barn Market we meet with High Bray, river Bray, Bratton, Burnham, Braunton, _Berryn_arbor, the Brendon Hills, Paracombe and Baggy Point; in the Totnes neighbourhood are _Big_bury, Burr Island, Beer Head, Berry Head, Branscombe, Branshill, and Prawle Point, which last may be connoted with the rivers Barle, Bark, and Brue. It is perhaps noteworthy that the three spots associated until the historic period with flint-knapping[367] are Beer Head in Devon, _Pur_fleet near Barking, and _Bran_don in Suffolk.
Totnes being the traditional landing-place of Bru it is interesting to find in that immediate district two Prestons, a Pruston, Barton, Bourton or Borton, Brookhill, Bructon, Brixham, Prescott, Parmount, Berry Pomeroy, Prestonberry and Preston Castle or Shandy's Hill.[368] Ebrington suggests an ington or town of the children of Ebr; Alvington may be similarly connected with Alph, and Ilbert and Brent seemingly imply the Holy Ber or Bren. The True Street by Totnes may be connoted with the adjacent Dreyton, and Bosomzeal Cross in all probability once bore in the centre, or bogel, the boss which customarily forms the eye of Celtic crosses. Hu being the first of the three deddu, tatu, or pillars, the term Totnes probably as in Shoeburyness meant Tot_nose_, and the adjacent Dodbrooke, Doddiscombleigh, and Daddy's Hole may all be connoted with the Celtic tad, dad, or daddy. With the Doddi of Doddiscombleigh or Doddy's Valley Meadow, may be connoted the gigantic and commanding Cornish headland known as Dodman. The Hollicombe by Preston was presumably the holy Coombe, and Halwell, at one time a Holy Well: in this neighbourhood of Kent's Cavern and Kent's Copse are Kingston and Okenbury; at Kingston-on-Thames is Canbury Park, and it is extremely likely that the true etymology of Kingston is not King's Town but King Stone, i.e., a synonymous term for Preston and the same word as Johnstone.
If as now suggested Bru was père Hu we may recognise Hu at Hoodown which, at Totnes, where it occurs, evidently does not mean a low-lying spit of land but, as at Plymouth Hoe or Haw, implied a hill. In view of the preceding group of local names it is difficult to assume that some imaginative Mayor of Totnes started the custom of issuing his proclamations from the so-called Brutus Stone in Fore Street merely to flatter an obscure Welsh poet who had vain-gloriously uttered the tradition that the British were the remnants of Droia: it is far more probable that the Mayor and corporation of Totnes had never heard of Taliesin, and that they stolidly followed an immemorial wont.
With the church of St. Just or Roodha, and with the Rodau of Rodau's Town neighbouring the Danejohn at Canterbury or Durovernum, we shall subsequently connote Rutland or Rutaland and the neighbouring Leicester, anciently known as Ratæ. The highest peak in Leicestershire is Bardon Hill, followed, in order of altitude, by "Old John" in Bradgate Park, Bredon, and Barrow Hill.
Adjacent to Ticehurst in Sussex--a hurst which is locally attributed to a fairy named Tice--may be found the curious place-names Threeleo Cross and Bewl Bri. These names are the more remarkable being found in the proximity of Priestland, Parson's Green, Barham, and Heart's Delight. Under the circumstances I think Threeleo Cross must have been a tri holy or three-legged cross, and that Huggins Hall, which marks the highest ground of the district, was Huge or High King's Hall: in close proximity are Queen's Street, Maydeacon House, Grovehurst, and Great Old Hay.
With Bredon in Leicestershire, a district where the tradition of a three-jumping giant, as has been seen, prevailed, may be connoted the prehistoric camp, or abri, of Bradenstoke, and that Abury itself was regarded as a vast trinacria is probable from the fact that in the words of a quite impartial archæologist: "The triangle of downs surrounding Avebury may be considered the hub of England and from it radiates the great lines of hills like the spokes of a wheel, the Coltswolds to the north, the Mendips to the west, the Dorsetshire Hills to the south west, Salisbury Plain to the south, the continuation of the North and South Downs to the east, and the high chalk ridge of the Berkshire Downs north-east to the Chilterns."[369]
In this quotation I have ventured to italicise the word triangle which idea again is recurrent in the passage: "The Downs round Avebury are the meeting-place of three main watersheds of the country and are the centre from which the great lines of hills radiate north-east, and west through the Kingdom. Here at the junction of the hills we find the largest prehistoric temple in the world with Silbury, the largest artificial earth mound in Europe, close by."[370]
The assertion by Stukeley that Avebury described the form of a circle traversed by serpentine stone avenues has been ridiculed by less well-informed archæologists, largely on the ground that no similar erection existed elsewhere in the world. But on the British coin here illustrated a cognate form is issuing from the eagle's beak, and in Fig. 190 (a Danish emblem of the Bronze Age), the Great Worm or Dragon, which typified the Infinite, is supporting a wheel to which the designer has successfully imparted the idea of movement.
Five miles N.-E. of Abury there stands on the summit of a commanding hill the natural great fortress known as Barbury Castle, surrounded by the remains of numerous banks and ditches. The name Barbara--a duplication of Bar--is in its Cretan form Varvary, and it was seemingly the Iberian or Ivernian equivalent of "Very God of Very God," otherwise Father of Fathers, or Abracadabra. In Britain, and particularly in Ireland, children still play a game entitled, The Town of Barbarie, which is thus described: "Some boys line up in a row, one of whom is called the prince. Two others get out on the road and join hands and represent the town of Barbarie. One of the boys from the row then comes up to the pair, walks around them and asks--
Will you surrender, will you surrender The town of Barbarie?
They answer--
We won't surrender, we won't surrender, The town of Barbarie.
Being unsuccessful, he goes back to the prince and tells him that they won't surrender. The prince then says--
Take one of my good soldiers.
This is done, and the whole row of boys are brought up one after the other till the town is taken by their parting the joined hands of the pair who represent the town of Barbarie."[371]
It will be remarked that Barbarie is represented by a pair, which is suggestive of the Dioscuri or Heavenly Twins, and on referring to the life of St. Barbara we find her recorded as the daughter of Dioscorus, and as having been born at Heliopolis, or the city of the sun. The Dioscuri--those far-famed heroes Castor and Pollux--were said to have been born out of an egg laid by Leda the Swan: elsewhere the Dioscuri were known as the Cabiri, a term which is radically abiri. It is probable that St. Barbara was once represented with the emblems of the two Dioscuri or Cabiri, for one of her "tortures" is said to have been that she should be hanged between two forked trees. These two trees were doubtless two sprigs such as shown in Fig. 191 or two flowering pillars between which the Virgin was extended Andrew-wise in benediction. The next torture recorded of St. Barbara was the scorching of her sides with burning lamps, from which we may deduce that the Virgin was once depicted with two great lights on either side. Next, St. Barbara's oppressors made her strongly to be beaten, "and hurted her head with a mallet": the Slav deity Peroon was always depicted with a mallet, and the hammer or axe was practically a universal symbol of Power. As already noted, Peroon, the God with a mallet, has been equated by some scholars with Varuna of India; in Etruria the God of Death was generally represented with a great hammer, and the mallet with which St. Barbara was "hurted" may be further equated with the celebrated Hammer of Thor.
The gigantic hammer cut into the hillside at Tours, and associated in popular estimation with Charles Martel, in view of the name Tours is far more likely to have been the hammer of Thor, who, as we have seen, was assigned to Troy.
We are told that St. Barbara's father imprisoned his daughter within a high and strong tour, tor, or tower, that no man should see her because of her great beauty: this incident is common alike to fairy-tale--notably at Tory Island--and hagiology, and one meets persistently with the peerless princess imprisoned in a peel, broch, or tower. In Fig. 192 is represented a so-called Trinity of Evil, but in all probability this is a faithful reproduction of the Iberian Aber or Aubrey, i.e., the trindod seated upon his symbolic tor, tower, or broch. The strokes at the toes, like the more accentuated lines from the fingers of Fig. 193, denoted the streaming light, and when we read that one of the exquisite tortures inflicted upon St. George was the thrusting of poisoned thorns into his finger-nails it is a reasonable conclusion that St. George was likewise represented with rayed fingers. The feast of St. Ibar in Hibernia is held upon 23rd April or Aperil, which is also St. George's Day.
St. Barbara, we are told, was marvellously carried on a stone into a high mountain, on which two shepherds kept their sheep, "the which saw her fly"; and it is apparent in all directions that Barbara was peculiarly identified with the Two-One Twain or Pair. Barbara is popularly contracted into Babs or Bab, and the little Barbara or Babette may probably be identified with the Babchild of Kent. The coin here illustrated was unearthed at the village of Babchild, known also as Bacchild, and its centre evidently represents the world pap, Pope, paab, or baba: in Christian Art the All Father is represented as a Pope, and as twin Popes, and likewise as a two-faced Person.
There is little doubt that the pre-Christian Pope was sometimes represented as a mother and child, and it was probably the discovery of one of these images or pictures that started the horrible scandal of Pope Joan or Papesse Jeanne. It is said that this accomplished but unhappy lady occupied the papal-chair for a period of two years five months under the title of John the Eighth, but having publicly become the mother of a little son her life ended in infamy and ill odour. To commemorate this shocking and incredible event a monument representing the Papess with her baby was, we are told, erected on the actual spot which was accordingly declared accursed to all ages: but as the incident thus memorised occurred as long ago as the ninth century, it is more probable that the statue was the source of the story and not vice versa. According to some accounts Joan was baptised Hagnes which is the feminine form of Hagon or Acon: others said her name was Margaret, and that she was the daughter of an English missionary who had left England to preach to the Saxons. At the time of the Reformation Germany seized with avidity upon the scandal as being useful for propaganda purposes, and with that delicacy of touch for which the Lutherans were distinguished, embroidered the tale with characteristic embellishments. According to Baring-Gould the stout Germans, not relishing the notion of Joan being a daughter of the Fatherland, palmed her off on England, but "I have little doubt myself," he adds, "that Pope Joan is an impersonification of the great whore of Babylon seated on the Seven Hills":[372] on the contrary, I think she was more probably a personification of the Consort of St. Peter the Rock, and the Keeper of the Keys of Heaven's Gate. Among Joan's sobriquets was Jutt, which is believed to have been "a nickname surely!": more seemingly Jutt was a Latinised form of Kud, Ked, Kate, or Chad, and Engelheim, or Angel Home, the alleged birth-place of Jutt, was either entirely mystical, or perhaps Anglesea, if not Engel Land.
The father of Jutt's child was said to have been Satan himself, who, on the occasion of the birth, was seen and heard fluttering overhead, crowing and chanting in an unmusical voice:--
Papa pater patrum, Papissae pandito partum Et tibi tunc eadem de corpore quando recedam.
This description would seem to have been derived from some ancient picture in which the Papa was represented either as a fluttering or chanting cock, or as cockheaded. Such representations were common among the Gnostics, and the legend, papa-pater-patrum, Father, Father of Fathers, is curiously suggestive of Barbara or Varvary: in the Gnostic emblem here reproduced is the counterpart to the cock-headed deity, and the reverse is obviously Vera, Una, or the naked Truth.
Gretchen, the German for Margaret, being Great Jane, will account for Pope Joan, and Gerberta, another of her names is radically Berta: Bertha, or Peratha, among the Germans is equated with Perchta, and translated "Bright One," or the "Shining One": the same roots are found in St. Cuth_bert_, or Cudbright as he becomes in Kirkcudbrightshire.
The child of Papesse Jeanne, Gerberta, Hagnes or Jutt was deemed to be Antichrist: according to other accounts the mother of the feared and anticipated Antichrist was a very aged woman, of race unknown, called Fort Juda. Fort Juda was probably Strong Judy, Judy, the wife of Punch, being evidently a form of the very aged wife of Pan, the goat-headed symbol of Gott.[373] As Peter was the Janitor of the Gate, so Kate or Ked was similarly connected with the Gate which is the same word as Gott or Goat: the Gnostic God here represented is a seven-goat solar wheel.
The horns and head of the goat still figure in representations of Old Nick, and there is no doubt that the horns of the crescent moon, under the form of Io, the heifer, were particularly worshipped at Byzantium: this City of the Golden Horn, now known as Constantinople, to which it will be remembered the British Chronicles assign our origin, was founded by a colony of Greeks from Megara, and in Scandinavia it is still known as Megalopolis, or the City of Michael; its ancient name Byzantium will probably prove to have been connected with byzan or bosen, the bosses or paps, and Pera, the Christian district which borders the Bosphorus, may be connoted with Epeur.
Fig. 200, reproduced from a Byzantine bronze pound weight, is supposed to represent "two military saints," but it more probably portrays the celestial pair, Micah and Maggie. Their bucklers are designed in the form of marguerites or marigolds; the A under the right hand figure is Alpha, whence we may perhaps equate this saint with Alpha, the consort of Noah. The spear-head under the other Invictus is the "Broad" arrow of Britain, and the meaning of this spear-head or arrow of Broad will be subsequently considered. It will be noticed that the stars which form the background are the triple dots, and the five-fruited tree is in all probability the Tree of Alpha, Aleph, or Life. Why five was identified with vif or vive, i.e., life, I am unable to surmise, but that it was thus connected will become apparent as we proceed.
The Arabic form of Constantinople is Kustantiniya, which compares curiously with Kystennyns, one of the old variants of the Cornish village named Constantine. There is a markedly Byzantine style about the group of British coins here reproduced, and Nos. 45 and 46 manifestly illustrate the Dioscuri, Twins, or Cabiri. The Greek word for brothers or twins is adelphi, and as according to Bryant the Semitic ad or ada meant first we may translate adelphi into First Elphi or First Fay-ther. The head of No. 49, which is obviously an heraldic or symbolic figure, consists of the three circles, intricate symbolism underlies the Byzantine reliquary cross here illustrated, and the same fantastic system is behind the Gnostic paper-mark represented on Fig. 203. In this it will be noted the eyes are represented by what are seemingly two feathers: the feather was a symbol of the Father, and will be noted in the Alephant emblem illustrated on page 160.
In Fig. 204 the Celestial Invictus is depicted as a Trinity; three feathers are the emblem of the British Prince of Wales, and there is evidently some recondite meaning in the legend that St. Barbara insisted upon her father making three windows in a certain building on the grounds that "three windows lighten all the world and all creatures". Upon Dioscorus inquiring of his daughter why she had upset his arrangements for two windows, Barbara's reply is reported to have been: "These three fenestras or windows betoken clearly the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the which be three persons and One Very God". The word person is radically the same as appear and appearance, and the portrayal of the Supreme Power as One, Two, or Three seems evidently to have been merely a matter of inclination: Queen Vera or Virtue may be regarded as One or as the Three Graces or Virtues. The mythic mother of St. David is said to have been Gwen of the Three Paps, and this St. Gwen Tierbron, or Queen of the Three Breasts, may be equated with the Lady Triamour, and with the patron of Llandrindod or St. triune dad Wells. On the horse ornament illustrated ante (No. 14, Fig. 134, p. 286), three hearts are represented: on Fig. 205 three circles, together with a palm branch,[374] associated with the national horse.
The emblems on page 499 depict two flying wheels, and likewise Three-in-One: near St. Just in Cornwall used to be three interlaced stone circles, and the phenomenon of three circles is noticeable elsewhere; there is little doubt, says Westropp, that in the three rings of Dunainy on the Knockainy Hill the triad of gods, Eogabal, Feri, and Aine, were supposed to dwell.[375]
Avebury consists of two circles within one, and that "Avereberie" was regarded as the great periphery may be concluded from the name Avereberie which is equivalent to periphery, Varvary, or Barbara. The bird emblem existing at Farr is suggestive that the county of Forfar was once inhabited by worshippers of Varvara, Barbara, the Fair of Fairs, or Fire of Fires.
Having set his labourers to work, the legend continues that Barbara's father departed thence and went into a far country, where he long sojourned: the Greeks used the word barbaroi to mean not ruffians but those who lived or came from abroad; the same sense is born by the Hebrew word obr, and it is to this root that anthropologists assign the name Hebrew which they interpret as meaning men who came from abroad.
It is noteworthy that, according to Herodotus, the messengers of the Hyperboreans who came from abroad, i.e., barbaroi, were entitled by the Delians, "Perpherees" and held in great honour:[376] the inverted commas are original, whence it would seem that perpheree was a local pronunciation of hyperboreæ.
The general impression is that the Hebrew, or Ebrea as the Italians spell it, derived his title from _Abra_ham whose name means Father of a Multitude. At Hebron Abraham, the son of Terah, entertained three Elves or Angels: "He saw three and worshipped one":[377] at Hebron Abram bought a piece of land from a merchant named Ephron,[378] and I cannot believe that Ephron really meant, as we are told, of a calf; it is more probable that he derived his title from Hebron where Ephron was evidently a landowner. Tacitus records a tradition that the Hebrews were originally "natives of the Isle of Crete,"[379] and my suggestion that the Jews were the Jous gains somewhat from the fact that York--a notorious seat of ancient Jewry--was originally known as Eboracum or Eboracon. Our chroniclers state that York was founded by a King Ebrauc, the Archbishop of York signs himself to-day "Ebor," and the river Eure used at one time to be known as the Ebor: the Spanish river Ebro was sometimes referred to as the Iber.[380]
An interesting example of the Cabiri or Adelphi once existed at the Kentish village of Biddenden where the embossed seven-spiked ladies here illustrated, known as the Biddenden Maids, used to be impressed on cakes which were distributed in the village church on Easter Sunday. This custom was connected with a charity consisting of "twenty acres of land called the Bread and Cheese Land lying in five pieces given by persons unknown, the rent to be distributed among the poor of this parish". The name of the two maidens is stated to have been Preston, and that this was alternatively a name for Biddenden is somewhat confirmed by an adjacent Broadstone, Fairbourne, and Bardinlea. Whether it is permissible here to read Bardinlea as Bard's meadow I do not know, but considered in connection with the local charity from five pieces of land it is curious to find that according to the laws of Dyvnwal Moelmud, the different functionaries of the Bardic Gorsedd had a right each to five acres of land in virtue of their office, were entitled to maintenance wherever they went, had freedom from taxes, no person was to wear a naked weapon in their presence, and their word was always paramount.[381] In view of this ordinance it almost looks as though the charitable five acres at Biddenden were the survival of some such privileged survival.
As Biddy is a familiar form of Bridget or Bride, Biddenden may be understood as the dun or den of the Biddys, and the modern sense of our adjective bad is, it is to be feared, an implication either that the followers of the Biddy's fell from grace, or that at any rate newer comers deemed them to have done so. The German for both is beide, but that both the _Bid_denden maidens were bad is unlikely: the brace of chickabiddies[382] illustrated overleaf may perhaps have fallen a little short of the designer's ideals, yet they were undoubtedly deemed fit and good, otherwise they would not have survived. That their admirers, while seeing Both or Twain, worshipped Ane is obviously possible from the popular "Heathen chant" here quoted from Miss Eckenstein's Comparative Study of Nursery Rhymes:--
1. We will a' gae sing, boys, Where will we begin, boys? We'll begin the way we should, And we'll begin at ane, boys.
O, what will be our ane, boys? O, what will be our ane, boys? --My only ane she walks alane, And evermair has dune, boys.
2. Now we will a' gae sing, boys; Where will we begin, boys? We'll begin where we left aff, And we'll begin at twa, boys.
What will be our twa, boys? --Twa's the lily and the rose That shine baith red and green, boys, My only ane she walks alane, And evermair has dune, boys.
In the near neighbourhood of Biddenden are Peckham, Buckman's Green, Buckhill, and Buggles, or Boglesden: the two bogles now under consideration were possibly responsible for the neighbouring Duesden, i.e. the Dieu's den or the Two's den. According to Skeat the word bad, mediæval badde, is formed from the Anglo-Saxon baeddel, meaning an hermaphrodite; all ancient deities seem to have been regarded as hermaphrodites, and it is impossible to tell from the Britannia, Bride, or Biddy figures on p. 120 whether Bru or Brut was a man or a maid. Apollo was occasionally represented in a skirt; Venus was sometimes represented with a beard; the beard on the obverse of No. 46, on p. 364, is highly accentuated, and that this feature was a peculiarity of Cumbrian belief is to be inferred from the life of Saint Uncumber. St. Uncumber, or Old Queen Ber, was one of the seven daughters born at a birth to the King of Portugal, and the story runs that her father wanting her to marry the prince of Sicily, she grew whiskers, "which so enraged him that he had her crucified".[383]
One may infer that the fabricator of this pious story concocted it from some picture of a bearded virgin extended like Andrew on the Solar wheel: close to Biddenden is Old Surrender, perhaps originally a den or shrine of Old Sire Ander.[384]
At Broadstone, by Biddenden, we find Judge House, and doubtless the village juge once administered justice at that broad stone. In Kent the paps are known colloquially as bubs or bubbies: by Biddenden is a Pope's Hall, and a Bubhurst or Bubwood, which further permit the equation of the Preston Maids with Babs, Babby, or Barbara. St. Barbara was not only born at Heliopolis, but her tomb is described by Maundeville as being at Babylon, by which he means not Babylon in Chaldea, but Heliopolis in Egypt. In The Welsh People Sir J. Morris Jones establishes many remarkable relationships between the language of Wales and the Hamitic language of early Egypt; in 1881 Gerald Massey published a list of upwards of 3000 similarities between British and Egyptian words[385]; and In Malta and the Mediterranean Race, Mr. R. N. Bradley prints the following extraordinary statement from Col. W. G. MacPherson of the Army Medical Service: "When I was in Morocco City, in 1896, I met a Gaelic-speaking missionary doctor who had come out there and went into the Sus country (Trans-atlas), where 'Shluh' is the language spoken, just as it is the language of the Berber tribes in the Cis-atlas country. He told me that the words seemed familiar to him, and, after listening to the natives speaking among themselves, found they were speaking a Gaelic dialect, much of which he could follow. This confirmed my own observation regarding the names of the Berber tribes I myself had come across, namely, the Bini M'Tir, the Bini M'Touga, and the Bini M'Ghil. The 'Bini' is simply the Arabic for 'Children of,' and is tacked on by the Arabs to the 'M' of the Berbers, which means 'sons of' and is exactly the same as the Irish 'M,' or Gaelic 'Mac'. Hence the M'Tir, M'Touga, and M'Ghil, become in our country MacTiers, the MacDougalls, and the MacGills. I prepared a paper on this subject which was read by my friend Dr. George Mackay of Edinburgh, at the Pan-Celtic Congress there in 1907, I think, or it may have been 1908. It caused a leading article to be written in the Scotsman, I believe, but otherwise it does not appear to have received much attention."
As it is an axiom of modern etymology to ignore any statements which cannot be squared with historical documents it is hardly a matter of surprise that Col. MacPherson's statements have hitherto received no consideration. But apart from the fact that certain Berber tribes still speak Gaelic, the Berbers are a highly interesting people: they extend all over the North of Africa, and the country between Upper Egypt and Abyssinia is known as Barbara or Barba. The word Africa was also written Aparica, and the Berbers, apart from founding the Old Kingdom of Bornou and the city of Timbuctoo, had an important seat at Berryan. They had in the past magnificent and stately temples, used the Arabic alphabet, and the Touriacks--the purest, proudest, most numerous, and most lordly family of the Berbers--have an alphabet of their own for which they claim great antiquity: they have also a considerable native literature.[386] The Touriack alphabet is almost identical with that used by the Tyrians in later times, and the name Touriack is thus probably connected with Tyre and Troy. In 1821, a traveller described the Touriacks as "the finest race of men I ever saw--tall, straight, and handsome, with a certain air of independence and pride that is very imposing. They are generally white, that is to say, comparatively so, the dark brown of their complexion being occasioned only by the heat of the climate. Their arms and bodies, where constantly covered, are as white as those of many Europeans."[387]
To Britons the Berbers should be peculiarly interesting, as anthropologists have already declared that the primitive Scotch race were formed from "the great Iberian family, the same stock as the Berbers of North Africa": Laing and Huxley further affirm that among these Scotch aborigines they recognise the existence of men "of a very superior character".[388] It will probably prove that the "St. Barbe" of Gaul--a name connected with the megalithic monuments at Carnac--originated from Barba, or Berber influences: with this Gaulish St. Barbe may be connoted the fact that the pastors of the heretical Albigenses, whose headquarters were at the town of Albi, were for some unknown reason entitled barbes.
A traveller in 1845 describes the Berbers or Touriacks as very white, always clothed, and wearing pantaloons like Europeans. The word pantaloon comes from Venice where the patron saint is St. Pantaleone, but the British for pantaloons is breeks or breeches. It was a distinction of the British to wear breeks: Sir John Rhys attributes the word Briton to "cloth and its congeners," and when, circa 500 B.C., the celebrated Abaris visited Athens his hosts were evidently impressed by his attire: "He came, not clad in skins like a Scythian, but with a bow in his hand, a quiver hanging on his shoulders, a plaid wrapped about his body, a gilded belt encircling his loins, and trousers reaching from the waist down to the soles of his feet. He was easy in his address; affable and pleasant in his conversation; active in his despatch, and secret in his management of great affairs; quick in judging of present accuracies; and ready to take his part in any sudden emergency; provident withal in guarding against futurity; diligent in the quest of wisdom; fond of friendship; trusting very little to fortune, yet having the entire confidence of others, and trusted with everything for his prudence. He spoke Greek with fluency, and whenever he moved his tongue you would imagine him to be some one out of the midst of the academy or very Lyceum."[389]
I have suggested that Abaris or Abharas was a generic term for Druid or Chief Druid, and it is likely that the celebrated Arabian philosopher Averrhoes, who was born in Spain A.D. 1126, was entitled Averroes (his real name seems to have been Ibn Roshd) in respect of his famous philosophy: it is noteworthy that the Berbers were known alternatively as Barabbras.[390]
In No. 41, on p. 364, two small brethren are like Romulus and Remus sucking nourishment from a wolf. This animal is the supposed ancestor of all the dog-tribe: the word wolf is eu olf, and the term bitch, applied to all females of the wolf tribe, is radically pige, peggy, or Puck. The Bitch-nourished Brethren are radically bre, for the -ther of brother is the same adjective as occurs in fa_ther_, mo_ther_, and sis_ter_.
Taliesin, the mystic title of the Welsh Chief Druid of the West, is translated as having meant radiant brow: the brow is the covering of the brain, and in No. 2, on p. 120, Britannia is pointing to her brow. In No. 3 of the same plate she is represented in the remarkable and unusual attitude of gazing up to Heaven: it will be remembered that, according to Cæsar, Britain was the cradle of the Druidic Philosophy, and that those wishing to perfect themselves in the system visited this country; that the Britons prided themselves on their brains is possibly the true inference to be drawn from the two curious coins now under consideration.
The President of Celtic poetry and bardic music is said to have been a being of gigantic height named Bran: it is to Bran the Blessed that tradition assigns the introduction of the Cross into Britain, and when Bran died his head is stated to have been deposited under the White Tower of London, where it acted as a talisman against foreign aggression. One of the disastrous blunders alleged against King Arthur was the declaration that he disdained to hold the realm of England, except in virtue of his own prowess,[391] and Romance affirms that he disinterred the magic head of the Blessed Bran, thereby bringing untold woes upon the land. As a parallel to this story may be connoted the historic fact that when the Romans in 390 B.C. inquired the name of the barbaric general who had led the Celts victoriously against them, the Celtic officer replied by giving the name of the God to whom he attributed the success of his arms, and whom he figured to himself as seated invisible in a chariot, a javelin in his hand, while he guided the victorious host over the bodies of its enemies.[392] Now the name of this invisible chief under whom the Gaulish conquerors of Rome and Delphi claimed to fight, was Brennos, whom De Jubainville equates with Brian, the First of the Three divine Sons of Dana, or Brigit, the Bona Dea of Britain. The highest town in France, and the principal arsenal and depot of the French Alps is entitled Briancon, and as this place was known to the Romans as Brigantium, we may connote Briancon with King Brian. Brigan may probably be equated with the fabulous Bregon of Hibernia, with Bergion of Iberia, and with St. Brychan of Wales, who is said to have been the parent of fifty sons and daughters, "all saints". The Hibernian super-King, entitled Brian Boru, had his seat at Tara, and from him may be said to have descended all the O'Briens, the Brownes, and the Byrons. The name Burgoyne is assigned to Burgundy, and it is probable that inquiry would prove a close connection between the Burgundii and giant Burgion of Iberia. In the Triads the Welsh prince Brychan is designated as sprung from one of the three holy families of Prydain: through Breconshire, or Brecknock, runs the river Bran; and that Awbrey was a family name in Brecon is implied by the existence in the priory church of St. John, or Holyrood, of tombs to the Awbreys.
When the head of the beneficent and blessed Bran was deposited at London it is said to have rested there for a long time with the eyes looking towards France. One of the most remarkable and mysterious of the Pictish symbols, found alike in Picardy and Pictland generally, is the so-called butterfly design of which three typical examples are here illustrated. What it seems to represent is Browen or the Brows, but it is also an excellent bird, butterfly, or papillon: or as we speak familiarly of using our brains, and as the grey matter of the brain actually consists of two divisions, which scientists entitle the cerebrum and the cerebellum, the two-browed butterfly might not illogically be designated the brains. Both Canon Greenwell and Sir Arthur Evans have drawn attention to similar representations of the human face on early objects from Troy and the Ægean; the same symbol is found on sculptured menhirs of the Marne and Gard valleys in France, while clay vessels with this ornament, belonging to the early age of metal, have been found in Spain. The "butterfly" is seen on gold roundels from the earliest (shaft) graves at Mycenæ, and as Sir Hercules Read has rightly said, "everything points to the transmission of that influence to the British Isles by way of Spain".[393]
The Scandinavians assigned three eyes to Thor, and Thor, as has been seen, was attributed by them to Troy. On the stone illustrated on p. 381, now built into the church at Dingwall--a name which means court hill--three circles are on one side and two upon the other: some of the Trojan idols are three-eyed and some are "butterflies". Is it possible that this Elphin little face, or papillon, was the precursor of the modern cherub or Amoretto, and that it was the Puck of the Iberian Picts, who conceived their Babchild or Bacchild as peeping, _pry_ing, touting, and _peer_ing perpetually upon mankind? The ancients imagined that every worthy soul became a star, whence it is possible that the small blue flower we call a periwinkle was, like the daisy, a symbol of the fairy, phairy, or peri _peri_scope. In Devonshire the speedwell (Veronica +chamædrys) is known as Angels' Eyes; in Wales it is entitled the Eye of Christ:[394] the word periwinkle may be connoted with the phairies Periwinkle, and Perriwiggen, who figure in the court of Oberon.
In the magnificent emblem here illustrated the Pillar of the Universe, "to Whom all thoughts and desires are known, from Whom no secrets are hid," is supporting a great universe zoned round and round by Eyes, Cherubs, or Amoretti, and the earth within is represented by a cone or berg. In Fig. 221 the Creator is depicted as animating nine choirs of Amoretti by means of three rays or breaths, and as will be shown subsequently the creation of the world by means of three rays or beams of light from heaven was an elemental feature of British philosophy.
The periwinkle, known in some districts as the cockle, may, I think, be regarded as a prehistoric symbol of the world-without-end query:--
Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are.
The term cockle was applied not only to the periwinkle and the poppy, but likewise to the burdock, whose prickly burrs are obviously a very perfect emblem of the Central Pyre, Fire, Burn, or Brand. In Italy the barberry, or berberis, is known as the Holy Thorn, as it is supposed that from this bush of pricks and prickles was woven Christ's crown of thorns. As a home of the spooks the brakes or bracken rivalled the hawthorn,[395] and it was generally believed that by eating fern or bracken seed one became invisible. Witches were supposed to detest bracken, because it bears on its root the character C, the initial of the holy name Christ, "which may be plainly seen on cutting the root horizontally". Commenting on this belief the author of Flowers and Folklore remarks: "A friend suggests, however, that the letter intended is not the English C, but the Greek X (Chi), the initial letter of the word Christos which really resembles the marks on the root of the bracken."[396]
In Cornish broch denoted the yew tree, the sanctity of which is implied by the frequency with which a brace or pair of yews are found in churchyards. The yew is probably the longest living of all trees, accredited instances occurring of its antiquity to the extent of 1400 years, and at Fortingal in _Perth_shire there is a famous yew tree which has been estimated to be 3000 years of age. This is deemed to be the most venerable specimen of living European vegetation, but at _Bra_bourne, in Kent, used to be a superannuated yew which claimed precedence in point of age even over that of Perthshire. A third claimant (2000 years) is that at Hensor (the ancient sire?) in Buckinghamshire, and a fourth exists at Buckland near Dover.[397]
The yew (Irish eo), named in all probability after Io, or Hu the Jupiter,[398] or Ancient Sire of Britain, is found growing profusely in company with the box on the white chalky brow of Boxhill overlooking Juniper Hall. The foot of this slope around which creeps the placid little river Mole is now entitled _Bur_ford Bridge, but before the first bridge was here built, the site was seemingly known as Bur ford. The neighbouring Dorking, through which runs the Pipbrook, is equivalent to Tor King, Tarchon, or Troy King, and there is a likelihood that the Perseus who redeemed Andromeda, the Ancient Troy Maid, was a member of the same family. In the Iberian coin herewith inscribed Ho, which is ascribed to Ilipa or Ilipala, one may perhaps trace Hu, i.e., Hugh the mind or brain in transit to these islands.
To the yews on Boxhill one may legitimately apply the lines which Sir William Watson penned at the neighbouring Newlands or the lands of the self-renewing Ancient Yew:--
Old Emperor Yew, fantastic sire, Girt with thy guard of dotard Kings, What ages hast thou seen retire Into the dusk of alien things?
From Newlands Corner where the yews--the self-seeded descendants of immemorial ancestors--are thickly dotted, is a prospect unsurpassed in England.
The beech trees which are also a feature in the neighbourhood of Boxhill irresistibly turn one's mind to the immortal beeches at _Burn_ham in Bucks. Bucks supposedly derives its name from the patronymic Bucca or Bucco, and this district was thus presumably a seat of the Bucca, Pukka, or Puck King, alias Auberon, to whom at Burnham the beech or boc would appear to have been peculiarly dedicated. There is a Burnham near Brightlingsea; a Burnby near Pocklington, a Burnham on the river Brue, a Burn in Brayton parish, Yorks; a river Burn or Brun in Lancashire, a river Burry in Glamorganshire, and in Norfolk a Burnham-Ulph. In Brancaster Bay are what are termed "Burnham Grounds"; hereabouts are Burnham Westgate, Burnham Deepdale, Burnham Overy, etc., and the local fishermen maintain "there are three other Burnhams under Brancaster Bay".[399] Doubtless the sea has claimed large tracts of Oberon's empire, but from Brean Down, Brown Willy, and Perran Round in the West to the famous Birrenswerk in Annandale, and the equally famous Bran Ditch in Cambridgeshire, the name of the Tall Man is ubiquitous. Among the innumerable Brandons or Branhills, Brandon Hill in Suffolk, where the flint knappers have continued their chipping uninterruptedly since old Neolithic times, may claim an honourable pre-eminence.
FOOTNOTES:
[323] Cf. Thomas, J. J., Brit. Antiquissima, p. 29.
[324] Hone, W., Everyday Book, i., 502.
[325] Squire, C., Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland, p. 52.
[326] Hazlitt, W. Carew, Faiths and Folklore, ii., 338.
[327] Cf. Johnson, W., Folk Memory, p. 143.
[328] Among the many Prestons I have enquired into is one with which I am conversant near Faversham. Here the Manor House is known as Perry Court; similarly there is a Perry Court at a second Preston situated a few miles distant. In the neighbourhood are Perry woods. There is a modern "Purston" at Pontefract, which figured in Domesday under the form "Prestun".
[329] Taylor, Rev. T., Celtic Christianity of Cornwall, p. 33.
[330] Courtney, Miss M. L., Cornish Feasts and Folklore, p. 123.
[331] Haslam, Wm., Perranzabuloe.
[332] Ibid., p. 60.
[333] "Mr. W. Mackenzie, Procurator Fiscal of Cromarty, writes me from Dingwall (10th September, 1917), as follows: 'We are not without some traces and traditions of phallic worship here. There is a stone in the Brahan Wood which is said to be a "knocking stone". Barren women sat in close contact upon it for the purpose of becoming fertile. It serves the purpose of the mandrake in the East. I have seen the stone. It lies in the Brahan Wood about three miles from Dingwall.'"--Frazer, Sir J. G., quoted from Folklore, 1918, p. 219.
[334] Guerber, H. A., Myths and Legends of the Middle Ages, p. 219.
[335] Guerber, H. A., Myths and Legends of the Middle Ages, p. 221.
[336] "The Brehon laws are the most archaic system of law and jurisprudence of Western Europe. This was the code of the ancient Gaels, or Keltic-speaking Irish, which existed in an unwritten form long before it was brought into harmony with Christian sentiments.... It is impossible to study these laws and the manners and customs of the early Irish, together with their land tenure, and to compare them with the laws of Manu, and with the light thrown on the Aryans of India by the Sanskrit writings without coming to the conclusion that they had a common origin."--Macnamara, N. C., Origin and Character of the British People, p. 94.
[337] Place-names of England and Wales, p. 406.
[338] Of the Teutonic Tiw, Dr. Taylor observes: "This word was used as the name of the Deity by all the Aryan nations. The Sanskrit deva, the Greek theos, the Latin deus, the Lithuanian dewas, the Erse dia, and the Welsh dew are all identical in meaning. The etymology of the word seems to point to the corruption of a pure monotheistic faith." In Chaldaic and in Hebrew di meant the Omnipotent, in Irish de meant goddess, and in Cornish da or ta meant good. From the elementary form de, di, or da, one traces ramifications such as the Celtic dia or duw meaning a god. In Sanskrit Dya was the bright heavenly deity who may be equated with the Teutonic Tiu, whence our Tuesday, and with the Sanskrit Dyaus, which is equivalent to the Greek Zeus. The same radical d' is the base of dies, and of dieu; of div the Armenian for day; of div the Sanskrit for shine; of Diva the Sanskrit for day. Our ancestors used to believe that the river Deva or Dee sprang from two sources, and that after a very short course its waters passed entire and unmixed through a large lake carrying out the same quantity of water that it brought in.
The word "Dee" seems widely and almost universally to have meant good or divine, and it may no doubt be equated with the "Saint Day" who figures so prominently in place-names, and the Christian Calendar.
[339] Hone, W., Everyday Book, i., 1118.
[340] Ancient Coins, p. 3.
[341] Lardner, D., History of Spain and Portugal, vol. i, p. 18.
[342] Ibid., p. 13.
[343] Ibid., p. 6.
[344] Macalister, R. A. S., Proc. Roy. Ir. Acad., xxxiv., C., 10-11.
[345] Mann, L. M., Archaic Sculpturings, p. 34.
[346] Wild Wales (Everyman's Library), p. 258.
[347] Keightley, Fairy Mythology, p. 523.
[348] Bell's Travels, i., 248.
[349] Cf. Guest, Dr., Origines Celticæ, i., 61.
[350] Bellot, H. H. L., The Temple, p. 12.
[351] That there is nothing far-fetched in this possibility is proved by a Vedic Hymn circa 2500 B.C.: "Enter, O lifeless one, the mother earth, the widespread earth, soft as a maiden in her arms rest free from sin. Let now the earth gently close around you even as a mother gently wraps her infant child in soft robes. Let now the fathers keep safe thy resting-place, and let Yama, the first mortal who passed the portals of Death, prepare thee for a new abiding place."
[352] Near Land's End is _Bar_tinny or _Per_tinny, which is understood to have meant Hill of the Fire.
[353] At Bradfield is a British camp on _Bar_ley Hill. Notable earthwork abris exist at _Bray_ford, _Bor_ingdon Camp, "Old Barrow," _Parra_combe, and _Pre_stonbury in Devonshire: at _Buri_ton, and Bury Hill in Hampshire: at _Bree_don Hill, Burrough-on-the-hill, and Bury Camp in Leicestershire: at Borough Hill in Northamptonshire: at Burrow Wood, Bury Ditches, Bury Walls, and Caer_bre_ in Shropshire: at Carn Brea in Cornwall: at Bourton, and Bury Castle, in Somerset: at _Bar_moor in Warwickshire: at _Bar_bury, Bury Camp, and Bury Hill in Wiltshire: at Berrow in Worcestershire. Earthworks are also to be found on Brow downs, Bray downs, Bray woods, and Bury woods in various directions.
[354] F. M., p. 464.
[355] "Camps of indubitably British date, Saxon, and Norman entrenchments, to say nothing of minor matters such as dykes and mounds and so-called amphitheatres, all are accredited to a people who very probably had nothing at all to do with many of them."--Allcroft, A. Hadrian, Earthwork of England, p. 289.
[356] The Bull's head will have been noted on the buckler of Britannia, ante, p. 120.
[357] Bohn's Library, p. 114.
[358] Stone, J. Harris, England's Riviera.
[359] Abelson, J., Jewish Mysticism, p. 31.
[360] The authorities equate the names Alberic and Avery.
[361] F. M., p. 206.
[362] Book xl., chap. i.
[363] Friend, Rev. H., Flowers and Folklore, ii., 474.
[364] Myths of Ancient Britain, p. 18.
[365] Taylor, Rev. R., Diegesis, p. 271.
[366] Wood, E. J., Giants and Dwarfs, p. 44.
[367] Johnson, W., Folk Memory, p. 185.
[368] Cf. Shandwick or Shandfort ante, p. 327, also Shanid, p. 55.
[369] Cox, R. Hippesley, A Guide to Avebury, p. 55.
[370] Ibid.
[371] Folklore, XXIX., i., p. 182.
[372] Curious Myths of the Middle Ages.
[373] Jupiter is said to have been suckled by a goat.
[374] The Sanscrit for palm is toddy--whence the drink of that name.
[375] Proc. of Royal Irish Acad., xxxiv., C., 3, 4.
[376] Book IV., 33.
[377] Maundeville, in his Travels, mentions that near Hebron, "a sacerdotal city, that is a sanctuary on the Mount of Mamre, is an oak tree which the Saracens call dirpe, which is of Abraham's time, and people called it the dry tree. They say that it has been there since the beginning of the world, and that it was once green and bore leaves, till the time that our Lord died on the cross, and then it died, and so did all the trees that were then in the world."--Travels in the East, p. 162.
[378] Gen. xxiii.
[379] History, v., 2.
[380] Guest, Dr., Origines Celticæ, i., 54.
[381] Barddas, p. xxx.
[382] Vide inscription _Chuck_hurst?
[383] Dawson, L. H., A Book of the Saints, p. 221.
[384] Skeat considers that Sirrah is "a contemptuous extension of sire, perhaps by addition of ah! or ha! (so Minsheu); Old French sire, Provencial sira".
[385] A Book of the Beginnings.
[386] "The Berbers, their language, and their books ought to be fully explored and studied. Archæology and linguistic science have lavished enthusiastic and toilsome study on subjects much less worthy of attention, for these Berbers present the remains of a great civilisation, much older than Rome or Hellas, and of one of the most important peoples of antiquity. Here are 'ruins' more promising, and, in certain respects, more important, than the buried ruins of Nineveh; but they have failed to get proper attention, partly because a false chronology has made it impossible to see their meaning and comprehend their importance. The Berbers represent ancient communities whose importance was beginning to decline before Rome appeared, and which were probably contemporary with ancient Chaldea and the old monarchy of Egypt."--Baldwin, J. D., Prehistoric Nations, p. 340.
[387] Ibid., p. 342.
[388] Laing, S., and Huxley, T. H., The Prehistoric Remains of Caithness, pp. 70, 71.
[389] Quoted from Higgens, G., Celtic Druids.
[390] Latham, R. G., The Varieties of Man, p. 500.
[391] "Thy prowess I allow, yet this remember is the gift of Heaven."--Homer.
[392] De Jubainville, Irish Myth. Cycle, p. 84.
[393] A Guide to the Antiquities of the Bronze Age (B. M.).
[394] Wright, E. M., Rustic Speech and Folklore, p. 334.
[395] Rev. Hilderic Friend. This gentleman adds: "Interesting as the study proves, we shall none of us regret that the English nation is daily becoming more and more intelligent and enlightened, and is leaving such follies to the heathen and the past" (vol. ii., 568).
[396] As bracken is the plural of brake, fern was once presumably the plural of pher.
[397] See Johnson, W., Byways in British Archæology, 375-7.
[398] Since writing I find that Didron, in vol. ii. of Christian Iconography, p. 180, illustrates a drawing of Jupiter upon which he comments, "a crown of yew leaves surrounds his head".
[399] Guest, Dr., Origines Celticæ, i., 12.