VIII. SCOURING THE WHITE HORSE…

VIII. SCOURING THE WHITE HORSE

"Where one might look to find a legitimate national pride in the monuments of our forefathers there seems to be a perverse conspiracy to give the credit to anyone rather than to the Briton, and preferably to the Roman interloper. If any evidence at all be asked for, the chance finding of a coin or two, or of a handful of shivered pottery, is deemed enough. Such evidence is emphatically not enough."--A. HADRIAN ALLCROFT.

The owld White Harse wants zettin to rights, And the Squire hev promised good cheer, Zo we'll gee un a scrape to kip un in zhape, And a'll last for many a year. --Berkshire Ballad.

According to Gaelic mythology Brigit was the daughter of the supreme head of the Irish gods of Day, Life, and Light--whose name Dagda Mor, the authorities translate into Great Good Fire. Some accounts state there were three Brigits, but these three, like the three Gweneveres or Ginevras who were sometimes assigned to King Arthur, are evidently three aspects of the one and only Queen Vera, Queen Ever, or Queen Fair. Brigit's husband was the celebrated Bress, after whom we are told every fair and beautiful thing in Ireland was entitled a "bress".

Brigit and Bress were the parents of three gods entitled Brian, Iuchar, and Uar, and it looks as though these three were equivalent to the Persian trinity of Good Thought, Good Deed, and Good Word. The term word is derived by Skeat from a root wer, meaning to speak, whence Uar was seemingly werde or Good Word. Brian, I have already connoted with brain, whence Good Brian was probably equivalent to Good Thought, and Iuchar, the third of Bride's brats, looks curiously like eu coeur, eu cor, or eu cardia, i.e., soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious heart, otherwise Kind Action or Good Deed.

These three mythic sons constitute the gods of Irish Literature and Art, and are said to have had in common an only son entitled Ecne,[400] whose name, according to De Jubainville, meant "knowledge or poetry".[401] The legend CUNO which appears so frequently in British coins in connection with Pegasus--the steed of the Muses--or the Hackney, varies into ECEN, vide the examples herewith, and the palm branch or fern leaf constituting the mane points to the probability that the animal portrayed corresponds to "Splendid Mane," the magic steed of three-legged Mona.

Mona was a headquarters of the British Druids by whom white horses were ceremoniously maintained. Speaking of the peculiar credulity of the German tribes Tacitus observes: "For this purpose a number of milk-white steeds unprophaned by mortal labour are constantly maintained at the public expense and placed to pasture in the religious groves. When occasion requires they are harnessed to a sacred chariot and the priest, accompanied by the king or chief of the state, attends to watch the motions and the neighing of the horses. No other mode of augury is received with such implicit faith by the people, the nobility, and the priesthood. The horses upon these solemn occasions are supposed to be the organs of the gods."[402]

The horse is said to be exceptionally intelligent,[403] whence presumably why it was elevated into an emblem of Knowing, Kenning, Cunning, and ultimately of the Gnosis. That the Gnostics so regarded it is sufficiently evident apart from the collection of symbolic horses dealt with elsewhere.[404]

The old French for hackney was haquenee, the old Spanish was hacanea, the Italian is chinea, a contracted form of acchinea: jennet or Little Joan is connected with the Spanish ginete which has been connoted with Zenata, the name of a tribe of Barbary celebrated for its cavalry.

That Jeanette was worshipped in Italy sub rosa, would appear from the emblem here illustrated, which is taken from the title page of a work published in 1601.[405] The Hackney, the New-moon (Kenna?) and the Staff or Branch are emblems, which, as already seen, occur persistently on British coins, and the legend PHILOS IPPON IN DIES CRESCIT reading: "Love of the Horse; in time it will increase," obviously applied to some philosophy, and not a material taste for stud farms and the turf.

In 1857, during some excavations in Rome in the palace of the Cæsars on the Palatine Hill, an inscription which is described as a "curious scratch on the wall" was brought to light. This so-called graffito blasfemo has been held to be a vile caricature of the crucifixion, some authorities supposing the head to be that of a wild ass, others that of a jackal: beneath is an ill-spelt legend in Greek characters to the effect: "ALEXAMENOS WORSHIPS HIS GOD," and on the right is a meanly attired figure seemingly engaged in worship.[406]

I am unable to recognise either a jackal or a wild ass in the figure in dispute, which seems in greater likelihood to represent a not ill-executed horse's head. Nor seemingly is the creature crucified, but on the contrary it is supporting the letter "T," or Tau, an emblem which was so peculiarly sacred among the Druids that they even topped and trained their sacred oak until it had acquired this holy form.[407] The Tau was the sign mentioned by Ezekiel as being branded upon the foreheads of the Elect, and this "curious scratch" of poor Alexamenos attributed to the very early part of the third century was not, in my humble opinion, the work of some illiterate slave or soldier attached to the palace of the Cæsars, ridiculing the religion of a companion, but more probably the pious work of a Gnostic lover of philosophy: that the Roman church was honeycombed with Gnostic heresies is well known.

The word philosophy is philo sophy or the love of wisdom, but sophi, or wisdom, is radically ophi, or opi, i.e., the Phoenician hipha, Greek hippa, a mare: the name Philip is always understood as phil ip or "love of the horse," and the hobby horse of British festivals was almost certainly the hippa or the hippo.

Of the 486 varieties of British coins illustrated by Sir John Evans no less than 360 represent a horse in one form or another, whence it is obvious that the hobby horse was once a national emblem of the highest import. In the opinion of this foremost authority all Gaulish and all British coins are contemptible copies of a wondrous Macedonian stater, which circulated at Marseilles, whence the design permeated Gaul and Britain in the form of rude and clownish imitations: this supposed model, the very mark and acme of all other craftsmen, is here illustrated, and the reader can form his own opinion upon its artistic merits. "It appears to me," says Sir John Evans, "that in most cases the adjuncts found upon the numerous degraded imitations of this type are merely the result of the engraver's laziness or incompetence, where they are not attributable to his ignorance of what the objects he was copying were originally designed to represent. And although I am willing to recognise a mythological and national element in this adaptation of the Macedonian stater which forms the prototype of the greater part of the ancient British series, it is but rarely that this element can be traced with certainty upon its numerous subsequent modifications."[408]

The supposed modifications attributed to the laziness or incompetence of British craftsmen are, however, so astonishing and so ably executed that I am convinced the present theory of feeble imitation is ill-founded. The horses of Philippus are comparatively stiff and wooden by the side of the work of Celtic craftsmen who, when that was their intention, animated their creations with amazing verve and elan. Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, who regards our early coins as "deplorable abortions," laments that one remarkable feature in the whole group of numismatic monuments of British and Celtic extraction is the spirit of servile imitation which it breathes, as well as the absence of that religious sentiment which confers a character on the Greek and Roman coinages.[409] How this writer defines religious sentiment I am unaware, but in any case it is difficult to square his assertion with Akerman's reference to "the great variety of crosses and other totally uninteresting objects" found on the post-Roman coinage.[410]

We have already noted certain exquisitely modelled coins of Gaul and there are many more yet to be considered. Dr. Jewitt concedes that the imitations were not always servile "having occasionally additional features as drapery, a torque round the neck, a bandlet or what not," but this writer obsequiously follows Sir John Evans in the opinion that the stater of Philip was "seized on by the barbarians who came in contact with Greek civilisation as an object of imitation. In Gaul this was especially the case, and the whole of the gold coinage of that country may be said to consist of imitations more or less rude and degenerate of the Macedonian Philippus."[411]

In 1769 a hoard of 371 gold British coins was discovered on the Cornish hill known as Carn Bre, near Cambourne, in view of which (and many other archæological finds) Borlase entertained the notion that Carn Bre was a prehistoric sanctuary. This conclusion is seemingly supported by the near neighbourhood of the town Redruth which is believed to have meant--rhe druth, or "the swift-flowing stream of the Druids". It is generally supposed that primitive coins were struck by priests within their sacred precincts,[412] and the extraordinary large collection found upon Carn Bre seems a strong implication that at some period coins were there minted. We find seemingly the Bre of Carn Bre, doubtless the Gaulish abri or sanctuary, recurrent in Ireland, where at Bri Leith it was believed that Angus Mac Oge, the ever-young and lovely son of Dagda Mor, had his brugh or bri, which meant fairy palace. The Cornish Cambourne, which the authorities suppose to have been Cam bron, and to have meant crooked hill, was more probably like Carn Bre the seat or abri of King Auberon, "Saint" Bron, or King Aubrey.

The generic term coin is imagined to be derived from cuneum, the Latin accusative of cuneus, a wedge, "perhaps," adds Skeat, "allied to cone". It is, however, almost an invariable rule to designate coins by the design found upon their face, whence "angel," "florin," "rose," "crown," "kreuzer" (cross), and so forth. The British penny is supposed to have derived its title from the head--Celtic pen--stamped upon it:[413] the Italian ducat was so denominated because it bore the image of a duke, whose coins were officially known as ducati, or "coins of the duchy"; and as not only the legend cuin, cuno, etc., appears upon early coinage, but also an image of an angel which we have endeavoured to show was regarded as the Cun or Queen, it seems likely that the word coin (Gaelic cuinn) is as old as the CUIN legend, and may have had no immediate relation either with cunneus or cone. Nevertheless, the Queen of Heaven was occasionally depicted on coins in the form of a cone, as on the token here illustrated: on the coins of Cyprus Venus was represented under the symbolism of a cone-shaped stone.[414] The ancient minters not only customarily portrayed the features of their pherepolis or Fairy of the City, but they occasionally rendered her identity fool-proof by inscribing her name at full length as in the ARETHUSA coin here illustrated: some of our seventh-century money bears the legend LUX--an allusion to the Light of the World; in the East coins were practically religious manifestos and bore inscriptions such as GOD IS ONE; GOD IS THE ETERNAL; THERE IS NO GOD BUT GOD ALONE; MAY THE MOST HIGH PERPETUATE HIS KINGDOM; and among the coins of Byzantium is an impression of the Virgin bearing the legend O LADY DO THOU KEEP IN SAFETY.[415]

The early coinage of Genoa represented a gate or janua; the Roman coin of Janus was known as the As, an implication that Janus, the first and most venerable of the Roman pantheon, was radically genus or King As: in the same way it is customary among us to speak colloquially of "George," or more ceremoniously of "King George," and in all probability the full and formal title of the Roman As was the Janus. On these coins there figured the prow or forefront of a ship, and the same prow will be noticed on the tokens of Britannia (ante, p. 120). It is remarkable that even 500 years after the coins of Janus had been out of circulation the youth of Rome used to toss money to the exclamation "Heads or Ships"--a very early instance of the pari mutuel!

In connection with archaic coins it is curious that one cannot get away from John or Ion. The first people to strike coins are believed to have been either the Ionians or the Lydians, both of whom inhabited the locality of ancient Troy:[416] as early as the middle of the seventh century B.C., the Ægean island of Ægina, then a great centre of commerce, minted money, but the annalists of China go far further in their claim that as far back as 1091 B.C., a coinage was instituted by Cheng, the second King of Chou.[417] The generic term token is radically Ken, shekel is seemingly allied to Sheik, the Moorish or Berberian for a chief, and with daric, the Persian coin, one may connote not only Touriack but ultimately Troy or Droia. Our guinea was so named after gold from Guinea; Guinea presumably was under Touriack or Berber influences, and we shall consider in a subsequent chapter Ogane, a mighty potentate of northern Africa whose toe, like that of Janus, the visitor most reverently kissed.

The Hackney of our early coinage thus not only appears pre-eminently upon it, but the very terms coin, token, chink, and jingle,[418] are permeated with the same root, i.e., Ecna, Ægina, or Jeanne.

That the worship of the Hackney stretches backward into the remotest depths of antiquity is implied by the carvings of prehistoric horse-heads found notably in the trous or cave shelters of Derbyshire and Dordogne. The discoveries at Torquay in Kent's Cavern, in Kent's Copse, (or Kent's Hole as it is named in ancient maps), included bone, or horn pins, awls, barbed harpoons, and a neatly formed needle precisely similar to analogous objects found in the rock shelters of Dordogne.[419] Many representations of horses and horse-heads have been found among the coloured inscriptions at Font de Gaune--the Fount of Gaune, and likewise at _Combar_elles: the Combar is here seemingly King Bar, and Bruniquel, another famous site of horse remains, is in all probability connected with the broncho. Perigord, the site of ancient Petrocorii, is radically peri, and Petro_cor_ii, the Father or Rock Heart, may be connoted with Iu_char_, the brother of Bryan and the father of Ecna, or philosophy.

In England horse-teeth in association with a flint celt have been found at Wiggonholt in Sussex: the term holt is applied in Cornwall to Pictish souterrains, and it is probable that Wiggonholt was once a holt or hole of eu Igon: Ægeon was an alternative title of Briareus of the Hundred Hands, and as already shown Briareus was localised by Greek writers upon a British islet (ante, p. 82).

The white horse constituted the arms of Brunswick or Burn's Wick; horses were carved upon the ancient font at _Burn_sall in Yorkshire, and that the broncho was esteemed in Britain by the flint knappers is implied by the etching of a horse's head found upon a polished horse rib in a cave at _Cress_well Crags in Derbyshire. Ceres or Demeter was represented as a mare, cres is the root of cresco--I grow, and among the white horses carved upon the chalk downs of England, one at Bratton was marked by an exaggerated "crescentic tail". Bratton, or Bra-ton? Hill, whereon this curious brute was carved, may be connoted with Bradon, and Bratton may also be compared with prad, a word which in horsey circles means a horse, whence prad cove, a dealer in horses: with the white horse at Bratton may be connoted the horse carved upon the downs at _Pre_ston near Weymouth. For a mass of miscellaneous and interesting horse-lore the curious reader may refer to Mr. Walter Johnson's Byways in British Archæology: the opinion of this painstaking and reliable writer is that the famed white horse of Bratton, like its fellow at Uffington, although usually believed to commemorate victories over the Danes are more probably to be referred to the Late Bronze, or Early Iron Age.

It has already been noted that artificially white horses were inscribed at times on Scotch hills, but these earth-monuments are unrecorded either in Ireland or on the Continent. On the higher part of Dartmoor there is a bare patch on the granite plateau in form resembling a horse, but whether the clearing is artificial is uncertain: the probabilities are, however, in favour of design for the site is known as White Horse Hill.[420]

The White Horse of Berkshire--the shire of the horse, Al Borak, or the brok?--is situated at Uffington, a name which the authorities decode into town or village of Uffa: I do not think this imaginary "Uffa" was primarily a Saxon settler, and it is more probable that Uffa was hipha, the Tyrian title of the Great Mother whose name also meant mare, whence the Hellenic hippa. The authorities would like to read Avebury, a form of Abury or Avereberie, as burg of Aeffa, but near Avebury there is a white horse cut upon the slope of a down, and the adjacent place-name Uffcot suggests that here also was an hipha-cot, or cromlech. The ride of Lady Godiva nude upon a white horse was, as we shall see later, probably the survival of an ancient festival representative of Good Hipha, the St. Ive, or St. Eve, who figures here and there in Britain, otherwise Eve, the Mother of All Living.

There used to be traces at Stonehenge of a currus or horse-course, and all the evidence is strongly in favour of the supposition that the horse has been with us in these islands for an exceedingly long time.

When defending their shores against the Roman invaders the British cavalry drove their horses into the sea attacking their enemies while in the water, and one of the facts most impressive to Cæsar was the skill with which our ancestors handled their steeds. Speaking of the British charioteers he says: "First they advance through all parts of their Army, and throw their javelins, and having wound themselves in among the troops of horse, they alight and fight on foot; the charioteers retiring a little with their chariots, but posting themselves in such a manner, that if they see their masters pressed, they may be able to bring them off; by this means the Britons have the agility of horse, and the firmness of foot, and by daily exercise have attained to such skill and management, that in a declivity they can govern the horses, though at full speed, check and turn them short about, run forward upon the pole, stand firm upon the yoke, and then withdraw themselves nimbly into their chariots."[421]

According to Mr. and Mrs. Hawes, two-wheeled chariots are delineated on Gnossian seals, among which is found a four-wheeled chariot having the front wheels armed with spikes:[422] the Britons are traditionally supposed to have attached scythes to their wheels, and Homer's description of a chariot fight might well have expressed the sensations of the British Jehu:--

his flying steeds His chariot bore, o'er bodies of the slain And broken bucklers trampling; all beneath Was splash'd with blood the axle, and the rails Around the car, as from the horses' feet And from the felloes of the wheels were thrown The bloody gouts; and onward still he pressed, Panting for added triumphs; deeply dyed With gore and carnage his unconquer'd hands.[423]

Biga, the Greek for chariot, is seemingly buggy, the name of a vehicle which was once very fashionable with us: the term, now practically extinct in this country, is still used largely in America, whither like much other supposedly American slang, it was no doubt carried by the pilgrim fathers.[424] To account satisfactorily for buggy one must assume that the earliest bigas were used ceremoniously in sacred festivals to Big Eye or the Sun: that this was a prevalent custom is proved by the Scandinavian model representing the Solar Chariot here illustrated. Among the cave-offerings of Crete the model biga was very frequent, and no doubt it had some such mental connection with the constellation King Charles's Wain, as still exists in Breton folklore. In what was known as King's barrow in Yorkshire, the skeleton of an old man was uncovered accompanied by chariot wheels, the skeletons of two small horses, and the skulls of two pigs: similar sepulchres have been found in great number in the Cambrai--Peronne--Bray district of France. Not only do we here find the term Santerre applied to an extensive plain, but the exquisite bronze plaques, discs, and flagons recovered from the tombs "appear to be of Greek workmanship". In the words of Dr. Pycraft (written in August, 1918): "The Marne is rich in such relics--though, happily, they need no little skill in finding, for they date back to prehistoric times ranging from the days of the Stone Age to the dawn of history. The retreat of this foul-minded brood [the German Army] towards the Vesle will probably mean the doom of the celebrated Menhirs, or standing stones, of the Marne Valley. These date back to about 6000 B.C., and are remarkable for the fact that they bear curiously sculptured designs, of which the most striking is a conventionalised representation of the human face.[425] This, and the general character of the ornamentation, bears a close likeness to that found on early objects from Hissarlik and the Greek islands.... These megalithic monuments mark the appearance in Europe of a new race, bringing with them new customs--and, what is still more important, the use of metal."[426]

Among the finds at Troy, Schliemann recovered some curious two-holed whorls or wheels, in the eyes of which are representations of a horse: he also discovered certain small carved horse-heads.[427] That the horse was of good omen among the Trojans is implied by the description of the building of Æneas's new colony, for of this new-born tre we read--

A grove stood in the city, rich in shade, Where storm-tost Tyrians, past the perilous brine, Dug from the ground by royal Juno's aid A war-steed's head, to far-off days a sign That wealth and prowess should adorn the line.[428]

Such was the auspiciousness of this find that the Trojans forthwith erected an altar to Juno, i.e., Cuno?

At the home of the Mother Goddess in Gnossus there has been discovered a seal impression which is described as a noble horse of enormous size being transported on a one-masted boat driven by Minoan oarsmen, seated beneath an awning:[429] it has been assumed by one authority after another that this seal-stone represented and commemorated the introduction into Crete of the thorough-bred horse, but more probably it was the same sacred horse as is traditionally associated with the fall of Troy. There is some reason to think that this supposedly fabulous episode may have had some historic basis: historians are aware that the Druids were accustomed to make vast wicker frames, sometimes in the form of a bull, and according to Roman writers these huge constructions filled either with criminals or with sacrificial victims were then burnt. Two enormous white horses constructed from wood and paper formed part of a recent procession in connection with the obsequies of the late Emperor of Korea, and it is quite possible that the wily Greeks strategically constructed a colossal horse by means of which they introduced a picked team of heroes in the Trojan sanctuary. According to Virgil--

Broken by war, long baffled by the force Of fate, as fortune and their hopes decline, The Danaan leaders build a monstrous horse, Huge as a hill, by Pallas' craft divine, And cleft fir-timbers in the ribs entwine. They feign it vowed for their return, so goes The tale, and deep within the sides of pine And caverns of the womb by stealth enclose Armed men, a chosen band, drawn as the lots dispose.[430]

That this elaborate form of the wicker-cage was introduced into Troy upon some religious pretext would appear almost certain from the inquiry of the aged Priam--

but mark, and tell me now, What means this monster, for what use designed? Some warlike engine? or religious vow? Who planned the steed, and why? Come, quick, the truth avow.[431]

The Trojans were guileless enough to "through the gates the monstrous horse convey," and even to lodge it in the citadel fatuously ignoring the recommendation of Capys

... to tumble in the rolling tide, The doubtful gift, for treachery designed, Or burn with fire, or pierce the hollow side.

Unless there had been some highly superstitious feeling attaching to the votive horse, one cannot conceive why the sound advice of Capys was not immediately put into practice.

Although both Greeks and Trojans were accomplished charioteers, riding on horseback was, we are told, so rare and curious an exhibition in ancient Greece that only one single reference is found in the poems of Homer. According to Gladstone, equestrian exercise was "the half-foreign accomplishment of the Kentauroi," who were fabulously half-man and half-horse: similarly, in most ancient Ireland there are no riders on horseback, and the warriors fight invariably from chariots.[432] On the other hand, in Etruria there are found representations of what might be a modern race meeting, and the effect of these pictures upon the early investigators of Etrurian tombs seems to have been most surprising. In the words of Mrs. Hamilton Gray: "The famous races of Britain seemed there to find their type. The racers, the race-stand, the riders with their various colours, the judges, the spectators, and the prizes were all before us. We were unbelieving like most of our countrymen.... Our understandings and imaginations were alike perplexed."[433]

The verb to canter is supposed to be derived from the pace at which pilgrims proceeded to _Canter_bury. But pilgrims either footed it or else ambled leisurely along on their palfreys, and the connection between canter and Cantuar is seemingly much deeper than supposed. At Kintyre in Scotland the patron saint is St. Cheiran, who may be connoted with Chiron, the wise and good Kentaur chief; and this connection of Chiron-Kentaur, Cheiran-Kintyre is the more curious, inasmuch as both an Irish MS. and Ptolemy refer independently by different terms to the Mull of Kintyre, as "the height of the horse".[434]

The illustration herewith is an early Victorian conception of Chiron, the wise and kindly Kentaur King, and CANTORIX, an inscription found on the spectral steeds of Fig. 146, might seemingly without outrage be interpreted as Canto rex, or Song King: in Welsh canto, a song or chant, was gan, and the title tataguen meant "the father of the muse";[435] according to mythology the walls of Troy were built by Oceanus to the music of Apollo's lyre.

It would appear probable that Kent, the county of Invicta, the White Horse, was pre-eminently a horse-breeding county, as it remains to this day: part of Cantuarburig is known as Hackington, and in view of the Iceni hackney-coins there is little doubt that horse-breeding was extensively practised wherever the equine Eceni, Cantii, and Cenomagni were established. It is noteworthy that the Icknield Way was known alternatively as Hackington Way, Hackney Way, Acknil Way, and Hikenilde Street.[436]

It is a curious fact that practically the first scratchings of a horse represent the animal as bridled, whence the authorities assume that horses were kept semi-domesticated in a compound for purposes of food: immense collections of horse bones have been discovered, whence it seems probable that horses were either sacrificed in hecatombs or were eaten in large quantities; but the Tartars kept horses mainly for the mare's milk.

Pliny mentions a horse-eating tribe, in Northern Spain, entitled the Concanni, with which Iberians may be connoted the Congangi of Cumberland, whose headquarters were supposedly Kendal: the western point of Carnarvonshire is named by Ptolemy Gangani, and the same geographer mentions another Gangani in the West of Hibernia. The Hibernian Ganganoi, situated in the neighbourhood of the Shannon, worshipped a Sengann whose name is supposed to mean Old Gann: we have illustrated the earthwork wheel cross of Shanid (ante p. 55), and have suggested the equation of Sen Gann with Sinjohn. In all probability the fairy known in Ireland as Gancanagh, who appears in lonesome valleys and makes love to milkmaids, is a survival of the Gangani's All Father. The name Konken occurs among the kingly chronology of Archaic Britain; the most ancient inscribed stone in Wales is a sepulchral stone of a certain Cingen: the Saxon name Cunegonde is translated as having meant royal lady.

The French cancan, an exuberant dance which is associated with Paris, the city of the Parisii, may be a survival from the times of the Celtiberian Concanni: Paris was the Adonis of the Hellenes, or Children of Hellas, and it is not unlikely that the lament helas! or alas! was the cry wailed by the women on the annual waning of the Solar Power. At Helstone in Cornwall--supposed to be named from hellas, a marsh--there is still danced an annual Furry dance of which the feature is a long linked chain similar to that of the French farandole: if faran, like fern, be the plural of far, it follows that the furry and the _faran_dole were alike festivals of the Great Fire, Phare, Fairy, Phairy, or Peri; the Parisii who settled in the Bridlington district are by some scholars assigned to Friesland.

Persia, the home of the peris, is still known locally as Farsistan, whence the name Farsees or Parsees is now used to mean fire worshippers: the Indian Parsees seem chiefly to be settled in the district of India, which originally formed part of the ancient Indian Konkan kingdom, and the probabilities are that the Konkani of the East, like the Cancanii of the West, were worshippers of the Khan Khan, or King of Kings.

In the most ancient literature of India entire hymns are addressed to the Solar Horse, and the estimation in which the White Horse was held in Persia may be judged from the annual salutation ceremony thus described by Williamson in The Great Law: "The procession to salute the God formed long before the rising of the sun. The High Priest was followed by a long train of Magi, in spotless white robes chanting hymns and carrying the sacred fire on silver censers. Then came 365 youths in scarlet, to represent the days of the year, and the colour of fire. These were followed by the chariot of the sun, empty, decorated with garlands, and drawn by superb white horses, harnessed with pure gold. Then came a white horse of magnificent size, his forehead blazing with gems, in honour of Mithras. Close behind him rode the king, in a chariot of ivory inlaid with gold, followed by his royal kindred, in embroidered garments and a long train of nobles, riding on camels richly caparisoned. This gorgeous retinue, facing the East, slowly ascended Mount Orontes. Arrived at the summit, the high priest assumed his tiara, wreathed with myrtle, and hailed the first rays of the rising sun with incense and with prayer. The other Magi gradually joined him in singing hymns to Ormuzd, the source of all blessings, by whom the radiant Mithra had been sent to gladden the earth, and preserve the principle of life. Finally, they all joined in the one universal chorus of praise, while king, princes, and nobles prostrated themselves before the orb of day."

There is every likelihood that this festival was celebrated on a humbler scale at many a British "Hallicondane," and as the glory of the horse or courser is its speed--"swift is the sun in its course"--we may also be sure that no pains were spared to secure a worthy representative of the Supreme Ecna, Ekeni, or Hackney.

In Egypt the whole land was ransacked in order to discover the precise and particular Bull, which by its special markings was qualified to play Apis, and when this precious beast was found there were national rejoicings. Reasoning by analogy it is probable that not only did each British horse-centre have its local races, but that there was in addition what might be called a Grand National either at Stonehenge or at one or another of the tribal centres. In such case the winners would become the sacred steeds, which, as we know, were maintained by the Druids in the sanctuaries, and from whose neighing or knowing auguries were drawn. Such was the value placed in Persia upon the augury of a horse's neigh, that on one memorable occasion the rights of two claimants to the throne were decided by the fact that the horse of the favoured one neighed first.[437]

It is probable that the primitive horse-races of the Britons were elemental Joy-days, Hey-days, and Holy-days, similar to the time-honoured Scouring and Cleansing of the White Horse of Berkshire or Barrukshire. On the occasion of this festival in 1780, The Reading Mercury informed its readers that: "Besides the customary diversions of horse-racing, foot-races, etc., many uncommon rural diversions and feats of activity were exhibited to a greater number of spectators than ever assembled on any former occasion. Upwards of 30,000 persons were present, and amongst them most of the nobility and gentry of this and the neighbouring counties, and the whole was concluded without any material accident."

Below the head of the White Horse, which at festival time was thoroughly scoured and restored to its pristine whiteness, is a huge scoop in the downs forming a natural amphitheatre, and at the base of this so-called "manger" are the clear traces of artificial banks or tiers. In 1825 the games were held at Seven Barrows, distant two miles in a south-easterly direction from the White Horse itself. These Seven Barrows are imagined to be the burial places of seven chieftains slain at the battle of Ashdown, and adjacent mounds supposedly contain the corpses of the rank and file. But the starting-post of Lewes race-course, which is also two miles in extent, is shown in the Ordnance map as being likewise situated at a group of seven tumuli, and as the winning-post at Lewes is at the base of Offham Hill the fact of starting at Seven Barrows, racing for two miles, and finishing respectively at Offham and Uffington is too conspicuous to be coincidence. Referring to the Stonehenge track Stukeley writes: "This course which is two miles long," and he adds casually, "there is an obscure barrow or two round which they returned".

At Uffington are the remains of a cromlech known as Wayland's Smithy, Wayland, here as elsewhere, being an invisible, benevolent fairy blacksmith[438]: on Offham Hill, Lewes, stands an inn entitled the "Blacksmith's Arms," and below it Wallands Park.

The sub-district of Lewes, where the De Vere family seem to have been very prominent, contains the parishes of St. John, South_over_, and Berwick: opposite the Castle Hill is Brack Mount, also a district called The Brooks; running past All Saints Church is Brooman's Lane, and the "rape" of Lewes contains the hundreds of Barcomb and Preston. The principal church in Lewes is that of St. Michael, which is known curiously as St. Michaels in Foro, and it stands, in all probability like the Brutus Stone, in Fore Street, Totnes, in what was the centre or forum of the original settlement.

The name Lewes is thought to be lowes, which means barrows or toothills, and this derivation is no doubt correct, for within the precincts of Lewes Castle, which dominates the town, are still standing two artificial mounds nearly 800 feet apart from centre to centre.

These two barrows, known locally as the Twin Mounds of Lewes, may be connoted with the duas tumbas or two tumps, elsewhere associated with St. Michael: at their base lies Lansdowne Place, and at another Elan's Town, or Wick, i.e., Alnwick on the river Aln or Alone, near Berwick, we find a remarkable custom closely associated with so-called Twinlaw or Tounlow cairns. This festival is thus described by Hope: "On St. Mark's Day the houses of the new freemen are distinguished by a holly-tree planted before each door, as the signal for their friends to assemble and make merry with them. About eight o'clock the candidates for the franchise, being mounted on horseback and armed with swords, assemble in the market-place, where they are joined by the chamberlain and bailiff of the Duke of Northumberland, attended by two men armed with halberds. The young freemen arranged in order, with music playing before them and accompanied by a numerous cavalcade, march to the west-end of the town, where they deliver their swords. They then proceed under the guidance of the moorgrieves through a part of their extensive domain, till they reach the ceremonial well. The sons of the oldest freemen have the honour of taking the first leap. On the signal being given they pass through the bog, each being allowed to use the method and pace which to him shall seem best, some running, some going slow, and some attempting to jump over suspected places, but all in their turns tumbling and wallowing like porpoises at sea, to the great amusement of the populace, who usually assemble in vast numbers. After this aquatic excursion, they remount their horses and proceed to perambulate the remainder of their large common, of which they are to become free by their achievement. In passing the open part of the common the young freemen are obliged to alight at intervals, and place a stone on a cairn as a mark of their boundary, till they come near a high hill called the Twinlaw or Tounlaw Cairns, when they set off at full speed, and contest the honour of arriving first on the hill, where the names of the freemen of Alnwick are called over. When arrived about two miles from the town they generally arrange themselves in order, and, to prove their equestrian abilities, set off with great speed and spirit over bogs, ditches, rocks, and rugged declivities till they arrive at Rottenrow Tower on the confines of the town, the foremost claiming the honour of what is termed 'winning the boundaries,' and of being entitled to the temporary triumphs of the day."[439]

The occurrence of this horsey festival on St. Mark's Day may be connoted with the fact that in Welsh and Cornish march, in Gaelic marc, meant horse: obviously marc is allied to the modern mare.

There is a Rottenrow at Lewes, and Rottenrow Tower on the confines of Alnwick is suggestive of the more famous Rotten Row in London. It would seem that this site was also the bourne or goal of steeplechases similar to those at Alnwick, for upwards of a mile westward there was once a street called Michael's Grove, of which the site is now occupied by Ovington Square. This "Ovington" may be connoted not only with Offham Hill and Uffington of the White Horse, but also with Oving in Bucks, where is an earthwork also a spring known as "the Horse Spring," traditionally associated with Horsa.[440]

Ovington Square at Kensington seems also to have been designated Brompton Grove, and as _Bronde_sbury, a few miles northward, was known alternatively as Bromesbury, and Bromfield, in Shropshire, as Brunefield, we may safely regard the Brom which appears here, and in numerous Bromptons, Bromsgroves, Bromsberrows, Bromleas, also Brimham Rocks, as being the same word as Bron. The Latin name for broom--planta genista--apart from other evidence in my notebooks is an implication that the golden broom was deemed a symbol of Genista, the Good Genus or Janus: and as Janus of January, and planta genista, was the first, the word prime may be connoted with broom. On 1st January, i.e., the first day of the first month, it was customary in England to make a globe of blackthorn, a plant which is the first to come into flower: we have already connoted the thorn or spica with the Prime Cause, and with the prime letter of the alphabet A, or Aleph, whence in all probability bramble may be equated also with broom and prime.

Mitton, in Kensington, observes that before being Brompton Grove this part of the district had been known as Flounders Field,[441] but why tradition does not say. Flounders Field is on the verge of, if not within, the district known as Kensington Gore, and those topographers who have assigned gore to the old English term meaning mud are probably correct. From Kensington Gore, or Flounders Field, we may assume that the freemen of Kensington once wallowed their way as at Alnwick to Rottenrow, and the plight of these sportsmen must have been the more pitiable inasmuch as, at any rate at Alnwick, the freemen were by custom compelled to wear white robes. In this connection it may be noted that at the triennial road-surveying ceremony known in Guernsey as the Chevauchee or Cavalcade of St. Michael (last held in 1837), a white wand was carried and the regimental band of the local militia was robed in long white smocks. "This very unmilitary costume," says a writer in Folklore, "must, I think, have been traditionally associated with the Chevauchee as it is quite unlike all the uniforms of that date worn by our local militia; it may have been a survival of some ancient, perhaps rustic, possibly priestly band of minstrels and musicians."[442]

Whether our Whit or White Monday parade of carthorses has any claim to antiquity I am unaware, but it is noteworthy that the Scouring of the Uffington White Horse was celebrated on Whit Monday with great joyous festivity. The Cavalcade of St. Michael, in which all the nobility and gentry took part, was ordained to be held on the Monday of Mid May and was evidently a most imposing ritual. It seems to have culminated at the Perron du Roy (illustrated on p. 315), which was once the boundary stone of the Royal Fief: at this spot stood once an upright stone known as La Rogue des Fees, and a repast to the revellers was here served in a circular grass hollow where according to tradition the fays used to dance. During the procession the lance-bearer carried a wand eleven and a quarter feet long, the number of Vavasseurs was eleven, and it is possible that the eleven pools in Kensington, which were subsequently merged into the present Serpentine,[443] were originally constructed or adapted to this Elphin number in order to make a ceremonial course for the freemen floundering from Flounders Field to Rottenrow.

Kensington in days gone by was pre-eminently a district of springs and wells; the whole of south-west London was more or less a swamp or "holland," and the early Briton, whose prehistoric canoe was found some years ago at Kew, might if he had wished have wallowed the whole way from Turnham Green, via Brook Green, Parson's Green, Baron's Court, Walham and Fulham to Tyburn.

If it be true that Boudicca were able to put 4000 war chariots into the field there must at that time have been numerous stud farms, and the low-lying pastures of the larger Kent, which once contained London, were ideal for the purpose. The Haymarket is said to have derived its name from the huge amount of hay required by the mews of Charing Cross; a mile or so westward is Hay Hill; old maps indicate enormous mews in the Haymarket district, and there are indications that some of the present great mews and stables of south-western London are the relics of ancient parks or compounds. According to Homer--

By Dardanus, of cloud-compelling Jove Begotten, was Dardania peopled first, Ere sacred Ilium, populous city of men, Was founded on the plain; as yet they dwelt On spring-abounding Ida's lowest spurs. To Dardanus was Erichthonius born, Great King, the wealthiest of the sons of men; For him were pastur'd in the marshy mead, Rejoicing with their foals, three thousand mares; Them Boreas, in the pasture where they fed, Beheld, enamour'd; and amid the herd In likeness of a coal-black steed appear'd; Twelve foals, by him conceiving, they produc'd. These, o'er the teeming corn-fields as they flew, Skimm'd o'er the standing ears, nor broke the haulm; And o'er wide Ocean's bosom as they flew, Skimm'd o'er the topmost spray of th' hoary sea.[444]

Boreas, whom we may connote with Bress, the Consort of Brigit, or Bride, is here represented as wallowing, a term which Skeat derives from the Anglo-Saxon wealwian, to roll round: he adds, "see voluble," but in view of the world-wide rites of immersion or baptism it is more seemly to connect wallow with hallow. Mr. Weller, Senr., preferred to spell his name with a "V": there is no doubt that Weller and Veller were synonymous terms, and therefore that Fulham, in which is now Walham Green, was originally a home of Wal or Ful, perhaps the same as Wayland or Voland, the Blacksmith of Wayland's Smithy and of Walland Park.[445] It is supposed that Fulham was the swampy home of fowlen, or water fowls, but it is an equally reasonable conjecture that it was likewise a tract of marshy meads whereon the foalen or foals were pastured. As already noted the Tartar version of the Pied Piper represents the Chanteur or Kentaur as a foal, coursing perpetually round the world. The coins of the Gaulish Volcae exhibit a wheel or veel with the inscription VOL, others in conjunction with a coursing horse are inscribed VOOL, and we find the head of a remarkable maned horse on the coins of the Gaulish Felikovesi. As felix means happy, one may connote the hobby horse with _happi_ness, or one's hobby, and it is not improbable that both Felixstowe and Folkestone were settlements of the adjacent Felikovesi, whose coins portray the Hobby's head or Foal.

At Land's End, opposite the titanic headland known as Pardenick, or Pradenic, is Cairn Voel which is also known locally as "The Diamond Horse":[446] there is likewise a headland called The Horse, near Kynance Cove, and a stupendous cliff-saddle at Zennor,[447] named the Horse's Back. It would thus seem that the mythology of the Voel extended to the far West, and it is not improbable that Tegid Voel, the Consort of Keridwen the Mare, alias Cendwen, meant inter alia the Good Foal.

Prof. Macalister has recently hooked up from the deep waters of Irish mythology a deity whose name Fal he connotes with a Teutonic Phol. This Fal, a supposedly non-Aryan, neolithic (?) "pastoral horse-divinity," belonging to an older stratum of belief than the divine beings among the Tuatha De Danann, Prof. Macalister associates with the famous stone of Fal at Tara, and he remarks: "He looks like a Centaur, but is in parentage and disposition totally different from the orthodox Centaurs. He is, in fact, just the sort of being that would develop out of an ancient hippanthropic deity who had originally no connection with Centaurs, but who found himself among a people that had evolved the conception of the normal type of those disagreeable creatures."[448]

In Cornwall is a river Fal; a well is a spring, the whale or elephant of the sea was venerated because like the elephant it gushed out a fountain of water from its head. The Wilton crescent, opposite one of the ancient conduits by Rotten Row, Kensington, may well have meant Well town, for the whole of this district was notoriously a place of wells: not only do we find Wilton Crescent, but in the immediate neighbourhood of Ovington Square and Flounders Field is Walton Street and Hooper's Court. Sennen Cove at Land's End was associated with a mysterious sea-spirit known as the Hooper, and we shall meet again with Hooper, or Jupiter, the Hidden one in "Hooper's Hide," an alternative title for the game of Blind Man's Buff.

The authorities derive avon, or aune, the Celtic for a gently flowing river, from ap, the Sanscrit for water, but it is more likely that there is a closer connection with Eve, or Eva--Welsh Efa--whose name is the Hebrew for life or enlivening, whence Avon would resolve most aptly into the enlivening one. Not only are rivers actually the enlivening ones, but the ancients philosophically assigned the origin of all life to water or ooze. According to Persian, or Parthian philosophy--and Parthia may be connoted in passing with Porthia, an old name for the Cornish St. Ives, for St. Ive was said to be a Persian bishop--the Prime appointed six pure and beneficent Archangels to supervise respectively Fire, Metals, Agriculture, Verdure, the Brutes, and Water. With respect to the last the injunction given was: "I confide to thee, O Zoroaster! the water that flows; that which is stagnant; the water of rivers; that which comes from afar and from the mountains; the water from rain and from springs. Instruct men that it is water which gives strength to all living things. It makes all verdant. Let it not be polluted with anything dead or impure, that your victuals, boiled in pure water, may be healthy. Execute thus the words of God."[449]

Etymology points to the probability that water in every form, even the stagnant fen--the same word as Aven, font, and fount--was once similarly sacred in Britain, whence it may follow that even although Fulham and Walham were foul, vile, evil, and filthy,[450] the root fal still meant originally the enlivening all.

The word pollute (to be connoted with pool, Phol, or Fal) is traced by Skeat to polluere, which means not necessarily foul, but merely to flow over. The willow tree (Welsh helygen), which grows essentially by the water-side, may be connoted with wallow.

Of Candian or Cretan god-names only two are tentatively known, to wit--Velchanos and Apheia: Apheia may be connoted with Hephaestus, the Greek title of Vulcan or Vulcanus, and the connection between Hephaestus and Velchanos is clearly indicated by the inscribed figure of Velchanos which appears upon the coins of the Candian town of Phaestus. That the falcon was an emblem of the Volcae is obvious from the bird on Fig. 248, and the older forms of the English place-name Folkestone, i.e., Folcanstan, Folcstane, Fulchestan supposed to mean "stone of a man Folca," more probably imply a Folk Stone, or Falcon Stone, or Vulcan Stone. The Saxon gentleman named Folca is in all probability pure imagination.

The more British title of Wayland or Voland, the Vulcan or Blacksmith of Uffington, and doubtless also of the Blacksmith of Walland's Park, Offham, is Govannon. One may trace Govan, the British Hammersmith, from St. Govans at Fairfield near Glasgow, or from St. Govan's Head in South Wales, to St. Govan's Well, opposite De Vere Gardens in Kensington. In Welsh govan was a generic term for smith; one of the triune aspects of St. Bride was that of a metal worker, and it is reasonable to equate the Lady Godiva of _Coven_try, with Coventina or Coven of the Tyne, whose images from Coventina's Well in Northumberland are here reproduced. As will be seen she figures as Una or the One holding an olive branch, and as Three holding a phial or vial, a fire, and a what-not too obscure for specification. "The founding of the Temple of Coventina," says Clayton, "must be ascribed to the Roman officers of the Batavian Cohort, who had left a country where the sun shines every day and where in pagan times springs and running waters were objects of adoration."[451] But is there really no other possible alternative? Mr. Hope describes the goddess represented in Fig. 256 as floating on the leaf of a water-lily; the legend of the patron saint of St. Ives in Cornwall is to the effect that this maiden came floating over the waves upon a leaf, and it thus seems likely that Coventry, the home of Lady Godiva, derived its name from being the tre, tree, or trou of Coven, or St. Govan.

In his account of a great and triumphant jousting held in London on May Day, 1540, on which occasion all the horses were trapped in white velvet, Stow several times alludes to an Ivy Bridge by St. Martin's in the Fields, and this Ivy Bridge must have been closely adjacent to what is now Coventry Street and Cranbrook Street. Crene is Greek for brook,[452] the Hippocrene or the horse brook was the fountain struck by the hoof of the divine Pegasus: _Cran_brook Street is a continuation of Coventry Street, and I rather suspect that the neighbouring Covent Garden is not, as popularly supposed, a corruption of Convent Garden, but was from time immemorial a grove or garden of Good Coven. The Maiden Lane here situated probably derived its title from a sign or tablet of the Maiden similar to the Coventina pictures, and it is not improbable that Coven or Goodiva once reigned from Covent Garden via Coventry Street to St. Govan's Well in Kensington. Near Ripon is an earthwork abri known seemingly as Givendale,[453] and on Hambleton Hill in this neighbourhood used to be a White Horse carved on the down side.[454] The primal Coventrys were not improbably a tribal oak or other sacred tree, such as the Braintree in Essex near Bradwell,[455] and the Pick_tree_ previously noted.

At Coveney, in Cambridgeshire--query, Coven ea or Coven's island?--bronze bucklers have been found which in design "bear a close resemblance to the ribbon pattern seen on several Mycenæan works of art, and the inference is that even as far north as Britain, the Mycenæan civilisation found its way, the intermediaries being possibly Phoenician traders".[456] But the Phoenicians having now been evicted from the court it is manifestly needful to find some other explanation.

Coveney is not many miles from St. Ives, Huntingdon, named supposedly after Ivo, a Persian bishop, who wandered through Europe in the seventh century. Possibly this same episcopal Persian founded Effingham near Bookham and Boxhill, for at the foot of the Buckland Hills is Givon's Grove, once forming part of a Manor named Pachevesham. On the downs above is Epsom, which certainly for some centuries has been Ep's home,[457] and the Pacheve of Pachevesham was possibly the same Big Hipha: there is second Evesham in the same neighbourhood. Speaking of the British inscription EPPILOS, Sir John Rhys observes that it is very probably a derivation from epo, a horse; and of the town of _Ep_eiacon, now _Eb_chester, the same authority states: "The name seems to signify a place for horses or cavalry".[458] Near Pachevesham, below Epsom, is an old inn named "The Running Mare".

In connection with Givon, or Govan, or Coven, it is interesting to note that the word used by Tacitus to denote a British chariot is covinus. Local tradition claims that the scythes of Boudiccas coveni were made at Birmingham, and there may be truth in this for the bir of Birmingham is the radical of faber, feu_ber_, or fire father, and likewise of Lefebre, the French equivalent of Smith. That Birmingham was an erstwhile home of the followers of the Fire Father, the Prime, or Forge of Life, is deducible not only from the popular "Brum" or "Brummagem," but from the various forms recorded of the name.[459] The variant Brymecham may be modernised into Prime King; the neighbouring Bromsgrove is equivalent to Auberon's Grove; Bromieham was no doubt a home of the Brownies, and the authorities are sufficiently right in deriving from this name "Home of the sons of Beorn". Bragg is a common surname in Birmingham: Perkunas or Peroon, the Slav Pater or Jupiter, was always represented with a hammer. In Fig. 175 ante, p. 332, the British Fire Father, or Hammersmith, was labouring at what is assumed to be a helmet or a burnie, and Fig. 258 is evidently a variant of the same subject. In the Red Book of Hergest there occurs a line--"With Math the ancient, with Gofannon," from which one might gather that Math and Gofannon were one. In any case the word smith is apparently se mith, se meath, or Se Math, and the Smeath's Ridge at Avebury was probably named after the heavenly Smith or Gofan.

According to Rice Holmes the bronze image of a god with a hammer has been found in England, but where or when is not stated: it is, however, generally believed that this Celtic Hammer Smith was a representation of the Dis Pater,[460] to whom the Celts attributed their origin.

The London place-name Hammersmith appears in Domesday Book as Hermoderwode: in Old High German har or herr meant high, whence I suggest that Hermoderwode has not undergone any unaccountable phonetic change into Hammersmith, but was then surviving German for Her moder or High Mother Wood. From Broadway Hammersmith to Shepherd's Bush runs "The Grove," and that originally this grove had cells of the Selli in it is somewhat implied by the name Silgrave, still applied to a side-street leading into The Grove. "Brewster Gardens," "Bradmore House," "British Grove," and Broadway all alike point similarly to Hammersmith being a pre-Saxon British settlement. Bradmore was the Manor house at Hammersmith, and the existence of lewes, leys, or barrows on this Brad moor is implied by the modern Leysfield Road. The lewes at Folkestone were in all probability situated on the commanding Leas, and as the local pronunciation of Lewis in the Hebrides is "the Lews" there likewise were probably two or more lowes or laws whence the laws were proclaimed and administered. Bradmore is suggestive of St. Bride, the heavenly Hammersmith who was popularly associated with a falcon, and the great Hammersmith or Vulcan may be connoted with the Golden Falcon, whose memory has seemingly been preserved in Hammersmith at Goldhawk Road.

When Giraldus Cambrensis visited the shrine of the glorious Brigit at Kildare he was told the tale of a marvellous lone hawk or falcon popularly known as "Brigit's Bird". This beauteous tame falcon is reported to have existed for many centuries, and customarily to have perched on the summit of the Round Tower of Kildare.[461] Doubtless this story was the parallel of a fairy-tale current at Pharsipee in Armenia. "There," says Maundeville, "is found a sparrow-hawk upon a fair perch, and a fair lady of fairie, who keeps it; and whoever will watch that sparrow-hawk seven days and seven nights, and, as some men say, three days and three nights, without company and without sleep, that fair lady shall give him, when he hath done, the first wish that he will wish of earthly things; and that hath been proved oftentimes."[462]

Goldhawk Road at Hammersmith is supposedly an ancient Roman Road, and in 1884 the remains of a causeway were uncovered. Both road and route are the same word as the British rhod, and Latin rota meaning a wheel, and it is likely that the term roadway meant primarily a route along which rotæ or wheels might travel: as rotten would be the ancient plural of rot, Rottenrow may thus simply have meant a roadway for wheeled traffic. According to Borlase the British fighting chariot was a rhod, the rout of this traffic presumably caused ruts upon the route, whence it is quite likely that Rotten Row was a rutty and foul thoroughfare. The ordinary supposition that this title is a corruption of route du roi may possibly have some justification, for immediately opposite is Kingston House, and at one time Rotten Row was known as the King's Road: originally the world of fashion used to canter round a circular drive or ring of trees, some of which are still carefully preserved on the high ground near the present Tea House, and thus it might reasonably follow that Rotten Row was a corrupted form of rotunda row.

Opposite to Rotten Row are Rutland Gate and Rutland House, where lived the Dukes of Rutland, anciently written Roteland. Rutlandshire neighbours Leicester, a town known to the Romans under the name of Ratae; Leicestershire is watered by the river Welland, and in Stukeley's time there existed in a meadow near Ratae "two great banks called _Raw_dikes, which speculators look on as unaccountable".[463] That Leicester or Ratae paid very high reverence to the horse may be inferred from the fact that here the annual Riding of the George was one of the principal solemnities of the town, and one which the inhabitants were bound legally to attend. In addition to the Rottenrows at Kensington and Lewes there is a Rottenrow in Bucks, and a Rottenrow near Reading, all of which, together with Rottenrow Tower near Alnwick, must be considered in combination.

Redon figures as a kingly name among the British chronologies, and as horses are associated so intimately with the various Rotten Rows, the name Redon may be connoted with Ruadan, a Celtic "saint" who is said to have presented King Dermot with thirty sea-green horses which rose from the sea at his bidding. Sea horses are a conspicuous feature on the coins of the Redones who dwelt in Gaul and commanded the mouth of the Loire.[464] The horse was certainly at home at Canterbury where Rodau's Town is in immediate proximity to what is now called Riding Gate.

There is a river Roden at Wroxeter, a river Roding in Essex; Yorkshire is divided into three divisions called Ridings, and in East Riding, in the churchyard of the village of Rudstone, there stands a celebrated monolith which is peculiar inasmuch as its depth underground was said to equal its height above.[465] There is another Rudstone near Reading Street, Kent, and the Givon's Grove near Epsom is either in or immediately adjacent to a district known as Wrydelands. To ride was once presumably to play the rôle of the Kentaur Queen, whether equine as represented in the Coventry Festival or as riding in a triumphal biga, rhod, wain or wagon. That such riding was once a special privilege is obvious from the statement of Tacitus: "She claimed a right to be conveyed in her carriage to the Capitol; a right by ancient usage allowed only to the sacerdotal order, the vestal virgins, and the statues of the gods".[466]

That the Lady of Coventry was the Coun or Queen is possibly implied by the _Coun_don within the borough of modern Coventry which also embraces a Foleshill,[467] and Radford.

The coins of the Gaulish Rotomagi, whose headquarters were the Rouen district, depict the horse not merely cantering but galloping apace, whence obviously the Rotomagi were an equine or Ecuina people. With their coins inscribed Ratumacos may be compared the coinage of the Batavian Magusæ which depicts "a sea horse to the right," and is inscribed MAGUS.[468] Magus, as we have seen, was a title of the Wandering Geho, Jehu, or Jew, and he may here be connoted with the "Splendid Mane" which figures under the name Magu, particularly in Slav fairy-tale:--

Magu, Horse with Golden Mane, I want your help yet once again, Walk not the earth but fly through space As lightnings flash and thunders roll, Swift as the arrow from the bow Come quick, yet so that none may know.[469]

The French roue meaning a wheel, and rue, a roadway, are probably not decayed forms of the Latin rota but ruder, more rudimentary, and more radical: like the Candian Rhea, the Egyptian Ra or Re, and our ray, they are probably the Irish rhi, the Spanish rey, and the French roi.

There is a river Rea in Shropshire and a second river Rea upon which stands _Bir_mingham: that this Rea was connected with the Candian Rhea is possible from the existence at Birmingham of a Canwell, or Canewell. Near Cambourne, or Cam_bre_, is the rhe druth (Redruth) which the authorities decode into stream of the Druids. Running through the village of _Ber_riew in Wales, is a rivulet named the Rhiw, and rising on _Bar_don Hill, Leicestershire, is "the bright and clear little river Sence". As the word mens, or mind, is usually assigned to Minerva, Rhea was possibly the origin of reason, or St. Rhea, and to Rhi Vera may be assigned river and revere; a reverie is a brown study.

According to Persian philosophy the soul of man was fivefold in its essence, one-fifth being "the Roun, or Rouan, the principle of practical judgment, imagination, volition":[470] another fifth, "the Okho or principle of conscience," seemingly corresponds to what western philosophers termed the Ego or I myself.

In the neighbourhood of Brough in Westmorland is an ancient cross within an ancient camp, known as Rey Cross, and that Leicester or Ratae--which stands upon the antique Via Devana or Divine Way--was intimately related with the Holy Rood is obvious from the modern Red Cross Street and High Cross Street.

The ruddy Rood was no doubt radically the rolling four-spoked wheel, felloe, felly, periphery, or brim, and although perhaps Reading denoted as is officially supposed, "Town of the Children of Reada," the name Read, Reid, Rea, Wray, Ray, etc., did not only mean ruddy or red-haired. I question whether Ripon really owes its title as supposed to ripa, the Latin for bank of a stream.

The town hall of Reading is situated at Valpy Street in Forbury Gardens on what is known as The Forbury, seemingly the Fire Barrow or prehistoric Forum, and doubtless a holy fire once burned ruddily at Rednal or Wredinhal near Bromsgrove. In Welsh rhedyn means fern, whence the authorities translate Reddanick in Cornwall into the ferny place: the connection, however, is probably as remote and imaginary as that between Redesdale and reeds.

The place-name Rothwell, anciently Rodewelle, is no doubt with reason assumed to be "well of the rood or cross". Ruth means pity, and the ruddy cross of St. John, now (almost) universally sacrosanct to Pity, was, I think, probably the original Holy Rood. The knights of St. John possessed at Barrow in Leicester or Ratae a site now known as Rothley Temple, and as th, t, and d, are universally interchangeable it is likely that this Rothley was once Roth lea or Rood Lea. Similarly Redruth, in view of the neighbouring Carn Bre, was probably not "Stream of the Druids," but an abri of the Red Rood. The sacred rod or pole known generally as the Maypole was almost invariably surmounted by one or more rotæ, or wheels, and the name "Radipole rood" at Fulham (nearly opposite Epple St.) renders it likely that the Maypole was once known alternatively as the Rood Pole. From the Maypoles flew frequently the ruddy cross of Christopher or George.

In British mythology there figures a goddess of great loveliness named Arianrod, which means in Welsh the "Silver Wheel": the Persians held that their Jupiter was the whole circuit of heaven, and Arianrhod, or "Silver Wheel," was undoubtedly the starry welkin, the Wheel Queen, or the Vulcan of Good Law. With Wayland Smith may be connoted the river Welland of Rutland and Rataeland.

Silver, a white metal,[471] was probably named after Sil Vera, the Princess of the Silvery Moon and Silvery Stars. Silver Street is a common name for old roads in the south of England:[472] Aubrey Walk in Kensington, is at the summit of a Silver Street, and the prime Aubrey de Vere of this neighbourhood was, I suspect, the same ghost as originally walked Auber's Ridge in Picardy, and the famous French Chemin des Dames. France is the land of the Franks,[473] and near Frankton in Shropshire at Ellesmere, i.e., the Elle, Fairy, or Holy mere, are the remains of a so-called Ladies Walk. This extraordinary Chemin des Dames, the relic evidently of some old-time ceremony, is described as a paved causeway running far into the mere, with which more than forty years ago old swimmers were well acquainted. It could be traced by bathers until they got out of their depth. How much farther it might run they of course knew not. Its existence seems to have been almost forgotten until, in 1879, some divers searching for the body of a drowned man came upon it on the bottom of the mere, and this led to old inhabitants mentioning their knowledge of it.[474]

England abounds in Silverhills, Silverhowes, Silverleys, Silvertowns, Silverdales, and Perryvales. By Silverdale at Sydenham is Jews Walk, and on Branch Hill at Hampstead is a fine prospect known as Judges Walk: here is Holly Bush Hill and Holly Mound, and opposite is Mount Vernon, to be connoted with Dur_overnon_, the ancient name of Canterbury or Rodau's Town.

Jews Walk, and the Grove at Upper Sydenham, are adjacent to Peak Hill, which, in all probability, was once upon a time Puck's Hill, and the wooded heights of Sydenham were in all likelihood a caer sidi, or seat of fairyland.

My chair is prepared in Caer Sidi The disease of old age afflicts none who is there. . . . . . . . . . . . About its peaks are the streams of ocean And above it is a fruitful fountain.

Sir John Morris-Jones points out that sidi is the Welsh equivalent of the Irish sid, "fairyland"[475] and he connects the word with seat. In view of this it is possible that St. Sidwell at Exeter was like the River Sid at Sidmouth, a caer sidi, or seat of the shee.

Sydenham, like the Phoenician Sidon, is probably connected with Poseidon, or Father Sidon, and Rhode the son of Poseidon may be connoted with Rhadamanthus, the supposed twin brother of Minos. Near Canterbury is Rhodesminnis, or Rhode Common,[476] and on this common Justice was doubtless once administered by the representatives of Rhadamanthus, who was praised by all men for his wisdom, piety, and equity. It is said that Rhode was driven to Crete by Minos, and was banished to an Asiatic island where he made his memory immortal by the wisdom of his laws: Rhode, whose name is rhoda, the rose or Eros, is further said to have instructed Hercules in virtue and wisdom, and according to Homer he dwells not in the underworld but in the Elysian Fields.

A rose coin of Rhoda was reproduced ante, page 339; the rhoda or rose, like the rood, is a universal symbol of love, and with Rodau's Town, Canterbury, or Durovernon, which is permeated with the rose of St. George, or Oros, i.e., rose, may be connoted the neighbouring _Rutu_piae, now Richborough. From the ground-plan of this impressive ruin it will be seen to be unlike anything else in Europe, inasmuch as it originally consisted of a quadrangle surrounding a massive rood or cross imposed upon a titanic foundation.[477]

With Rutupiae, of which the Rutu may be connoted with the rood within its precincts, Mr. Roach Smith, in his Antiquities of Richborough, connotes the Gaulish people known as the Ruteni. The same authority quotes Malebranche as writing "all that part of the coast which lies between Calais and Dunkirk our seamen now call Ruthen," whence it is exceedingly likely that the Reading Street near Broadstairs, and the Rottingdean near Brighton were originally inhabited by children of Reada or Rota.

Apparently "Rotuna" was in some way identified in Italy with Britain, or natione Britto, for according to Thomas an inscription was discovered at Rome, near Santa Maria Rotuna, bearing in strange alphabetical characters NATIONE BRITTO, somewhat analogous at first sight to Hebrew, Greek, or Phoenician letters.[478]

From the plan it will be seen that the northern arm of the Rutupian rood points directly to the high road, and Rutupiæ itself constitutes the root or radical of the great main route leading directly through Rodau's Town, and Rochester to London Stone. The arms of Rochester or _Duro_brivum--where, as will be remembered, is a Troy Town--are St. Andrew on his roue Or rota.

The name Durobrivæ was also applied by the Romans to the Icenian town of Caistor, where it is locally proverbial that,

Caister was a city when Norwich was none, And Norwich was built of Caistor stone.

There is a second Caistor which the Romans termed Venta Icenorum: the neighbouring modern Ancaster, the Romans entitled Causeimei. It is always taken for granted that the numerous chesters, casters, cesters of this country are the survivors of some Roman castra or fort. Were this actually the case it is difficult to understand why the Romans called Chester Deva, Ancaster Causeimei, Caistor Durobrivæ, and Rochester Durobrivum: in any case the word castra has to be accounted for, and I think it will be found to be traceable to some prehistoric Judgment Tree, Cause Tree, Case Tree, or Juge Tree. No one knows exactly how "Zeus" was pronounced, but in any case it cannot have been rigid, and in all probability the vocalisation varied from juice to sus, and from juge to jack and cock.[479]

The rider of a race-horse is called a jockey, and the child in the nursery is taught to

Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross To see a white lady ride on a white horse.

An English CAC horse is illustrated on page 453, and the White Lady of Banbury who careered to the music of her bells was very certainly the Fairy Queen whom Thomas the Rhymer describes as follows: "Her Steed was of the highest beauty and spirit, and at his mane hung thirty silver bells and nine, which made music to the wind as she paced along. Her saddle was of ivory, laid over with goldsmiths' work: her stirrups, her dress, all corresponded with her extreme beauty and the magnificence of her array. The fair huntress had her bow in hand, and her arrows at her belt. She led three greyhounds in a leash, and three hounds of scent followed her closely."

This description might have been written of Diana, in which connection it may be noted that at Doncaster (British Cair Daun), the hobby horse used to figure as "the Queen's Pony". Epona, the Celtic horse-goddess, may be equated with the Chanteur or Centaur illustrated on so many of our "degraded" British coins, and Banstead Downs, upon which Ep's Home stands, may be associated with Epona, and with the shaggy little ponies[480] which ranged in Epping Forest. Banstead, by Epsom (in Domesday Benestede), is supposed to have meant "bean-place or store": at Banwell in Somerset, supposed to have meant "pool of the bones," there is an earthwork cross which seemingly associates this Banwell with Banbury Cross, and ultimately to the cross of Alban.

The bells on the fingers and bells on the White Lady's toes may be connoted with the silver bell of the value of 3s. 4d., which in 1571 was the prize awarded at Chester--a town of the Cangians or Cangi--to the horse "which with speede of runninge then should run before all others".[481]

With this Chester Meeting may be noted Goodwood near Chichester. Chichester is in Sussex, and was anciently the seat of the Regni, a people whose name implies they were followers of re gni or Regina, but the authorities imagine that Chichester, the county town of Sussex, owes its name to a Saxon Cissa, who also bestowed his patronymic on Cissbury Ring, the famous oval entrenchment near Broadwater. At Cissbury Ring, the largest and finest on the South Downs, great numbers of Neolithic relics have been found, and the name may be connoted with Chisbury Camp near Avebury.

Near Stockport is Geecross, supposedly so named from "an ancient cross erected here by the Gee family". Presumably that Geecross was the chi cross or the Greek chi: the British name for Chichester was Caer Kei,[482] which means the fortress of Kei, but at more modern Chichester the famous Market Cross was probably a jack, for the four main streets of Chichester still stand in the form of the jack or red rood. The curious surname Juxon is intimately connected with Chichester; there is an inscription at Goodwood relating to a British ruler named Cogidumnus[483]--apparently Cogi dominus or Cogi Lord--whence it seems probable that Chichester or Chichestra (1297) was as it is to-day an assize or juges tree, or even possibly a jockey's tre.

The adjacent Goodwood being equivalent to Jude wood, it is worthy of notice that Prof. Weekley connotes the name Judson with Juxon. His words are: "The administration of justice occupied a horde of officials from the Justice down to the Catchpole.[484] The official title Judge is rarely found, and this surname is usually from the female name Judge, which like Jug was used for Judith and later for Jane.

"Janette, Judge, Jennie; a woman's name (Cotgrave). The names Judson and Juxon sometimes belong to these."[485]

The word Chester is probably the same as the neighbouring place-name _Goo_strey-cum-Barnshaw in _Che_shire, and the Barn shaw or Barn hill here connected with Goostrey may be connoted with Loch Goosey near Barhill in Ayrshire.

Chi or Jou, who may be equated with the mysterious but important St. Chei of Cornwall, was probably also once seated at Chee Dale in Derbyshire, at Chew Magna, and Chewton, as well as at the already mentioned Jews Walk and Judges Walk near London.

In Devonshire is a river Shobrook which is authoritatively explained as Old English for "brook of Sceocca, i.e., the devil, Satan! cf. Shuckburgh": on referring we find Shuckburgh meant--"Nook and castle of the Devil, i.e., Scucca, Satan, a Demon, Evil Spirit; cf. Shugborough". I have not pursued any inquiries at Shugborough, but it is quite likely that the Saxons regarded the British Shug or Shuck with disfavour: there is little doubt he was closely related to "Old Shock," the phantom-dog, and the equally unpopular "Jack up the Orchard". In some parts of England Royal Oak Day is known as Shick Shack Day,[486] and in Surrey children play a game of giant's stride, known as Merritot or Shuggy Shaw.[487]

Merrie Tot was probably once Merrie Tod or Tad, and Shuggy Shaw may reasonably be modernised as Shaggy Jew or Shaggy Joy. It will be remembered that the Wandering Jew, alias Elijah, wore a shag gown (ante, p. 148): this shagginess no doubt typified the radiating beams of the Sun-god, and it may be connoted with the shaggy raiment and long hair of John the Baptist. As shaggy Pan, "the President of the Mountains," almost certainly gave his name to pen, meaning a hill, it may be surmised that shaw, meaning a wooded hill, is allied to Shuggy Shaw. The surname Bagshaw implies a place-name which originated from Bog or Bogie Shaw: but Bagshawes Cavern at Bradwell, near Buxton,[488] is suggestive of a cave or Canhole[489] attributed to Big Shaw, and the neighbouring _Tide_swell is agreeably reminiscent of Merrie Tot or Shuggy Shaw.

In connection with jeu, a game, may be connoted gewgaw, in Mediæval English giuegoue: the pronunciation of this word, according to Skeat, is uncertain, and the origin unknown; he adds, "one sense of gewgaw is a Jew's Harp; cf. Burgundian gawe, a Jew's Harp".

Virgil, in his description of a Trojan jeu or show, observes--

This contest o'er, the good Æneas sought, A grassy plain, with waving forests crowned And sloping hills--fit theatre for sport, Where in the middle of the vale was found A circus. Hither comes he, ringed around With thousands, here, amidst them, throned on high In rustic state, he seats him on a mound, And all who in the footrace list to vie, With proffered gifts invites, and tempts their souls to try.[490]

It will be noted that the juge or showman seats himself amid shaws, upon a toothill or barrow, and doubtless just such eager crowds as collected round Æneas gathered in the ancient hippodrome which once occupied the surroundings of St. John's Church by Aubrey Walk, Kensington. "St John's Church," says Mitton, "stands on a hill, once a grassy mound within the hippodrome enclosure, which is marked in a contemporary map 'Hill for pedestrians,' apparently a sort of natural grand-stand."[491] A large tract of this district was formerly covered by a race-course known as the hippodrome. "It stretched," continues Mitton, "northward in a great ellipse, and then trended north-west and ended up roughly where is now the Triangle at the west-end of St. Quintin Avenue. It was used for both flat-racing and steeplechasing, and the steeplechase course was more than 2 miles in length. The place was very popular being within easy reach of London, but the ground was never very good for the purpose as it was marshy."[492]

That the grassy mound or natural grand-stand of St. John was once sacred to the divine Ecne, Chinea, or Hackney, and that this King John or King Han was symbolised by an Invictus or prancing courser is implied from the lines of a Bardic poet: "Lo, he is brought from the firm enclosure with his light-coloured bounding steeds--even the sovereign ON, the ancient, the generous Feeder".[493] We have seen that in Ireland Sengann meant Old Gann, and that "Saint" John of Kensington was originally Sinjohn, Holy John, or Elgin, seems to be somewhat further implied from the neighbouring Elgin Crescent, Elgin Avenue, and Howley Street.

The Fulham place almost immediately adjacent, considered in conjunction with Fowell Street, suggests that here, as at the more western Fulham, was a home of Foals or wild Fowl, or perhaps of Fal, the Irish Centaur-god.

The sovereign On, the ancient Courser "of the blushing purple and the potent number," was mighty Hu, whose name New, or Ancient Yew, is, I think, perpetuated at Newbury--where _Hew_son is still a family name--at Newington Padox (said to be for paddocks) in Warsickshire, at Newington near Wye, in Kent, and possibly at other _New_markets or tons, which are intimately associated with horse-racing. With the river Noe in Derbyshire may be connoted Noe, the British form of Noah: The Newburns in Scotland and Northumberland can hardly have been so named because they were novel or new rivers, and in view of the fact that British mythology combined Noah's ark (Welsh arch) with a mare, it may be questioned whether the place-name Newark (originally Newarcha), really meant as at present supposed New Work.[494] It may be that the Trojan horse story was purely mythological, and had originally relation to the supposition that mankind all emerged from the body of the Solar Horse.

The Kensington Hippodrome was eventually closed down on account of the noise and disorders which arose there, and one may safely assume there was always a certain amount of _rude_ness and _rowd_iness among the rout at all hippodromes. Had Herr Cissa, the imaginary Saxon to whom the authorities so generously ascribe Cissbury Ring, Chichester, and many other places, been present on some prehistoric Whit Monday, doubtless like any other personage of importance he would have arrived at Kensington seated in a reidi--the equivalent of the British rhod. And if further, in accordance with Teutonic wont, Cissa had sneered at the shaggy little keffils[495] of the British, certainly some keen Icenian[496] would have pointed out that not only was the keffil or cafall a horse of very distinguished antiquity, but that the word cafall reminded him agreeably of the Gaulish cheval and the Iberian cabal, both very chivalrous or cavalryous old words suggestive of valiant, valid, and strong Che or Jou.

Hereupon some young Cockney would inevitably have uttered the current British byword--

For acuteness and valour the Greeks For excessive pride the Romans For dulness the creeping Saxons.[497]

Unless human nature is very changeable Herr Cissa would then have delivered himself somewhat as follows: "It is really coming to this, that we Germans, the people to whose exquisite Kultur the nations of Europe and of America, too, owe the fact that they no longer consist of hordes of ape-like savages roaming their primordial forests, are about to allow ourselves to be dictated to."[498]

Irritated by the allusion to ape-like savages one may surmise that a jockey of Chichestra inquired whether Herr Cissa claimed the river Cuckmere and also Cuckoo- or _Houn_dean-Bottom, the field in which Lewes racecourse stands? He might also have insinuated that the White Horse cut in the downs below Hinover[499] in the Cuckmere valley was there long before the inhabitants of Hanover adopted it as a totem, and that the Juxons were just as much entitled to the sign of the Horse as the Saxons of Saxony, or Sachsen. To this Herr Cissa would have replied that the White Horse at Uffington was a "deplorable abortion," and that its barbaric design was "a slander on the Saxon standard". Hereupon a yokel from Cuckhamsley Hill, near Zizeter, sometimes known as Cirencester, probably inquired with a chuckle whether Herr Cissa claimed every Jugestree, Tree of Justice, Esus Tree, Assize or Assembly Tree in the British Islands? He pertinently added that in Cirencester, or Churncester, they were in the habit of celebrating at Harvest Home the festival of the Kernababy, or Maiden, which he always understood represented the Corn baby, elsewhere known as the Ivy Girl, or "Sweet Sis". This youth had a notion that Sweet Sis, or the Lady of the Corn[500] was somehow connected with his native Cirencester, or Zizeter, and he produced a token or coin upon which the well coiffured head of a chic little maiden or fairy queen was portrayed.[501]

An Icenian charioteer, who explained that his people alternatively termed themselves the _Jugan_tes,[502] also produced a medal which he said had been awarded him at Caistor, pointing out that the spike of Corn was the sign of the Kernababy, that the legend under the hackney read CAC, and that he rather thought the white horse of the Cuckmere valley and also the one by Cuckhamsley were representations of the same Cock Horse.[503] He added that he had driven straight from Goggeshall in his gig--a kind of coach similar to that in which the living image of his All Highest used of old time to be ceremoniously paraded.

Herr Cissa hereupon maintained that it was impossible for anyone to drive straight anywhere in a gig, for it was an accepted axiom of the science of language that the word gig, "probably of imitative origin," meant "to take a wrong direction, to rove at random".[504] At this juncture a venerable columba from St. Columbs, Nottinghill, intervened and produced an authentic Life of the Great St. Columba, wherein is recorded an incident concerning the holy man's journey in a gig without its linch pins. "On that day," he quoted, "there was a great strain on it over long stretches of road," nevertheless "the car in which he was comfortably seated moved forward without mishap on a straight course."[505]

In view of this feat, and of an illustration of the type of vehicle in which the journey was supposedly accomplished, it was generally accepted that Herr Cissa's definition of gig was fantastic, whereupon the Saxon, protesting, "You do not care one iota for our gigantic works of Kultur and Science, for our social organisation, for our Genius!" asserted the dignity of his gig definition by whipping up his horses, taking a wrong direction, and roving at random from the enclosure.

FOOTNOTES:

[400] With Ecne may be connoted ech, the Irish for horse.

[401] Irish Myth. Cycle, p. 82.

[402] Germania, x.

[403] "The senses of the horse are acute though many animals excel it in this respect, but its faculties of observation and memory are both very highly developed. A place once visited or a road once traversed seems never to be forgotten, and many are the cases in which men have owed life and safety to these faculties in their beasts of burden. Even when untrained it is very intelligent: horses left out in winter will scrape away the snow to get at the vegetation beneath it, which cattle are never observed to do."--Chambers's Encyclopædia, v., 792.

[404] Bayley, H., The Lost Language of Symbolism, vol. ii. Cf. chapter, "The White Horse".

[405] Nauticaa Mediterranea, Rome, 1601.

[406] Brock, M., The Cross: Heathen and Christian, p. 64.

[407] "The oak, tallest and fairest of the wood, was the symbol of Jupiter. The manner in which the principal tree in the grove was consecrated and ordained to be the symbol of Jupiter was as follows: The Druids, with the general consent of the whole order, and all the neighbourhood pitched upon the most beautiful tree, cut off all its side branches and then joined two of them to the highest part of the trunk, so that they extended themselves on either side like the arms of a man, making in the whole the shape of a cross. Above the insertions of these branches and below, they inscribed in the bark of the tree the word Thau, by which they meant God. On the right arm was inscribed Hesus, on the left Belenus, and on the middle of the trunk Tharamus."--Quoted by Borlase in Cornwall from "the learned Schedius".

[408] Ancient British Coins, p. 49.

[409] The Coin Collector, p. 159.

[410] Numismatic Manual, p. 225.

[411] Jewitt, L., English Coins and Tokens, p. 4.

[412] Head, Barclay, V., A Guide to the Coins of the Ancients, p. 1 (B. M.).

[413] Akerman, J. Y., Numismatic Manual, p. 228.

[414] Akerman, J. Y., Numismatic Manual, p. 10.

[415] The earliest "Lady" of Byzantium was the fabulous daughter of Io, Cf. Schliemann, Mykene.

[416] Macdonald, G., The Evolution of Coinage, p. 5.

[417] Macdonald, G., The Evolution of Coinage, p. 9.

[418] According to Skeat jingle, "a frequentative verb from the base jink," is allied to chink, and chink is "an imitative word".

[419] Munro, Dr. Robt., Prehistoric Britain, p. 45. The italics are mine.

[420] Johnson, W., Folk Memory, p. 321.

[421] Bella Gallico, Bk. IV.

[422] Crete, the Forerunner of Greece, p. 72.

[423] Iliad, XX., 570-80.

[424] "It's you English who don't know your own language, otherwise you would realise that most of what you call 'Yankeeisms' are merely good old English which you have thrown away."--J. Russell Lowell.

[425] As illustrated ante, p. 381.

[426] Illustrated London News, 10th August, 1918.

[427] Cf. Troy, p. 353; Ilios, 619.

[428] Il., lix.

[429] Hawes, C. H. and H. B., Crete the Forerunner of Greece, p. 44.

[430] Æneid, Book II., 111.

[431] Ibid., 20.

[432] Johnson, W., Byways, 419.

[433] Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria, p. 10.

[434] Johnston, Rev. W. B., Place-names of England and Wales, p. 2.

[435] Morris-Jones, Sir J., Taliesin, p. 32.

[436] Guest, Dr., Origines Celticæ, ii., 218-27.

[437] Fraser, J. B., Persia.

[438] There is an Uffington in Lincoln on the river Welland.

[439] Holy Wells, p. 102.

[440] Allcroft, A. Hadrian, Earthwork of England, p. 136.

[441] P. 16.

[442] Carey, Miss E. F., Folklore, xxv., No. 4, p. 417.

[443] Mitton, C. F., Kensington, p. 58.

[444] Iliad, XX., 246, 262.

[445] The first lessee of the Manor at Kensington, now known as Holland Park, was a certain Robert Horseman. Holland House being built in a swamp, or holland, may owe its title to that fact or to its having been erected by a Dutchman. The Bog of Allen in Ireland is authoritatively equated with holland.

[446] This information was given me verbally by Miss Mary George of Sennen Cove.

[447] Zennor is understood to have meant Holy Land.

[448] Proc. of Roy. Ir. Acad., xxxiv., C., 10-11, p. 376.

[449] Fraser, J.B., Persia, p. 132.

[450] According to Johnston, Felixstowe was the church of St. Felix of Walton, sometimes said to be stow of Felix, first bishop of East Anglia. "But this does not agree with the form in 1318 Filthstowe which might be 'filth place,' place full of dirt or foulness. This is not likely" (p. 259).

[451] Cf. Holy Wells.

[452] The numerous British Cranbrooks and Cranbournes are assumed to have been the haunts of cranes.

[453] Allcroft, A. Hadrian, Earthwork of England, p. 462.

[454] Johnson, W., Folk Memory, p. 321.

[455] Domesday Branchtrea, later Branktry. "This must be 'tree of Branc,' the same name as in Branksome (Bournemouth), Branxton (Coldstream), and Branxholm (Hawick)."--Johnston, J. B., Place-names of England and Wales, p. 165.

[456] A Guide to the Antiquities of the Iron Age (Brit. Museum), p. 35.

[457] Ep in old Breton meant horse; cf. Origines Celticæ, i., 373, 380, 381.

[458] Celtic Britain, p. 229.

[459] 1158 Brimigham; 1166 Bremingeham; 1255 Burmingeham; 1413 Brymecham; 1538 Bromieham.

[460] Ancient Britain, p. 282.

[461] Historical Works (Bohn's Library), p. 98.

[462] Travels in the East (Bohn's Library), p. 202.

[463] Avebury and Stonehenge, p. 43.

[464] A Guide to the Antiquities of the Iron Age, p. 29.

[465] Higgens, G., Celtic Druids, p. lxxiv.

[466] Annals, Bk. xii, xii.

[467] In 1200 Folkeshull. Of Flixton in Lancashire the authorities suggest, "perhaps a town of the flitch". Of Flokton in Yorkshire, "Town of an unrecorded Flocca". I suspect Flokton was really a Folk Dun or Folks Hill.

[468] Akerman, p. 166.

[469] Slav Tales, p. 182.

[470] Fraser, J. B., Persia, p. 134.

[471] The word silver is imagined to be derived from Salube, a town on the Black Sea.

[472] Johnston, J. B., Place-names, p. 445.

[473] The Frankish chroniclers assigned the origin of the Franks to Troy. The word Frank is radically feran or veran.

[474] Hope, R. C., Holy Wells, p. 137.

[475] Taliesin, p. 238.

[476] Minnis, said to be a Kentish word for common, is seemingly the latter portion of communis.

[477] "Within the area towards the north-east corner is a solid rectangular platform of masonry, 145 feet by 104 feet, and 5 feet in thickness. In the centre there is a structure of concrete in the form of a cross, 87 feet in length, 7 feet 6 inches wide, which points to the north. The transverse arm, 47 feet long and 22 feet wide, points to the gateway in the west wall. The platform rests upon a mass of masonry reaching downward about 30 feet from the surface, it measures 124 feet north to south and 80 feet east to west. At each corner there are holes 5 to 6 inches square, penetrating through the platform. A subterranean passage, 5 feet high, 3 feet wide, has been excavated under the overhanging platform, around the foundation beneath, which may be entered by visitors.

"The efforts that have been made to pierce the masonry have failed in ascertaining whether there are chambers inside. No satisfactory explanation of its origin and purpose has yet been discovered. It may have formed the foundation of a 'pharos'. The late C. R. Smith, whose opinion on the subject is of especial value, and also later authorities, have thought that this remarkable structure enclosed receptacles either for the storage of water, or for the deposit of treasure awaiting shipment."--A Short Account of the Records of Richborough (W. D.).

[478] Britannia Antiquissima, p. 5.

[479] This on the face of it looks far-fetched, but the intermediate forms may easily be traced, and the suggestion is really more rational than the current claim that fir and quercus are the "same word".

[480] Statues of Epona represent her seated "between foals". Ancient Britain, p. 279.

[481] A small bell swinging in a circle may often be seen to-day as a "flyer" ornament on the heads of London carthorses.

[482] Guest, Dr., Origines Celticæ, ii., p. 159.

[483] Tacitus in Agricola gives Cogidumnus an excellent reference to the following effect: "Certain districts were assigned to Cogidumnus, a king who reigned over part of the country. He lived within our own memory, preserving always his faith unviolated, and exhibiting a striking proof of that refined policy, with which it has ever been the practice of Rome to make even kings accomplices in the servitude of mankind."

[484] This functionary is said to have acquired his title by distraining on, or catching the people's pullets.

[485] The Romance of Names, p. 184.

[486] Hazlitt, W. C., Faiths and Folklore, ii., 543.

[487] Ibid., ii., 408.

[488] At _Bick_ley (Kent) is _Shaw_field Park.

[489] The neighbouring "Canholes" will be considered in a later chapter.

[490] Æneid, Bk. V., 39.

[491] Kensington, p. 89.

[492] Ibid., p. 89.

[493] Davies, E., Mytho. of Ancient Druids, p. 528.

[494] The oldest church in Ireland (the Oratory of Gallerus) is described as exactly like an upturned boat, and the nave or ship of every modern sanctuary perpetuates both in form and name the ancient notion of Noah's Ark, or the Ark of Safety. The ruins of Newark Priory, near Woking, are situated in a marshy mead amid seven branches of the river Wey which even now at times turn the site into a swamp. There is a Newark in Leicestershire and a Newark in St. John's Parish, Peterborough; here the land is flat and mostly arable. At Newark, in Notts, the situation was seemingly once just such a wilderness of waters as surrounded Newark Priory, in Send Parish, Woking. The ship of Isis, symbolizing the fecund Ark of Nature, figured prominently in popular custom, and the subject demands a chapter at the very least.

[495] Keffil meaning horse is still used in Worcestershire, and Herefordshire. "This is a pure Welsh word nor need one feel much surprised at finding it in use in counties where the Saxon and the Brython must have had many dealings in horse flesh. But what is significant is the manner in which it is used, for it is employed only for horses of the poorest type, or as a word of abuse from one person to another as when one says--'you great keffil,' meaning you clumsy idiot."--Windle, B. C. A., Life in Early Britain, p. 209.

[496] "The Icenians took up arms, a brave and warlike people."--Tacitus, Annals.

[497] Windle, B. C. A., Life in Early Britain, p. 210.

[498] Quoted in The Daily Express, 9th October, 1918, from Der Rheinisch Westfalische Zeitung.

[499] Cf. Johnson, W., Folk Memory, p. 326.

[500] The Cornish for corn was izik.

[501] Cf. Fig. 358, p. 596.

[502] Evans, Sir J., Ancient British Coins, p. 404.

[503] "Under any circumstances the legend CAC on the reverse would have still to be explained."--Ibid., p. 353.

[504] Skeat, p. 212.

[505] Huyshe, W., Adamnan's Life of St. Columba, p. 173.

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IX. BRIDE'S BAIRNS

"But, I do not know how it comes to pass, it is the unhappy fashion of our age to derive everything curious and valuable, whether the works of art or nature, from foreign countries: as if Providence had denied us both the genius and materials of art, and sent us everything that was precious, comfortable, and convenient, at second-hand only, and, as it were, by accident, from charity of our neighbours."--BORLASE (1754).

Homer relates that the gods watched the progress of the siege of Troy from the far-celebrated Mount Ida in Asia Minor: there is another equally famous Mount Ida in Crete, at the foot of which lived a people known as the Idaei. With Homer's allusion to "spring-abounding Ida's lowest spurs," where wandered--

... in the marshy mead Rejoicing with their foals three thousand mares,

may be connoted his reference to "Hyde's fertile vale,"[506] and there is little doubt that spring-abounding Idas and Hyde Parks were once as plentiful as Prestons, Silverdales, and Kingstons.

The name Ida is translated by the dictionaries as meaning perfect happiness, and Ada as rich gift: we have already seen that the ideal pair of Ireland were Great King Conn and Good Queen Eda, and that it was during the reign of these royal twain that Ibernia, "flowed with the pure lacteal produce of the dairy".[507]

Hyde Park, now containing Rotten Row at Kensington, occupies the site of what figured in Domesday Book as the Manor of Hyde: the immediately adjacent Audley Streets render it possible that the locality was once known as Aud lea, or meadow, whence subsequent inhabitants derived their surname. Hyde Park is partly in Paddington, a name which the authorities decode into "town of the children of Paeda". This Paeda is supposed to have been a King of Mercia, but he would hardly have been so prolific as to have peopled a town, and, considered in conjunction with the neighbouring Praed or pere Aed street, it is more likely that Paeda was Father Eda, the consort of Maida or Mother Eda, after whom the adjacent Maida Vale and Maida Hill seemingly took their title. By passing up Maida Vale one may traverse St. John's Wood, Brondesbury or Brimsbury, Kensal Green, Cuneburn, and eventually attain the commanding heights of Caen, or Ken wood, from whence may be surveyed not only "Hyde's fertile vale," situated on "spring-abounding Ida's lowest spurs," but a comprehensive sweep of greater London.

According to Tacitus "some say that the Jews were fugitives from the island of Crete,"[508] and he continues: "There is a famous mountain in Crete called Ida; the neighbouring tribe, the Idaei, came to be called Judaei by a barbarous lengthening of the national name". Modern editors of Tacitus regard this statement as no doubt the invention of some Greek etymologer, but with reference to the Idaei they speak of this old Cretan race as "being regarded as a kind of mysterious half-supernatural beings to whom mankind were indebted for the discovery of iron and the art of working it".[509]

There is evidence of a similar idealism having once existed among the Britons and the Jews in the second Epistle of Monk Gildas to the following effect: "The Britons, contrary to all the world and hostile to Roman customs, not only in the mass but also in the tonsure, are with the Jews slaves to the shadows of things to come rather than to the truth".[510] By "truth" Gildas here of course means his own particular "doxy," and the salient point of his testimony is the assertion that practically alone in the world the British and the Jews were dreamy, immaterial, superstitious idealists. That the Idaeians of Crete, Candia, or Idaea were singularly pure or candid may be judged from the testimony of Sir Arthur Evans: "Religion entered at every turn, and it was, perhaps, owing to the religious control of art that among all the Minoan representations--now to be numbered by thousands--no single example of indecency has come to light".[511] Referring to British candour, Procopius affirms: "So highly rated is chastity among these barbarians that if even the bare mention of marriage occurs without its completion the maiden seems to lose her fair fame".[512]

This alleged purity of the British Maid is substantiated by the words prude and proud, both of which like pretty, purity, and pride, are radically pure Ide. Skeat defines prude as a woman of affected modesty, and adds "see prowess"; but prudery has little connection with prowess, and is it really necessary to assume that primitive prudery was "affected"? The Jewish JAH is translated by scholars as "pure Being"; the passionate adoration of purity is expressed in the prehistoric hymn quoted ante page 183, Hu the Mighty was pre-eminently pure, and it is thus likely that the ancient Pere, Jupiter, or Aubrey meant originally the Pure.

We have seen that Jupiter, the divine Power, was conceived indifferently as either a man or an immortal maid: a maid is a virgin, and the words maid or mayde, like Maida, is radically "Mother Ida". According to Skeat maid is related to Anglo-Saxon magu, a son or kinsman; and one may thus perhaps account for brother, bruder, or frater, as meaning originally the produce or progeny of the same pere--but not necessarily the same pair.

To St. Bride may be assigned not only the terms bride and bridegroom, or brideman; but likewise breed and brood. Skeat connects the latter with the German bruhen to scald, but a good mother does not scald her brood, and as St. Bride was known anciently as "The Presiding Care"; even although bairn is the same word as burn, we may assume that St. Bride did not burn her brat.

There is a Bridewell and a church of St. Bride in London, but to the modern Londoner this "greatest woman of the Celtic Church" is practically unknown. In Hibernia and the Hebrides, however, St. Bride yet lives, and in the words of a modern writer is "more real than the great names of history. They, pale shadows moving in an unreal world, have gone, but she abides. With each revolving year she flits across the Machar, and her tiny flowers burn golden among the short, green, turfy grass at her coming. Her herald, the Gillebrighde, the servant of Bride, calls its own name and hers among the shores, a message that the sea, the treasury of Mary, will soon yield its abundance to the fisher, haven-bound by the cold and stormy waters of winter. He sees St. Bride, the Foster Mother, but his keen vision penetrates a vista far beyond the ages when Imperial Rome held sway and, in that immemorial past, beholds her still. In the uncharted regions of the Celtic imagination, she abides unchanging, her eyes starlit, her raiment woven of fire and dew; her aureole the rainbow. To him she is older than the world of men, yet eternally young. She is beauty and purity and love, and time for her has no meaning. She is a ministering spirit, a flame of fire. It is she who touches with her finger the brow of the poet and breathes into his heart the inspiration of his song. She is born with the dawn, and passes into new loveliness when the sun sets in the wave. The night winds sing her lullaby, and little children hear the music of her voice and look into her answering eyes. Who and what, then, is St. Bride? She is Bridget of Kildare, but she is more. She is the daughter of Dagda, the goddess of the Brigantes; but she is more. She is the maid of Bethlehem, the tender Foster Mother; but she is more even than that. She is of the race of the immortals. She is the spirit and the genius of the Celtic people."[513]

St. Bride was known occasionally as St. Fraid, and Brigit, or Brigid, an alternative title of the Fair Ide, may be modernised into Pure Good. With her white wand Brigit was said to breathe life into the mouth of dead Winter, impelling him to open his eyes to the tears, the smiles, the sighs, and the laughter of Spring, whence to Brid, or Bryth of the Brythons, may be assigned the word breathe; and as Bride was represented by a sheaf of grain carried joyously from door to door, doubtless in her name we have the origin of bread.

The name Bradbury implies that many barrows were dedicated to Brad; running into the river Rye of Kent is a river Brede, and as the young goddess of Crete was known to the Hellenes as Britomart, which means sweet maiden, we may equate Britomart with Britannia. At the village of Brede in Kent the seat now known as Brede Place is also known as the Giant's House, whence in all probability St. Bride was the maiden Giant, Gennet, or Jeanette.

In the province of Janina in Albania is the town of Berat, and the foundation of either this Berat or else the Beyrout of Canaan was ascribed by the Greek mythologists to a maiden named Berith or Beroë.

Hail Beroë, fairest offering of the Nereids! Beroë all hail! thou root of life, thou boast Of Kings, thou nurse of cities with the world Coeval; hail thou ever-favoured seat of Hermes ... With Tethys and Oceanus coeval. But later poets feign that lovely Beroë Derived her birth from Venus and Adonis Soon as the infant saw the light with joy Old Ocean straight received her in his arms. And e'en the brute creation shared the pleasure. ... In succeeding years A sacred town derived its mystic name From that fair child whose birth coeval was With the vast globe; but rich Ausonia's sons The city call Berytus.[514]

The same poet repeatedly maintains that the age of the city of Beroë was equal to that of the world, and that it could boast an antiquity much greater than that of Tarsus, Thebes, or Sardis. The reference to Beroë or Berith as the ever-favoured seat of Hermes implies the customary equation of Britannia = Athene = Wisdom. The prehistoric car illustrated in the preceding chapter is reproduced from a stone in Perthshire or Perithshire, and in a description written in 1569 this stone was then designated the Thane Stone.[515] That this was an Athene stone is somewhat implied by the further details, "it had a cross at the head of it and a goddess next that in a cart, and two horses drawing her and horsemen under that, and footmen and dogs". The Thanes of Scotland were probably the official representatives of Athene, or Wisdom, or Justice, and the dogs of the Thane Stone may be connoted with the Hounds of Diana or Britomart, and the greyhounds of the English Fairy Queen.

Athene is presumably the same as Ethne, the reputed mother of St. Columba, and also as Ieithon, the Keltic goddess of speech or _prat_ing, after whom Anwyl considers the river Ieithon in Radnorshire was named. This Welsh river-name may be connoted with the river Ythan in Scotland, and the legend IDA, found upon the reverse of some of the Ikenian coins of England, may be connoted with the place-name Odestone, or Odstone, implying seemingly a stone of Od, or Odin.

At Oddendale in Westmorland are the remains of a Druidic circle and traces of old British settlements: with the Thanestone may be connoted the carved example illustrated ante, page 381, from Dingwall, and also the decorated "Stone of the Fruitful Fairy," which exists in Ireland.[516]

The authorities think it possible that the river Idle--a tributary of the Trent--derived its name from being empty, vain, or useless; but it is more probable that this small stream was christened by the Idaeans, and that the resident Nymph or Fruitful Fairy was the idyll, or the idol, whom they idealised. It is not without significance that the starting point of the races at Uffington was Idles Bush: "As many as a dozen or more horses ran, and they started from Idle's Bush which wur a vine owld tharnin-tree in thay days--a very nice bush. They started from Idle's Bush as I tell 'ee sir, and raced up to the Rudge-way."[517] Doubtless there were also many other "Idles Bush's," perhaps at some time one in every Ideian town or neighbourhood: there is seemingly one notable survival at Ilstrye or _Ideles_tree, now Elstree near St. Albans.

That the Idaean ideal was Athene is implied by the adjective ethnic. The word ethic which means, "relating to morals," is connected by Skeat with sitte, the German for custom: there is, however, no seeming connection between German custom and the Idyllic.[518]

The early followers of Britomart are universally described as an industrious and peaceful people who made their conquests in arts and commerce: to them not only was ascribed the discovery of iron and the working of it, but the Cretan treatment of bronze proves that the Idaeans were consummate bronzesmiths. In Crete, according to Sir Arthur Evans, "new and refined crafts were developed, some of them like inlaid metal-work unsurpassed in any age or country".

That the Britons were expert blacksmiths is evident not merely from their chariot wheels, but also from the superb examples of bronze art-craft, found notably in the Thames. For the sum of one shilling the reader may obtain A Guide to the Antiquities of the Iron Age, published by the British Museum, in which invaluable volume two wonderful examples of prehistoric ironmongery are illustrated in colour. One of these, a bronze shield discovered at Battersea, is rightly described by Romilly Allen, as "about the most beautiful surviving piece of late Celtic metal-work". The Celts, as this same authority observes, had already become expert workers in metal before the close of the Bronze Age; they could make beautiful hollow castings for the chapes of their sword sheaths; they could beat out bronze into thin plates and rivet them together sufficiently well to form water-tight cauldrons; they could ornament their circular bronze shields and golden diadems with repoussé patterns, consisting of corrugations and rows of raised bosses; and they were not unacquainted with the art of engraving on metal.[519]

Not only were the Britons expert in ordinary metal-work but they are believed to have invented the art of enamelled-inlay. Writing in the third century of the present era, an oft-quoted Greek observed: "They say that the barbarians who live in Ocean pour colours on heated bronze and that they adhere, become as hard as stone, and preserve the designs that are made in them".

It is admitted that nowhere was greater success attained by this art of the early Iron Age than in Britain, and as Sir Hercules Read rightly maintains: "There are solid reasons for supposing this particular style to have been confined to this country".[520] The art of enamelling was of course practised elsewhere, particularly at Bibracte in Gaul, long before the Roman Conquest, but in the opinion of Dr. Anderson, the Bibracte enamels are the work of mere dabblers in the art compared with the British examples: the home of the art was Britain, and the style of the patterns, as well as the associations in which the objects decorated with it were found, demonstrate with certainty that it had reached its highest stage of indigenous development before it came in contact with the Roman culture.[521] The evidence of the bronze spear-head points to the same remarkable conclusions as the evidence of enamelled bronze, and in the opinion of the latest and best authorities, from its first inception throughout the whole progress of its evolution the spear-head of the United Kingdom has a character of its own, one quite different from those found elsewhere. In no part of the world did the spear-head attain such perfection of form and fabric as it did in these islands, and the old-fashioned notion that bronze weapons were imported from abroad is now hopelessly discredited. "Why, then," ask the authors of The Origin, Evolution, and Classification of the Bronze Spear-Head,[522] "may not a bronze culture have had its birth in our country where it ultimately attained a development scarcely equalled, certainly not surpassed, by that in any other part of the world?"

One of the distinctions of the British spear-head is a certain variety of tang, of which the only parallel has been found in one of the early settlements at Troy. Forms also, somewhat similar, have been discovered in the Islands of the Ægean sea, and in the Terramara deposits of Northern Italy, but it is the considered opinion of Canon Greenwell and Parker Brewis, that whatever may be the true explanation of the history of the general development of a bronze culture in Great Britain and Ireland, "there can be no doubt whatever that the spear-head in its origin, progress, and final consummation was an indigenous product of those two countries, and was manufactured within their limits apart from any controlling influence from outside".[523]

The magnificent bronze shield and bric a brac found in London were thus presumably made there, and it is not improbable that the principal smitheries were situated either at Smithfield in the East, or Smithfield in the West in the ward of Farringdon or Farendone.

Stow in his London uses the word fereno to denote an ironmonger, in old French feron meant a smith, and wherever the ancient ferenos or smiths were settled probably became known as Farindones or fereno towns. Stow mentions several eminent goldsmiths named Farendone; from feron, the authorities derive the surname Fearon, which may be seen over a shop-front near Farringdon Street to-day.

Modern Farringdon Street leads from Smithfield or Smithy field[524] to Blackfriars, and it may be suggested that the original Black Friars were literally freres or brethren, who forged with industrious ferocity at their fires and furnaces. Without impropriety the early fearons might have adopted as their motto Semper virens: smiting in smithies is smutty work, and all these terms are no doubt interrelated, but not, I think, in the sense which Skeat supposes them, viz.: "Smite, to fling. The original sense was to smear or rub over. 'To rub over,' seems to have been a sarcastic expression for 'to beat'; we find well anoynted--well beaten."

The word bronze was derived, it is said, from Brundusinum or Brindisi, a town which was famous for its bronze workers. Brindisi is almost opposite Berat in Epirus; the smith or faber is proverbially burly, i.e., bur like or brawny, and it is curious that the terms brass, brasier, burnish, bronze, etc., should all similarly point to Bru or Brut. With St. Bride or St. Brigit, who in one of her three aspects was represented as a smith, may be connoted bright, and with Bress, the Consort of Brigit, may be connoted brass. And as Bride was alternatively known as Fraid, doubtless to this form of the name may be assigned fer, fire, fry, frizzle, furnace, forge, fierce, ferocious, and force.

That the island of Bru or Barri in South Wales was a reputed home of the burly faber, feuber, or Fire Father, is to be inferred from the statement of Giraldus Cambrensis, that "in a rock near the entrance of the island there is a small cavity to which if the ear is applied a noise is heard like that of smiths at work, the blowing of the bellows, strokes of the hammers, grinding of tools and roaring of furnaces".[525] It is supposed that Barri island owes its name to a certain St. Baroc, the remains of whose chapel once stood there: that St. Baroc was Al Borak, the White Horse or brok, upon whom every good Mussalman hopes eventually to ride, is implied by the story that St. Baroc borrowed a friend's horse and rode miraculously across the sea from Pembrokeshire to Ireland.

On the coast between Pembroke and Tenby is Manor_beer_, known anciently as Maenor Pyrr, that is, says Giraldus, "the mansion of Pyrrus, who also possessed the island of Chaldey, which the Welsh call Inys Pyrr, or the island of Pyrrus". But the editor of Giraldus considers that a much more natural and congenial conjecture may be made in supposing Maenor Pyrr to be derived from Maenor a Manor, and Pyrr, the plural of Por, a lord. I have already suggested a possible connection between the numerous pre stones and Pyrrha, the first lady who created mankind out of stones.

Near Fore Street, in the ward of Farringdon by Smithfield, will be found Whitecross Street, Redcross Street, and Cowcross Street: the last of these three cross streets by which was "Jews Garden," may be connoted with the Geecross of elsewhere. The district is mentioned by Stow as famous for its coachbuilders, and there is no more reason to assume that the word coach (French coche) was derived from Kocsi, a town in Hungary, than to suppose that the first coach was a cockney production and came from Chick Lane or from Cock Lane, both of which neighbour the Cowcross district in Smithfield. The supposition that the gig or coach (the words are radically the same) was primarily a vehicle used in the festivals to Gog the High High, or Mighty Mighty, is strengthened by the testimony of the solar chariot illustrated ante, page 405.

Not only were the British famed from the dawn of history[526] for their car-driving but from the evidence of sepulchral chariots and sepulchral harness the authorities are of opinion that the fighting car was long retained by the Kelts, "and its presence in the Yorkshire graves seems to show that it persisted in Britain longer than elsewhere".[527]

Somewhere in the Smithfield district originally existed what Stow mentions as Radwell, and this well of the Redcross, or Ruddy rood, may be connoted with the Rood Lane a mile or so more eastward. Between Rood Lane and Red Cross Street is Lothbury: the suffix bury (as in Lothbury, and Aldermanbury) is held by Stow, and also by Camden, to mean a Court of Justice, and this definition accords precisely with the theory that the barrow was originally the seat of Justice. At Lothbury the noise or bruit made by the burly fabers was so vexatious that Stow seriously defines the place-name _Loth_bury as indicating a _loath_some locality.[528] The supposition that Cowcross Street, Jews Garden, and the Redcross or Ruddy rood site were primarily in the occupation of men of Troy or Droia may possibly be strengthened by the fact that here was a _Tre_mill brook, and the seat of a Sir Drew Drury. The parish church of Blackfriars is St. Andrews, there is another St. Andrews within a bow-shot of Smithfield, and that the "drews" were a skilled family is obvious from the fact that the name Drew is defined as Teutonic skilful. Both Scandinavians and Germans possess the Trojan tradition; the All Father of Scandinavia was named Borr, Thor, the Hammer God, was assigned to Troy, and in Teutonic mythology there figure two celestial Smith-brethren named Sindre and Brok.

The cradle of the Cretan Zeus is assigned sometimes not to Mount Ida but to the neighbouring Mount Juktas which is described as an extraordinary "cone". When the Cretan script is deciphered it will probably transpire that Mount Juktas was associated with Juk, Jock, or Jack, and the name may be connected with jokul, the generic term in Scandinavia for a snow-covered or white-crowned height. Jack is seemingly the same word as the Hebrew Isaac, which is defined as meaning laughter; Jack may thus probably be equated with joke and jokul with chuckle, all of which symptoms are the offspring of joy or gaiety. To kyg, an obsolete adjective meaning lively--and thus evidently a variant of agog--are assigned by our authorities the surnames Keach, Ketch, Kedge, and Gedge. In connection with kyg Prof. Weekley quotes the line--

Kygge or joly, jocundus.

Among the gewgaws found in the sacred shrines of Juktas are numerous bijou gigs, or coaches, all no doubt once very juju, or sacred.

To appreciate the outlook of the "half-supernatural" Idaeans one may find a partial key in the words of Aratus: "Let us begin with Zeus, let us always call upon and laud his name; all the network of interwending roads and all the busy markets of mankind are full of Zeus, and all the paths and fair havens of the sea, and everwhere our hope is in Zeus for we are also his children".[529]

Stow mentions the firmly-rooted tradition that the Cathedral of St. Paul stands upon the site of an ancient shrine to Jupiter. It may be merely coincidence that close to St. Paul's once stood an Ypres Hall:[530] in the immediate vicinity of Old St. Paul's used also to exist a so-called Pardon Churchyard, perhaps an implication that Ludgate Hill was once known as Par dun or Par Hill. That "Pardon" was equivalent to "Pradon" is evident from the fact that modern Dumbarton was originally Dun Brettan, or the Briton's Fort. The slope leading from the Southern side of St. Paul's or Pardon Churchyard, is still named Peter's Hill, and in view of the Jupiter tradition it is not altogether unlikely that Peter's Hill was originally eu Peter's Hill, synonymously Pere dun. The surname Pardon may still be found in this Godliman Street neighbourhood, where in Stow's time stood not only Burley House, but likewise Blacksmiths Hall. A funeral pyre is a fire; a phare is a lighthouse, and the intense purity of Bride's fire, phare, or pyre is implied by the fact that it was not suffered to be blown by human breath but by bellows only. From time immemorial the Fire of Bride was tended by nineteen holy maids, each of whom had the care of the Fire for one night in turn: on the twentieth night the nineteenth maid, having piled wood upon the fire, said: "Brigit, take charge of your own fire, for this night belongs to you". The tale ends that ever on the twentieth morning the fire had been miraculously preserved.[531]

The patron saint of engineers is Barbara or Varvara, the sacred pyre of Bride was maintained within a circle or periphery of stakes and brushwood, and close at hand were certain very beautiful meadows called St. Bridget's pastures, in which no plough was ever suffered to turn a furrow. The words mead and meadow are the same as maid and maida, whence it seems to follow that all meadows were dedicated to Bride, the pretty Lady of the Kine. Homer's "fertile vale of Hyde," and the Londoner's Hyde Park, were alike probably idealised and sacred meadows corresponding to the Irish Mag-Ithe or Plains of Ith; it is not unlikely that all heaths were dedicated to Ith. To the Scandinavian Ith or Ida Plains we find an ancient poet thus referring: "I behold Earth rise again with its evergreen forests out of the deep ... the Anses meet on Ida Plain, they talk of the mighty earth serpent, and remember the great decrees, and the ancient mysteries of the unknown God". After foretelling a time when "All sorrows shall be healed and Balder shall come back," the poet continues: "Then shall Hoeni choose the rods of divination aright, and the sons of the Twin Brethren shall inhabit the wide world of the winds".[532]

In Fig. 266--an Etrurian bucket--two diminutive Twin Brethren are being held by the Bona Dea--a winged Ange or Anse--who is surmounted by the symbolic cockle or coquille. The fact that this bucket was found at Offida renders it possible that the mother here represented was known to the craftsman who portrayed her as Offi divine, otherwise Hipha, Eve, or Good Iva. It will be noticed that the child on the right is white, that on the left black, and I have elsewhere drawn attention to many other emblems in which two A's, Alphas, Alifs, or Elves were similarly portrayed, the one as white, the other as black.[533] The intention of the artist seems to have been to express the current philosophy of a Prime or Supreme supervising both good and evil, light and dark, or day and night. Pliny says that British women used to attend certain religious festivals with their nude bodies painted black like Ethiopians, and there is probably some close connection between this obscure function, and the fact that Diana of the Ephesians, the many-breasted All-mother of Life, was portrayed at times as white, at times as black. There must be a further connection between this black and white Bona Dea, and the fact that in the Lady Godiva processions near Coventry, which took place at the opening of the Great May Fair festival, there were two Godivas, one of whom was the natural colour but the other was dyed black.[534]

The Bona Dea of Egypt, like the figure on the Etrurian bucket, was represented holding in her arms two children, one white and one black; and the two circles at Avebury, lying within the larger Avereberie or periphery, were probably representative of Day and Night circled by all-embracing and eternal Time.

The Twin Brethren or Gemini are most popularly known as Castor and Pollux, and the propitious figures of these heavenly Twins were carved frequently upon the prows of ancient ships. The phosphorescent stars or Will-o-the-wisps, which during storms sometimes light upon the masts of ships, used to be known as St. Elmo's Fires: St. Elmo is obviously St. Alma or St. All Mother, and the St. Helen with whom she is identified is seemingly St. Alone. It was believed that two stars were propitious, but that a solitary one boded bad luck; according to Pliny a single St. Elmo's fire was called Helen, "but the two they call Castor and Pollux, and invoke them as gods".

The appearance of the will-o-the-wisps, Castor and Pollux, was held to be an argument that the tempest was caused by "a sulphurous spirit rarefying and violently moving the clouds, for the cause of the fire is a sulphurous and bituminous matter driven downwards by the impetuous motion of the air and kindled by much agitation". I quote this passage as justifying the suggestion that sulphur--the yellow and fiery--is radically phur, and that brimstone, or brenstoon, as Wyclif has it, may be the stone of Brim or Bren, which burns.

The identification of Castor and Pollux with stars or asters, enables us to equate Castor as the White god or Day god, for dextra, the Latin for right, is de castra, i.e., good great astra. The white child in Fig. 266 is that on the right hand of the Bona Dea: that Pollux was the dark, sinister, sinistra, or left-hand power, is somewhat confirmed by the fact that the Celtic Pwll was the Pluto or deity of the underworld. Possibly the Latin castra, meaning a fort, originated from the idea that Castor was the heroic Invictus who has developed into St. Michael and St. George. The sin of sinister may possibly be the Gaelic sen, meaning senile, and the implication follows that the dark twin was the old in contradistinction to the new god.

The French for nightmare is _cauche_mar, the French for left is gauche, and it is the left-hand mairy, or fairy, in Fig. 266 which is the shady one. Not only does gauche mean left, but it also implies awkward, uncanny, and inept, whence it is to be feared that the Gooches, the Goodges, and their affiliated tribes were originally "Blackfriars," and followers of the Black God. I have already suggested that the Gogs were unpopular among the Greeks, and the intensity of their feeling is seemingly reflected by the Greek adjective kakos[535] (the English gagga?), which means evil, dirty, or unpleasant.

Castor and Pollux, or the Fires of St. Helen, were known along the shores of the Mediterranean as St. Telmo's Fires, the word Telmo being seemingly t Elmo or Good Alma. By the Italians they are known as the Fires of St. Peter and St. Nicholas; Peter here corresponding probably to the auburn Aubrey, and Nicholas to "Old Nick".

It was fabled that Castor and Pollux were alike immortal, that like day and night they periodically died, but that whenever one of the brothers expired the other was restored to life, thus sharing immortality between them. "There was," says Duncan, "an allusion to this tradition in the Roman horse-races, where a single rider galloped round the course mounted on one horse while he held another by the rein."[536] This ceremony becomes more interesting when we find that the cauchemar, the nightmare, or the blackmare used in England to be known as the "ephialtes".[537] That this ill-omened hipha, or hobby, was ill-boding Helena, seems somewhat to be confirmed by the custom in Cumberland of allotting to servants the years' allowance for horse-meat on St. Helen's, Eline's, or Elyn's day.[538] It is believed that horse meat is now taboo in Britain, because the eating of horse was so persistently denounced by Christianity as a heathen rite.

[Illustration: FIG. 268.--British Altar. By kind permission of the authorities of the British Museum. [To face page 479.]

I have shown elsewhere some of the innumerable forms under which the fires of Elmo, or the heavenly Twain, were represented. In England it is evident that a pair of horses served as one form of expression, for among the treasures at the British Museum is an article which is thus described: "Bronze plate representing an altar decorated with blue, green, and red sunk enamels, and evidently unfinished, hence native work of the fourth or fifth century. Found in the river Thames, 1847". The principal decoration of this bijou altar--significantly 7 inches high--is two winged steeds supporting a demijohn, vase, or phial, the handles of which, in the form of [SS], are detached from the vase, but are emerging flame-like from the supporters' heads. The fact of these steeds appearing upon an "altar" is evidence of their sacred character, and one finds apparently the same two beasts delineated on a bucket, vide Fig. 270. This so termed "barbaric production," discovered in an Aylesford gravel pit belonging to a gentleman curiously named Wagon, is attributed to the first century B.C., and has been compared unfavourably with the Etruscan bucket reproduced on page 474. The authorities of the British Museum comment upon it as follows: "The effect of barbaric imitation during two or three centuries may be appreciated by comparing the Etruscan cista of the fourth century, with the Aylesford bucket of the first century B.C. The first thing to be noticed is the absence from the latter of the heavy solid castings that form the feet and handle-attachments of the classical specimen. Such work was beyond the range of the British artificer, who was never successful with the human or animal form, but there is an evident desire to reproduce the salient features of the prototype. The solid uppermost band of the Etruscan specimen is represented by a thin embossed strip at Aylesford, while the classical motives are woefully caricatured. Minor analogies are noticed later, but the degradation of the ornament may fitly be dwelt on here as showing the limitations, and at the same time the originality of the native craftsman."

I confess myself unable either to appreciate or dwell upon the alleged degradation of this design, or the woeful inadequacy of the craftmanship. The bold execution of the spirals proves that the British artist--had such been his intent--could without difficulty have delineated a copybook horse: what, however, he was seemingly aiming at was a facsimile of the heraldic and symbolic beasts which our coins prove were the cherished insignia of the country, and these "deplorable abortions" I am persuaded were no more barbarous or unsuccessful than the grotesque lions and other fantastics which figure in the Royal Arms to-day.

In all probability the Aylesford bucket was made in the neighbourhood where it was found, for at Aylesford used to stand a celebrated "White Horse Stone". The attendant local legend--that anyone who rode a beast of this description was killed on or about the spot[539]--is seemingly a folk-memory of the time when the severe penalty for riding a white mare was death.[540] The place-name Aylesbury is derived by the authorities from bury, a fortified place of, and Aegil, the Sun-archer of Teutonic mythology: the head-dress of the face constituting the hinge of the Aylesford bucket consists of two circles which correspond in idea with the two children in the arms of the Etruscan hinge. That the bucket was originally a sacerdotal and sacred vessel is implied not only by the word but by the ancient custom thus recorded: "First on a pillar was placed a perch on the sharp prickled back whereof stood this idol ... in his left hand he held up a wheel, and in his right he carried a pail of water wherein were flowers and fruits".[541] I have elsewhere reproduced several emblems of Jupiter and Athene each seated on a "sharp prickled back," i.e., a broccus, saw, or zigzag, symbolic of the shaggy solar rays.

There is nothing decadent or seriously wrong with the drawing of the steeds delineated in Figs. 271 and 272, although the "what-not" proceeding from the mouth of the Geho is somewhat perplexing. This is seemingly a ribbon or a chain, and like the perfect chain surrounding our SOLIDO coins, and the chain which will be noted upon the Trojan spindle whorl illustrated on page 583, was probably intended to portray what the ancients termed Jupiter's Chain: "All things," says Marcus Aurelius, "are connected together by a sacred chain, and there is not one link in it which is not allied with the whole chain, for all things have been so blended together as to form a perfect whole, on which the symmetry of the universe depends. There is but one world, and it comprehends everything; one God endued with ubiquity; one eternal matter; and one law, which is the Reason common to all intelligent creatures."

A chain of pearls is proceeding from the mouth of the little figure which appears on some of the Channel Island coins, vide the DRUCCA example herewith: students of fairy-tale are familiar with the story of a Maid out of whose mouth, whenso'er she opened it fell jewels, and that this fairy Maid was Reason is implied by the present day compliment in the East, "Allah! you are a wise man, you spit pearls." The DRUCCA coin is officially described as a "female figure standing to the left, her right hand holding a serpent (?)" and it is quite likely that the serpent or symbol of Wisdom was intended by the artist. There is no question about the serpents in the Tyrian coin here illustrated, where on either side of the Maiden they are represented with almost precisely the same [SS] form as the [SS] proceeding from the mouths of the two steeds on the British "altar". In the latter case the centre is a vase or demijohn, in the former the centre is a Maid or Virgin. Without a doubt this BER virgin is Beroë or Berith, the pherepolis of Beyrout: in Fig. 278 the two serpents are associated with a phare, fire, or pyre; from the mouth of the British "Jupiters," illustrated in Figs. 274 and 275, the same two serpentine flames or S's are emerging.

The word BER, as has been seen, is equivalent to Vir, and in all probability the word virgin originally carried the same meaning as burgeon. That old Lydgate, the monk of Bery, knew all about Vera and how she made the buds to burgeon is obvious from his lines:--

Mightie Flora Goddesse of fresh flowers Which clothed hath the soyle in lustie greene, Made buds spring with her sweet showers By influence of the sunne-shine To doe pleasaunce of intent full cleane, Unto the States which now sit here Hath Vere down sent her own daughter deare.

It is evident that Vere is here the equivalent of Proserpine, the Maid who was condemned to spend one-half her time in Hades, and that "Verray" was occasionally noxious is implied by the old sense attributed to this word of nightmare, e.g., Chaucer:--

Lord Jesus Christ and Seynte Benedykte Bless this house from every wikked wight Fro nyghte's verray, etc.

Some authorities connoted this word verray with Werra, a Sclavonic deity, and the connection is probably well founded: the Cornish Furry dance was also termed the Flora dance.

The name Proserpine is seemingly akin to Pure Serpent--the same Serpent, perhaps, whose form is represented in extenso at Avebury: the Bona Dea of Crete was figured holding serpents and the nude figure on the left of Fig. 279 has been ingeniously, and, I think, rightly interpreted by Borlase as Truth, or Vera. It was doubtless some such similar emblem as originated the ridiculous story that St. Christine of Tyre was "tortured" by having live serpents placed at her breasts: "The two asps hung at her breasts and did her no harm, and the two adders wound them about her neck and licked up her sweat."[542] Not only is this suffering Christine assigned to Tyre (in Italy), but she is said to have been enclosed in a certain tower and to have been set upon a burning tour or wheel. Christine is the feminine of Christ, and that Christ was identified with Sophia or Wisdom is obvious from the design herewith.

The Sicilian coins of Janus depicted Columba or the Dove, and the same symbol of the Cretan, Epheia, Britomart, Athene, or Rhea figures in the hand of the Elf on page 627, and on the reverse of other British coins illustrated on the same page. The Dove is the acknowledged symbol of the Holy Ghost, yet the symbolists depicted even the immaculate Dove as duplex: the six wings of the parti-coloured Columba have in all probability an ultimate connection with the six beneficent world-supervisors of the Persian philosophy.

In the Christian emblem below, the Holy Ghost is represented as a Child floating on the Waters of Chaos between the circles of Day and Night, and that the Supreme was the Parent alike of both Good and Evil is expressed in the verse: "I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things." The preceding sentence runs: "There is none beside me. I am the Lord and there is none else."[543] That this idea was prevalent among the Druids of the west is strongly to be inferred from an ancient chant still current among the Bretons, which begins--

Beautiful child of the Druid, answer me right well. What would'st thou that I should sing? Sing to me the series of number one, that I may learn it this very day. There is no series for one, for One is Necessity alone. The father of death, there is nothing before and nothing after.[544]

The Magna Mater of Fig. 266 might thus appropriately have been known as Fate, Destiny, Necessity, or Fortune. Fortuna is radically for, and with the Fortunes or fates may be connoted the English fairies known as Portunes. The Portunes are said to be peculiar to England, and are known by the French as Neptunes: the English Portunes are represented as diminutive little people who, "if anything is to be carried into the house, or any laborious work to be done, lend a hand and finish it sooner than any man could".[545] A jocular and amiable little people who loved to warm themselves at the fire.

Among the heathen chants of the Spanish peasantry is one in which the number One stands for the wheel of Fortune, and the number six "for the loves you hold". These six loves may be connoted with the six pinions of the Dove illustrated on page 486, and that Janus of the Dove was regarded as the Chaos, Ghost, or Cause is obvious from the words which are put into his mouth by Ovid: "The ancients called me Chaos (for I am the original substance). Observe, how I can unfold the deeds of past times. This lucid air, and the three other bodies which remain, fire, water, and earth, formed one heap.[546] As soon as this mass was liberated from the strife of its own discordant association, it sought new abodes. Fire flew upwards: air occupied the next position, and earth and water, forming the land and sea, filled the middle space. Then I, who was a globe, and formless, assumed a countenance and limbs worthy of a god. Even now, as a slight indication of my primitive appearance, my front and back are the same."

In the mouth of Fig. 283 is the wheel of the four quarters, and variants of this wheel-cross form the design of a very large percentage of English coins: I here use the word English in preference to British as "there was no native coinage either in Scotland, Wales, or Ireland": in England alone have prehistoric British coins been found,[547] and in England alone apparently were they coined. Somewhat the same conclusions are indicated by the wheel-cross which is peculiar to Wales, Cornwall, and the Isle of Man: neither in Scotland or Ireland does the circular form exist.[548]

Among the seals of Crete there has been found one figuring a ship and two half-moons: it has been supposed that this token signified that the devotee had ventured on a two months' voyage and signalised the successful exploit by the fabrication of an ex voto; but if the subject in question actually represents a material vessel one may question whether the mariner could successfully have negotiated even a two hours' trip. The pair of crescents which figure so frequently on the wheel-cross coins of Britain probably implied the twin lily-white maids of Druidic folk-song, and the superstitions in connection with this symbol of the two sickles--the word is essentially the same as cycle, Greek kuklos--seem in Anglesea or Mona even to linger yet.[549] Among sepulchral offerings found in a prehistoric barrow near Bridlington or Burlington, were "two pieces of flint chipped into the form of crescents,"[550] and it is possible that Ida the Flame bearer, whose name is popularly connected with flame bearer or Flamborough Head, was not the Anglian chieftain, but the divine Ida, Head, or Flame to whom all Forelands and Headlands were dedicated. With Bridlington or Burlington may be connoted the fact that this town of the children of Brid is situated in the Deira district, which was occupied by the Parisii: this name is by some authorities believed to be only a corruption of that of the Frisii, originally settlers from the opposite coast of Friesland.

The Etruscan name for Juno was Cupra, which may be connoted with Cabira, one of the titles of Venus, also with Cabura, the name of a fountain in Mesopotamia wherein Juno was said to bathe himself. The mysterious deities known as the Cabiri are described as "mystic divinities (? Phoenician origin) worshipped in various parts of the ancient world. The meaning of their name, their character, and nature are quite uncertain".[551] Faber, in his Dissertation on the Mysteries of the Cabiri, states that the Cabiri were the same as the Abiri:[552] in Hebrew Cabirim means the Mighty Ones, and there is seemingly little doubt that Cabiri was originally great abiri. In Candia or Talchinea, the Cabiri were worshipped as the Telchines, and as chin or khan meant in Asia Minor Priest as well as King, and as the offices of Priest and King were anciently affiliated, the term talchin (which as we have seen was applied to St. Patrick) meant seemingly tall or chief King-Priest. The custom of Priest-Kings adopting the style and titles of their divinities renders it probable that the historical Telchins worshipped an archetypal Talchin. The original Telchins are described by Diodorus, as first inhabiting Rhodes, and the Colossus of Rhodes was probably an image of the divine Tall King or Chief King.

It is related that Rhea entrusted the infant Neptune to the care of the Telchines who were children of the sea, and that the child sea-god was reared by them in conjunction with Caphira or Cabira, the daughter of Oceanus. As Faber observes: "Caphira is evidently a mere variation of Cabira," and he translates Cabira as Great Goddess: in view of the evidence already adduced one might likewise translate it Great Power, Great Pyre, or Great Phairy. The Cabiri are often equated with the Dioscuri or Great Pair, and these Twain were not infrequently expressed symbolically by Twin circles.

The emblem of the double disc, "barnacle," or "spectacle ornament" is found most frequently in Scotland where it is attributed to the Picts: sometimes the discs are undecorated, others are elaborated by a zigzag or zed, which apparently signified the Central and sustaining Power, Fire, or Force. Figs. 287 and 288 from Crete represent the discs transfixed by a broca or spike and the winged ange or angel with a wand--the magic rod or wand which invariably denoted Power--may be designated King Eros. In Scotland the central brocco, i.e., skewer, shoot, or stalk is found sprouting into what one might term broccoli, and in Fig. 291 the dotted eyes, wheels, or paps are elaborated into sevens which possibly may have symbolised the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Notable examples of this disc ornament occur at Doo Cave in Fife, and as the Scotch refer to a Dovecote as "Doocot," it may be suggested that Doo Cave was a Dove Cave sacred to the deux, or duo, or Dieu. Other well-known specimens are found on a so-called "Brodie" stone and on the Inchbrayock stone in Forfarshire. Forfar, I have already suggested, was a land of St. Varvary: Overkirkhope, where the symbol also occurs, was presumably the hope or hill of Over, or uber, Church, and Ferriby,[553] in Lincolnshire, where the emblem is again found, was in all probability a by or abode of Ferri. The name Cupar may be connoted with Cupra--the Juno of Etruria--and Inchbrayock is radically Bray or Brock.

Sometimes the discs--which might be termed Brick a Brack or, Bride's Bairns--are centred by what looks like a tree (French arbre) or, in comparison with Fig. 295, from the catacombs, might be an anchor: it has no doubt rightly been assumed that this and similar carvings symbolised the Tree of Life with Adam and Eve on either hand. According to a recent writer: "The symbol group of a man and woman on either side of a tree with a serpent at times introduced is of pre-Christian origin. The figures narrowly considered as Adam and Eve and broadly as the human family are accompanied by the Tree which stands for Knowledge, and the serpent which represents Wisdom. This old world-wide symbol seems to crop up in Pictland twisted and changed in a curious fashion."[554] One of these fantastic forms is, I think, the feathered elphin or antennaed solar face of Fig. 293.

Among the ancients the word Eva, not only denoted life, but it also meant serpent: the jumbled traditions of the Hebrews associated Eve and the Serpent unfavourably, but according to an early sect of Gnostic Christians known as the Ophites, i.e., Evites, or "Serpentites," the Serpent of Genesis was a personification of the Good principle, who instructed Eve in all the learning of the world which has descended to us. There is frequent mention in the Old Testament of a people called the Hivites or Hevites, so called because, like the Christian Ophites, they were worshippers of the serpent. We meet again with Eff the serpent in F the fifth letter of the alphabet: this letter, according to Dr. Isaac Taylor, was formed originally like a horned or sacred serpent, and the two strokes of our F are the surviving traces of the two horns.[555]

The term Hivites is sometimes interpreted to mean Midlanders, which seems reasonable as they lived in the middle of Canaan. In connection with these serpent-worshipping Midlanders or Hivites it is significant that not only is the English Avebury described as being "situated in the very centre or heart of our country,"[556] but that it is geographically the very nave or bogel of the surrounding neighbourhood.

Eva is in all probability the source of the word ivy, German epheu, for the evergreen ivy is notoriously a long-lived plant, and even by the early Christian Church[557] Ivy was accepted as the emblem of life and immortality. As immortality was the primary dogma of the Druids, hence perhaps why they and their co-worshippers decked themselves with wreaths of this undying and seemingly immortal plant.[558] The figure of the Græco-Egyptian "Jupiter," known as Serapis, appears (supported by the Twins) surrounded by an ivy wreath, and that the ancient Jews ivy-decked themselves like the British on festival occasions is evident from the words of Tacitus: "Their priests it is true made use of fifes and cymbals: they were crowned with wreaths of ivy, and a vine wrought in gold was seen in their temple".[559] The leaf on the British VIRI coin here illustrated has been held to be a vine "which does not appear to have been borrowed from any Roman coin," but, continues Sir John Evans, "whether this was an original type to signify the fertility of the soil in respect of vines or adapted from some other source it is hard to say".[560] If the device be a Vine leaf it probably symbolised the True Vine; if a fig leaf it undoubtedly was the sign of Maggie Figgy, the Mother of Millions, and the Ovary of Everything: the Sunday before Easter used to be known as Fig Sunday, and on this occasion figs were eaten in large quantities.

From Aubrey's plan of the Overton circle constituting the head of the serpent at Avebury, it will be seen that the neck was carefully modelled, and that a pair of barrows appeared at the mouth (see ante, page 335). This head of the Eve or serpent was a stone circle distant about a mile from the larger peripheries, and the whole design covered upwards of two miles of country. As already noted the serpent was the symbol of immortality and rejuvenescence, because it periodically sloughed its skin and reappeared in one more beautiful.

That the two and the three circles were taken over intact by Christianity is evident from the emblems illustrated on p. 499, and that the French possessed the tradition of Good Eva or the Good Serpent is manifest from Fig. 300.

The Iberian inscription around Fig. 301--a French example--has not been deciphered, but it is sufficiently evident that the emblem represents the Iberian Jupiter with Juno and the Tree of Life.

The Jews or Judeans of to-day are known indifferently as either Jews or Hebrews, and it would seem that Jou was "Hebrew," or, as the Italians write the word, Ebrea: the French for Jew is juif, evidently the same title as Jove or Jehovah.

In Fig. 302, Jehovah is rather surprisingly represented as a puer or boy: as already mentioned, the Eros of Etruria was named Epeur, and it is possible that the London church of St. Peter le Poor--which stood in Brode Street next Pawlet or Little Paul House--was originally a shrine of Jupiter the puer, or Jupiter the Boy.[562]

In the design now under consideration the Family consists of three--the Almighty and Adam and Eve--but frequently the holy group consists of five, the additional two probably being Cain and Abel, Cain who slew his brother Abel, being obviously Night or Evil. In the emblems here illustrated which are defined by Briquet as "cars"; four cycles are supported by a broca or spike, constituting the mystic five. In Jewish mysticism the Chariot of Jehovah, or Yahve, was regarded as "a kind of mystic way leading up to the final-goal of the soul".[563]

The number of the Cabiri was indeterminate, and there is a probability that the sacerdotal Solar Chariot of the Cabiri, whether four or two-wheeled, originated the term cabriolet, whence our modern cab. I have elsewhere reproduced two pillars bearing the legend CAB, and we might assume that the two-wheeled vehicle illustrated, ante, page 454, represented a cab were it not for the official etymology of cabriolet. This term, we are told, is from cabriole, a caper, leap of a goat, "from its supposed lightness".[564] I have never observed a cab either skipping like a ram, or capering like a goat; and in the days before springs the alleged skittishness of the cab must have been even less marked. In any case the particular vehicle illustrated ante, page 454, cannot with propriety be termed "a caperer," for it is reproduced by the editor of Adamnan's Life of Columba, as being no doubt the type of car in which the Saint, even without his lynch pins, successfully drove a sedate and undeviating course.

The goat or caper was a familiar emblem of Jupiter, and our words kid and goat are doubtless the German gott: the horns and the hoofs of the Solar goat--see ante, page 361--are perpetuated in the current notions of "Old Nick," and in many parts of Europe Saints Nicholas and Michael are equated;[565] hence there is very little doubt that these two once occupied the position of the two Cabiri, Nick or Nixy being nox or night, and Michael--Light or Day.

The Gaulish coin here illustrated is described by Akerman, as "Two goats (?) on their hind legs face to face; the whole within a beaded circle": on the reverse is a hog, and some other animal represented with a broccus, or saw on its back. As this is a coin of the people inhabiting Agedincum Senonum (now Sens), the revolving twain are probably gedin--either goats, kids, or gods, and the baroque animal with the broccus on its back may be identified with a boar. There is not much evidence in this coin, which was found at Brettenham, Norfolk, of "degradation" from the Macedonian stater illustrated ante, page 394, nevertheless, Sir John Evans sturdily maintains: "the degeneration of the head of Apollo into two boars and a wheel, impossible as it may at first appear, is in fact but a comparatively easy transition when once the head has been reduced into a form of regular pattern".[566]

The Meigle in Perthshire, where the two-wheeled barrow or barouche was inscribed on the Thane stone, may be equated with St. Michael, and upon another stone at the same Meigle there occurs a carving which is defined as a group of four men placed in svastika form, one hand of each man holding the foot of the other. The author of Archaic Sculpturings describes this attitude as indicating the unbreakable character of the association of each figure with its neighbours, and expresses the opinion: "This elaborate variant of the symbol seems to symbolise aptly the four quarters of the earth, each quarter being represented by a man. The four quarters make a complete circle, and therefore all humanity, through love and affinity, should join from the four parts and form one inseparable bond of brotherhood."[567]

The wheel of _For_tune was sometimes represented by four kings, one on each quadrant, and this emblem was used not only as an inn-sign, but also in churches, notably in Norfolk--the land of the Ikeni. The authors of A History of Signboards cite continental examples surviving at Sienna, and in San Zeno at Verona. The wheels of San Zeno, Sienna, or Verona may be connoted with the Sceatta wheel-coin figured in No. 39 of page 364 ante, and with the seemingly revolving seals on the coin here illustrated.[568] The Sceatta four beasts connected by astral spokes are probably intended to denote seals, the phoca or seal having, as we have seen (ante, page 224), been associated with Chaos or Cause. In all probability the phoca was a token of the Phocean Greeks who founded Marseilles: the phoca was pre-eminently associated with _Pro_teus, and in the Faroe Islands they have a curious idea that seals are the soldiers of Pharaoh who was drowned in the sea. Pharaoh, or Peraa, as the Egyptian wrote it, was doubtless the representative Priest-King of Phra, the Egyptian Sun-god, and the drowning of Pharaoh in the Red Sea was probably once a phairy-tale based on the blood-red demise of a summer sun sinking beneath the watery horizon.

On Midsummer Day in England children used to chant--

Barnaby Bright, Barnaby Bright, The longest day and the shortest night,

whence it would appear that Barnaby was the auburn[569] divinity who was further connected with the burnie bee, lady bird, or "Heaven's little chicken". The rhyme--

Burnie bee, Burnie bee, fly away home Your house is on fire, your children will burn,

is supposed by Mannhardt to have been a charm intended to speed the sun across the dangers of sunset, in other words, the house on fire, or welkin of the West.

The name Barnabas or Barnaby is defined as meaning son of the master or son of comfort; Bernher is explained as lord of many children, and hence it would seem that St. Barnaby may be modernised into Bairnsfather. In this connection the British Bryanstones may be connoted with the Irish Bernesbeg and with "The Stone of the Fruitful Fairy". Bertram is defined by the authorities as meaning fair and pure, and Ferdy or Ferdinand, the Spanish equivalent of this name, may be connoted with the English Faraday.

The surname Barry, with which presumably may be equated variants such as Berry and Bray, is translated as being Celtic for good marksman: the Cretans were famed archers, and the archery of the English yeomen was in its time perhaps not less famous. If Barry meant good marksman, it is to be inferred that the archetypal Barry was Jou, Jupiter, or Jehovah as here represented, and as there is no known etymology for yeoman, it may be that the original yeomen were like the Barrys, "good marksmen". The Greeks portrayed Apollo, and the Tyrians Adad, as a Sovereign Archer, and as the lord of an unerring bow. The name Adad is seemingly ad-ad, a duplication of Ad probably once meaning Head Head, or Haut Haut,[570] and the Celtic dad or tad is presumably a corroded form of Adad. The famous archer Robin Hood, now generally accepted as a myth survival, will be considered later; meanwhile it may here be noted that the authorities derive the surnames Taddy, Addy, Adkin, Aitkin, etc., from Adam. One may connote Adkin or Little Ad with Hudkin, a Dutch and German elf akin to Robin Goodfellow: "Hudkin is a very familiar devil, who will do nobody hurt, except he receive injury; but he cannot abide that, nor yet be mocked. He talketh with men friendly, sometimes visibly, sometimes invisibly. There go as many tales upon this Hudkin in some parts of Germany as there did in England on Robin Goodfellow."[571] To this Hud the Leicestershire place-name Odestone or Odstone near Twycross--query Two or Twa cross--may be due.

I have suggested that the word bosom or bosen, was originally the plural of boss, whence it is probable that the name Barnebas meant the Bairn, Boss, or teat. The word bosse was also used to denote a fountain or gush, and the Boss Alley, which is still standing near St. Paul's, may mark either the site of a spring, or more probably of what was known as St. Paul's Stump. As late as 1714 the porters of Billingsgate used to invite the passer-by to buss or kiss Paul's Stump; if he complied they gave him a name, and he was compelled to choose a godfather: if he refused to conform to the custom he was lifted up and bumped heavily against the stump. This must have been the relic of an extremely ancient formality, and it is not unlikely that the Church of Boston in Norfolk covers the site of a similar stump: Boston, originally _Icken_hoe, a haw or hill of Icken, is situated in what was once the territory of the Ikeni, and its church tower to this day is known as "Boston Stump". At Boskenna (bos or abode of ikenna?) in the parish of St. Buryan, Cornwall, is a stone circle, and a cromlech "thought to have been the seat of an arch Druid". The chief street of Boston is named Burgate, there is a Burgate at Canterbury near which are Bossenden Woods, and Bysing Wood.

In the West of England the numerous bos- prefixes generally mean abode: one of the earliest abodes was the beehive hut, which was essentially a boss.

At Porlock (Somerset) is Bossington Beacon; there is a Bossington near Broughton, and a Bosley at Prestbury, Cheshire. In the immediate proximity of Bosse Alley, London, Stow mentions a Brickels Lane, and there still remains a Brick Hill, Brooks Wharf, and Broken Wharf. It is not improbable that the river Walbrook which did not run around the walls of London but passed immediately through the heart of the city was named after Brook or Alberick, or Oberon: in any case the generic terms burn, brook, and bourne (Gothic brunna, a spring or well), have to be accounted for, and we may seemingly watch them forming at the English river Brue, and at least two English bournes, burns, or brooks known as Barrow.

We have already considered the pair of military saints famous at Byzantium or St. Michael's Town: in the neighbourhood of Macclesfield, Cheshire, is a Bosley: the Bosmere district in Cumberland includes a Mickfield, in view of which it becomes interesting to note, near Old Jewry, in London, the parish church of St. Michael, called St. Michael at Bassings hall. With Michael at Bassings hall may be connoted St. Michael of Guernsey, an island once divided into two great fiefs, of which one was the property of Anchetil Vicomte du Bessin. The bussing of St. Paul's Stump or the Bosse of Billingsgate had evidently its parallel in the Fief du Bessin, for Miss Carey in her account of the Chevauchee of St. Michael observes that, "the one traditional dance connected with all our old festivals and merry-makings has always been the one known as A mon beau Laurier, where the dancers join hands and whirl round, curtsey, and kiss a central object".[572]

We may reasonably assume that John Barton, who is mentioned by Stow as a great benefactor to the church of St. Michael, was either John Briton, or John of some particular Barton, possibly of the neighbouring Pardon Churchyard. The adjacent Bosse Alley is next Huggen Lane, wherein is the Church of All Hallows, and running past the church of St. Michael at Bassings hall is another Hugan Lane. Gyne, as in gynæcology, is Greek for woman, whence the gyne or queen of the Ikenian _Icken_hoe or Boston Stump, may have meant simply woman, maiden, queen, or "a flaunting extravagant quean". Somewhat east from the Sun tavern,[573] on the north side of this Michael's church, is Mayden Lane, "now so called," says Stow, "but of old time Ingene Lane, or Ing Lane": "down lower," he continues, "is Silver Street (I think of Silversmiths dwelling there)". It has been seen that Silver Streets are ubiquitous in England, and as this Silver Street is in the immediate proximity of Adle Street and Ladle Lane, there is some presumption that Silver was here the Leda, or Lady, or Ideal, by whom it was said that Jupiter in the form of a swan became the Parent of the Heavenly twins or Fairbairns. We have considered the sign of the Swan with two necks as found near Goswell Road, and the neighbouring Goose Lane, Wind_goose_ Lane, Pente_cost_ Lane, and _Chis_well Street are all in this connection interesting. I have already suggested that Angus, Aengus, or Oengus, the pre-Celtic divinity of New Grange, meant ancient goose: Oengus was alternatively known as Sen-gann or Old Gann, connected with whom were two young Ganns who were described sometimes as the sons of Old Gann, sometimes as his father. In the opinion of Prof. Macalister Oengus, alias Dagda mor, the Great Good Fire, alias Sengann, "was not originally son of the two youths, but father of the two youths, and he thus falls into line with other storm gods as the parent of Dioscuri."[574]

There is little doubt that Aengus, the ancient goose, the Father of St. Bride, was Sengann the Old Gander, and in connection with St. Michael's goose it is noteworthy that Sinann, the Goddess of the Shannon, was alternatively entitled Macha. Mr. Westropp informs[575] us that Sengann was the god of the Ganganoi who inhabited Connaught, hence no doubt he was the same as Great King Conn, and Sinann was the same as Good Queen Eda.

At the north end of London Bridge stands Old Swan Pier, upon the site of which was once Ebgate, an ancient water-gate. "In place of this gate," says Stow, "is now a narrow passage to the Thames called Ebgate Lane, but more commonly the Old Swan." _Eb_gate may be connoted with the neighbouring Abchurch Lane, where still stands what Stow termed "the parish church of St. Marie _Ab_church, _Ape_church, or _Up_church, as I have read it," and this same root seemingly occurs in the Upwell of St. Olave _Up_well distant only a few hundred yards. This spot accurately marks the hub of ancient London, and there is here still standing the once-famous London stone: "some have imagined," says Stow, "the same to be set up by one John, or Thomas Londonstone, dwelling there against, but more likely it is that such men have taken name of the stone than the stone of them".

There is little doubt that London stone, where oaths were sworn and proclamations posted, was the Perry stone of the men who made the six main roads or tribal tracks which centred there, of which great wheel _Ab_church formed seemingly the hob or hub. Abchurch was in all probability originally a church of Hob, and it may aptly be described as one of the many primitive abbeys: there is an Ibstone at Wallingford, which the modern authorities--like the "John Londonstone" theorists of Stow's time--urge, was probably Ipa's stone: there is an Ipsley at Redditch, assumed to be either aspentree meadow or perhaps Aeppas mead. Ipstones at Cheadle, we are told, "may be from a man as above"; of Hipswell in Yorkshire Mr. Johnston concludes, "there is no name at all likely here, so this must be well at the hipple or little heap". But as Hipswell figures in Leland as _Ipres_well, is there any absolute must about the "hipple," and is it not possible that Ipres or Hipswell may have been dedicated to the same hipha or hip, the Prime Parent of our Hip! Hip! Hip! who was alternatively the Ypre of Ypres Hall and Upwell by Abchurch? At Halifax there is a _Hipper_holme which appeared in Domesday as Huperun, and here the authorities are really and seriously nonplussed. "It seems hard to explain Huper or Hipper. There is nothing like it in Onom, unless it be Hygebeort or Hubert; but it may be a dissimilated form of hipple, hupple, and mean 'at the little heaps'."[576]

Let us quit these imaginary "little heaps" and consider the position at the Halifax Hipperholme, or Huperun. The church here occupied the site of an ancient hermitage said to have been dedicated to St. John the Baptist, the Father of hermits, and to have possessed as a sacred relic the alleged true face of St. John: my authority continues that this attracted great numbers of pilgrims who "approached by four ways, which afterwards formed the main town thoroughfares concentrating at the parish church; and it is supposed to have given rise to the name Halifax, either in the sense of Holy Face with reference to the face of St. John, or in the sense of Holy ways with reference to the four roads, the word fax being Old Norman French for highways".[577] More recent authorities have compared the word with Carfax at Oxford, which is said to mean Holy fork, or Holy road, converging as in a fork. The roads at Carfax constitute a four-limbed cross; Oxenford used to be considered "the admeasured centre of the whole island";[578] it was alternatively known as Rhydychain, whence I do not think that Rhydychain meant a ford for oxen, but more probably either Rood King, or Ruddy King.

In 1190 Halifax was referred to as Haliflex, upon which the Rev. J. B. Johnston comments: "the l seems to be a scribe's error, and flex must be feax. Holy flax would make no sense. In Domesday it seems to be called Feslei, can the fes be feax too?" In view of the cruciform streets of Chichester, of our cruciform rood or rota coins, and of the four rivers supposed by all authorities to flow to the four quarters out of Paradise, is it not possible that four-quartered Haliflex was a fay's lea or meadow, whose founders built their "abbey"[579] in the true-face form of the Holy Flux or Fount, the ain or flow of living water? Four ains or eyes are clearly exhibited on the emblems here illustrated, which show the four-quartered sacramental buns or brioches, whence the modern Good Friday bun has descended.

It was a prevalent notion among our earliest historians that "In such estimation was Britain held by its inhabitants, that they made in it four roads from end to end, which were placed under the King's protection to the intent that no one should dare to make an attack upon his enemy on these roads".[580] These four great roads, dating from the time of King Belinus, and supposedly running from sea to sea, were probably mythical, but in view of the sanctity of public highways and the King's Peace which was enforced thereon, it is not improbable that numerous "Holloways"--now supposed to mean hollow or sunk ways--were originally and actually holy ways.

The Punjaub is so named because it is watered not by four but by five rivers, and that five streams possessed a mystic significance in British mythology is evident from the story of Cormac's voyage to the Land of Paradise or Promise.[581] "Palaces of bronze and houses of white silver, thatched with white bird's wings are there. Then he sees in the garth a shining fountain with five streams flowing out of it, and the hosts in turn a-drinking its water."[582]

It has been recently pointed out that the Celtic conception of Paradise "offers the closest parallel to the Chinese," whence it is significant to find that in the Chinese "Abyss of Assembly" there were supposed to lie five fairy islands of entrancing beauty, which were inhabited by spirit-like beings termed shên jên.[583] I have in my possession a Chinese temple-ornament consisting of a blue porcelain broccus of five rays or peaks, which, like the five fundamental cones of the Etruscan tomb (ante, p. 237), in all probability represent the five bergs or islands of the blessed. The inner circle of Stonehenge consisted of five upstanding trilithons of which the stones came--by popular repute--from Ireland. Among the Irish divinities mentioned by Mr. Westropp is not only the gracious Aine who was worshipped by five Firbolg tribes, but also an old god who kindled five streams of magic fire from which his sons--the fathers of the Delbna tribes--all sprang.[584]

It will be remembered that the Avebury district is the boss, gush, or spring of five rivers, and Avebury or Abury was almost without doubt another "abbey" or bri of Ab on similar lines to the six-spoked hub, hob, or boss of Abchurch, Londonstone. It is difficult to believe that the six roads meeting at Abchurch arranged themselves so symmetrically by chance, and it is still more difficult to attribute them to the Roman Legions.

As Mr. Johnson has pointed out there is a current supposition, seemingly well based, that some of the supposedly Roman roads represent older trackways, straightened and adapted for rougher usage.[585] That London stone at Abchurch was the hub, navel or bogel of the Cantian British roads may be further implied by the immediately adjacent _Buckle_sbury, now corrupted into Bucklersbury. Parts of the Ichnield Way--notably at Broadway--are known as Buckle Street, the term buckle here being seemingly used in the sense of Bogle or Bogie. It is always the custom of a later race to attribute any great work of unknown origin to Bogle or the Devil, e.g., the Devil's Dyke, and innumerable other instances.

Ichnos in Greek means track, ichneia a tracking; whence the immemorial British track known as the Ichnield Way may reasonably be connoted with the ancient Via Egnatio near Berat in Albania. That Albion, like Albania, possessed very serviceable ways before the advent of any Romans is clear from Cæsar's Commentaries. After mentioning the British rearguard--"about 4000 charioteers only being left"--Cæsar continues: "and when our cavalry for the sake of plundering and ravaging the more freely scattered themselves among the fields, he (Cassivelaunus) used to send out charioteers from the woods by all the well-known roads and paths, and to the great danger of our horse engage with them, and this source of fear hindered them from straggling very extensively".[586]

It has been seen that the Welsh tracks by which the armies marched to battle were known as Elen's Ways, whence possibly six such Elen's Ways concentrated in the heart of London, which I have already suggested was an Elen's dun. In French forests radiating pathways, known as etoiles or stars, were frequent, and served the most utilitarian purpose of guiding hunters to a central Hub or trysting-place.

One of the marvels which impress explorers in Crete is the excellence of the ancient Candian roads. According to Tacitus the British, under Boudicca, chiefly Cantii, Cangians, and Ikeni, "brought into the field an incredible multitude".[587] The density of the British population in ancient times is indicated by the extent of prehistoric reliques, whereas the Roman invaders were never numerically more than a negligible fraction. It is now admitted by historians that Roman civilisation did not succeed in striking the same deep roots in British soil as it did into the nationality of Gaul or Spain. "For one thing, the numbers both of Roman veterans and of Romanised Britons remained comparatively small; for another, beyond the Severn and beyond the Humber lay the multitudes of the un-Romanised tribes, held down only by the terror of the Roman arms, and always ready to rise and overwhelm the alien culture."[588]

Commenting upon the Icknield Way, Dr. Guest remarks the lack upon its course of any Roman relics, a want, however, which, as he says, is amply compensated for by the many objects, mostly of British antiquity, which crowd upon us as we journey westward--by the tumuli and "camps" which show themselves on right and left--by the six gigantic earthworks which in the intervals of eighty miles were raised at widely different periods to bar progress along this now deserted thoroughfare.[589] In a similar strain Mr. Johnson writes of the Pilgrim's Way in Surrey: "To my thinking, the strongest argument for the prehistoric way lies in the plea expressed by the grim old earthworks and silent barrows which stud its course, and by the numerous relics dug up here and there, relics of which we may rest assured not one-half has been put on record."[590]

Tacitus pictures a Briton as reasoning to himself "compute the number of men born in freedom and the Roman invaders are but a handfull".[591] Is it in these circumstances likely that the Roman handful troubled to construct six great arteries or main roads centring to London stone?

The Romans ran military roads from castra to castra, but in Roman eyes London was merely "a place not dignified with the name of a colony, but the chief residence of merchants and the great mart of trade and commerce".[592]

Holloway Road, in London, implies, I think, at least one Holy Way, and there seems to me a probability that London stone was a primitive Jupiterstone, yprestone, preston, pray stone, or phairy stone, similar to the holy centre-stone of sacred Athens: "Look upon the dance, Olympians; send us the grace of Victory, ye gods who come to the heart of our city, where many feet are treading and incense streams: in sacred Athens come to the holy centre-stone".

FOOTNOTES:

[506] Iliad, Bk. XX., 434.

[507] A King Cunedda figures in Welsh literature as the first native ruler of Wales, and tradition makes Cunedda a son of the daughter of Coel, probably the St. Helen who was the daughter of Old King Cole, and who figures as the London Great St. Helen and Little St. Helen: possibly, also, as the ancient London goddess Nehallenia = New Helen, Nelly = Ellen.

[508] History, Bk. V.

[509] Church, A. J. and Brodribb, W. J., The History of Tacitus, 1873, p. 229.

[510] Quoted in Celtic Britain, Rhys, Sir J., p. 74.

[511] Address to British Association.

[512] Quoted in The Veil of Isis, Reade, W. W., p. 47.

[513] Wilkie, James, Saint Bride, the Greatest Woman of the Celtic Church.

[514] Nonnus, quoted from A Dissertation on The Mysteries of the Cabiri, Faber, G. S., vol. ii., p. 313.

[515] Huyshe, W., The Life of St. Columba, p. 247.

[516] Canon ffrench, Prehistoric Faith and Worship, p. 56.

[517] Hughes, T., The Scouring of the White Horse, p. 111.

[518] Apart from recent experiences and the records of the Saxon invaders of this country, one may connote the candid maxims of the Frederick upon whom the German nation has thought proper to confer the sobriquet of "Great," e.g.:--

"It was the genius of successive rulers of our race to be guided only by self-interest, ambition, and the instinct of self-preservation."

"When Prussia shall have made her fortune, she will be able to give herself the air of good-faith and of constancy which is only suitable for great States or small Sovereigns." "As for war, it is a profession in which the smallest scruple would spoil everything."

"Nothing exercises a greater tyranny over the spirit and heart than religion.... Do we wish to make a treaty with a Power? If we only remember that we are Christians all is lost, we shall always be duped."

"Do not blush at making alliances with the sole object of reaping advantage for yourself. Do not commit the vulgar fault of not abandoning them when you believe it to be to your advantage to do so; and, above all, ever follow this maxim that to despoil your neighbours is to take from them the means of doing you harm."

In the eyes of the stupid and unappreciative Britons the Saxons were "swine," and the "loathest of all things," vide Layamon's Brut, e.g.: "Lo! where here before us the heathen hounds, who slew our ancestors with their wicked crafts; and they are to us in land loathest of all things. Now march we to them, and starkly lay on them, and avenge worthily our kindred, and our realm, and avenge the mickle shame by which they have disgraced us, that they over the waves should have come to Dartmouth. And all they are forsworn, and all they shall be destroyed; they shall be all put to death, with the Lord's assistance! March we now forward, fast together"--(Everyman's Library, p. 195).

"The Saxons set out across the water, until their sails were lost to sight. I know not what was their hope, nor the name of him who put it in their mind, but they turned their boats, and passed through the channel between England and Normandy. With sail and oar they came to the land of Devon, casting anchor in the haven of Totnes. The heathen breathed out threatenings and slaughter against the folk of the country. They poured forth from their ships, and scattered themselves abroad amongst the people, searching out arms and raiment, firing homesteads and slaying Christian men. They passed to and fro about the country, carrying off all they found beneath their hands. Not only did they rob the hind of his weapon, but they slew him on his hearth with his own knife. Thus throughout Somerset and a great part of Dorset, these pirates spoiled and ravaged at their pleasure, finding none to hinder them at their task"--(Ibid., p. 47).

[519] Allen J. Romilly, Celtic Art in Pagan and Christian Times, p. 130.

[520] A Guide to the Antiquities of the Iron Age, p. 89.

[521] Quoted by J. Romilly Allen, in Celtic Art, p. 138.

[522] Rev. Wm. Greenwell and Parker Brewis, Archæologia, vol. lxi., pp. 439, 472 (1909).

[523] Rev. Wm. Greenwell and Parker Brewis, Archæologia, vol. lxi., p. 4.

[524] The standard supposition that Smithfield is a corruption of smooth field may or may not be well founded.

[525] Bohn's ed., p. 382.

[526] The psychology of Homer's description of the Vulcan menage is curiously suggestive of a modern visit to the village blacksmith:--

"Him swelt'ring at his forge she found, intent On forming twenty tripods, which should stand The wall surrounding of his well-built house, The silver-footed Queen approach'd the house, Charis, the skilful artist's wedded wife, Beheld her coming, and advanc'd to meet; And, as her hand she clasp'd, address'd her thus: 'Say, Thetis of the flowing robe, belov'd And honour'd, whence this visit to our house, An unaccustom'd guest? but come thou in, That I may welcome thee with honour due.' Thus, as she spoke, the goddess led her in, And on a seat with silver studs adorn'd, Fair, richly wrought, a footstool at her feet, She bade her sit; then thus to Vulcan call'd; 'Haste hither, Vulcan; Thetis asks thine aid.' Whom answer'd thus the skill'd artificer: 'An honour'd and a venerated guest Our house contains; who sav'd me once from woe, Then thou the hospitable rites perform, While I my bellows and my tools lay by.' He said, and from the anvil rear'd upright His massive strength; and as he limp'd along, His tott'ring knees were bow'd beneath his weight. The bellows from the fire he next withdrew, And in a silver casket plac'd his tools; Then with a sponge his brows and lusty arms He wip'd, and sturdy neck and hairy chest. He donn'd his robe, and took his weighty staff; Then through the door with halting step he pass'd; ... with halting gait, Pass'd to a gorgeous chair by Thetis' side, And, as her hand he clasp'd, address'd her thus: 'Say Thetis, of the flowing robe, belov'd And honour'd, whence this visit to our house, An unaccustom'd guest? say what thy will, And, if within my pow'r esteem it done.'"

Iliad, Bk. XVIII., p. 420-80.

[527] British Museum, A Guide to the Antiquities of the Early Iron Age, p. 54.

[528] "Antiquities to be noted therein are: First the street of Lothberie, Lathberie, or Loadberie (for by all these names have I read it), took the name (as it seemeth) of berie, or court of old time there kept, but by whom is grown out of memory. This street is possessed for the most part by founders, that cast candlesticks, chafing-dishes, spice mortars, and such like copper or laton works and do afterward turn them with the foot, and not with the wheel, to make them smooth and bright with turning and scrating (as some do term it), making a loathsome noise to the by-passers that have not been used to the like, and therefore by them disdainfully called Lothberie."--London (Ev. Lib.), p. 248.

[529] Phenomena, p. xvii.

[530] Stow, London, p. 221.

[531] Giraldus Cambrensis, p. 97.

[532] Cf. Rhys, Sir J., Celtic Heathendom, p. 613.

[533] Cf. A New Light on the Renaissance and The Lost Language of Symbolism.

[534] Windle, B. C. A., Life in Early Britain, p. 116.

[535] Cacus figures in mythology as a huge giant, the son of Vulcan, and the stealer of Hercules' oxen.

[536] Duncan, T., The Religions of Profane Antiquity, p. 59.

[537] Hazlitt, W. Carew, Faith and Folklore, vol. i., p. 210.

[538] A trace of the old sacrificial eating?

[539] Gomme, L., Folklore as an Historic Science, p. 43.

[540] See Johnson, W., Byways of British Archæology. "Among the Saxons only a high priest might lawfully ride a mare," p. 436.

[541] Faber, G. S., The Mysteries of the Cabiri, i., 220.

[542] Golden Legend, iv., 96.

[543] Is. xlv. 7.

[544] Quoted from Eckenstein, Miss Lena, Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes, p. 153.

[545] Keightley, Fairy Mythology, p. 285.

[546] The "one heap" of chaos was illustrated ante, p. 224.

[547] Allen F. Romilly, Celtic Art, p. 78.

[548] Ibid., p. 188.

[549] The following letter appeared in Folklore of June 29, 1918:--

"Twenty-five years ago an old man in one of the parishes of Anglesey invariably bore or rather wore a sickle over his neck--in the fields, and on the road, wherever he went. He was rather reticent as to the reason why he wore it, but he clearly gave his questioner to understand that it was a protection against evil spirits. This custom is known in Welsh as 'gwisgo'r gorthrwm,' which literally means 'wearing the oppression'. Gorthrwm = gor, an intensifying affix = super, and trwm = heavy, so that the phrase perhaps would be more correctly rendered 'wearing the overweight'. It is not easy to see the connection between the practice and the idea either of overweight or oppression; still, that was the phrase in common use.

"For a similar reason, that is, protection from evil spirits during the hours of the night, it was and is a custom to place two scythes archwise over the entrance-side of the wainscot bed found in many of the older cottages of Anglesey. It is difficult to find evidence of the existence of this practice to-day as the old people no doubt feel that it is contrary to their prevailing religious belief and will not confess their faith in the efficacy of a 'pagan' rite which they are yet loth to abandon.

"R. GWYNEDON DAVIES."

[550] Wright T., Essays on Arch. Subjects, i., 26.

[551] Smith, W., A Smaller Classical Dictionary.

[552] Vol. i., p. 210.

[553] Domesday Ferebi, "probably dwelling of the comrade or partner". Do the authorities mean friend?

[554] Mann, L., Archaic Sculpturings, p. 30.

[555] Cf. The Alphabet, i., 12.

[556] Lord Avebury. Preface to A Guide to Avebury, p. 5.

[557] Durandus, Rationale.

[558] "Ruddy was the sea-beach and the circular revolution was performed by the attendance of the white bands in graceful extravagance when the assembled trains were assembled in dancing and singing in cadence with garlands and ivy branches on the brow."--Cf. Davies, E. Mythology of British Druids.

[559] History, V., 5.

[560] Ancient British Coins, p. 178.

[561] "Copied by Higgins, Anacalypsis, on the authority of Dubois, who states (vol. iii., p. 88), that it was found on a stone in a church in France, where it had been kept religiously for six hundred years. Dubois regards it as wholly astrological, and as having no reference to the story told in Genesis."

[562] It is quite improbable that there was any foundation for Stow's surmise that the epithet Poor was applied to the parish of St. Peter in Brode Street, "for a difference from others of that name, sometimes peradventure a poor parish". It is, however, possible that the church was dedicated to Peter the Hermit, i.e., the poor Peter.

[563] Cf. Abelson, J., Jewish Mysticism, p. 34.

[564] Cf. also Brachet A., Ety. Dictionary of French Language: "A two-wheeled carriage which being light leaps up". Had our authorities been considering phaeton, this definition might have passed muster. Although Skeat connects phaeton with the Solar Charioteer he nevertheless connotes phantom. Why?

[565] Blackie, C., Place-names, p. 137.

[566] Coins of the Ancient Britons, p. 121.

[567] P. 28.

[568] It is a miracle that this and the other coins illustrated on page 364 did not go into the dustbin. The official estimate of their value and interest is expressed in the following reference from Hawkin's Silver Coins of England, p. 17:--

"After the final departure of the Romans, about the year 450, the history of the coinage is involved in much obscurity; the coins of that people would of course continue in circulation long after the people themselves had quitted the shores, and it is not improbable that the rude and uncouth pieces, which are imitations of their money, and are scarce because they are rejected from all cabinets and thrown away as soon as discovered, may have been struck during the interval between the Romans and Saxons."

The italics are mine, and comment would be inadequate. Happily, in despite of "the practised numismatist," Time, which antiquates and hath an art to make dust of all things, hath yet spared these minor monuments.

[569] Auburn hair is golden-red--hence I am able to recognise only a remote comparison with alburnum, the white sap wood or inner bark of trees.

[570] "We also find Adad numbered among the gods whom the Syrians worshipped; nevertheless we find but little concerning him, and that little obscure and unsatisfactory, either in ancient or modern writers. Macrobius says, "The Assyrians, or rather the Syrians, give the name Adad to the god whom they worship, as the highest or greatest," and adds that the signification of this name is the One or the Only. This writer also gives us clearly to understand that the Syrians adored the sun under this name; at least, the surname Adad, which was given to the sun by the natives of Heliopolis, makes them appear as one and the same."--Christmas, H. Rev., Universal Mythology, p. 119.

[571] Discourse concerning Devils, annexed to The Discovery of Witchcraft, Reginald Scot, i., chap. xxi.

[572] Folklore, XXV., 4, p. 426.

[573] "The Sun and Moon have been considered as signs of pagan origin, typifying Apollo and Diana," History of Signboards, p. 496.

[574] Proc. of Royal Irish Acad., xxxiv., c. 10-11, pp. 318, 320.

[575] Ibid., c. 8, p. 159.

[576] Johnston, Rev. J. B., The Place-names of England and Wales, p. 304.

[577] Wilson, J. M., Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales, i., 839.

[578] Herbert, A., Cyclops Christianus, p. 93.

[579] In Ireland an "abbey" is a cell or hermitage.

[580] Cf. Guest, Dr., Origines Celticæ, ii., 223.

[581] The name Cormac is defined as meaning son of a chariot. Is it to be assumed that the followers of Great Cormac understood a physical road car?

[582] Wentz., W. Y. E., The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, p. 341.

[583] "The inhabitants are called shên jên, spirit-like beings, a term hardly synonymous with hsien, though the description of them is consistent with the recognised characteristics of hsien. The passage runs as follows: 'Far away on the Isle of Ku-shê there dwell spirit-like beings whose flesh is [smooth] as ice and [white] as snow, and whose demeanour is as gentle and unassertive as that of a young girl. They eat not of the Five Grains, but live on air and dew. They ride upon the clouds with flying dragons for their teams, and roam beyond the Four Seas. The shên influences that pervade that isle preserve all creatures from petty maladies and mortal ills, and ensure abundant crops every year.'"--Yetts, Major W. Perceval, Folklore, XXX., i., p. 89.

[584] Proc. Roy. Irish Acad., xxxiv., c. 8, p. 135.

[585] Folk Memory, p. 339.

[586] De B. Gallico, v., 19.

[587] Annals, xxxiv.

[588] Hearnshaw, F. J. C., England in the Making, p. 22.

[589] Origines Celticæ, ii., 240.

[590] Folk Memory, p. 349.

[591] Agricola, xv.

[592] Tacitus, Annals, xxxiii.

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