X. HAPPY ENGLAND
"In the old time every Wood and Grove, Field and Meadow, Hill and Cave, Sea and River, was tenanted by tribes and communities of the great Fairy Family, and at least one of its members was a resident in every House and Homestead where the kindly virtues of charity and hospitality were practised and cherished. This was the faith of our forefathers--a graceful, trustful faith, peopling the whole earth with beings whose mission was to watch over and protect all helpless and innocent things, to encourage the good, to comfort the forlorn, to punish the wicked, and to thwart and subdue the overbearing."--ANON, The Fairy Family, 1857.
"It is very much better to believe in a number of gods than in none at all."--W. B. YEATS.
It is generally supposed that the site of London has been in continuous occupation since that remote period when the flint-knappers chipped their implements at Gray's Inn, and the pile-dwelling communities, whose traces have been found in the neighbourhood of London Stone, drove their first stakes into the surrounding marshes. Not only are there in London the material evidences of antediluvian occupation, but "the fact remains that in the city of London there are more survivals from past history than can be found within the compass of any other British city, or of any other area in Britain."[593]
Sir Laurence Gomme assigns some importance to the place-name "Britaine Street"--now "Little Britain"--where, according to Stow, the Earls of Britain were lodged, but it is probable that in _Up_well, _Eb_gate, _Ab_church, _Ape_church or _Up_church, we may identify relics of an infinitely greater antiquity.
When Cæsar paid his flying visit to these islands he learned at the mouth of the Thames that what he terms an oppidum or stronghold of the British was not far distant, and that a considerable number of men and cattle were there assembled. As it has been maintained that London was the stronghold here referred to, the term oppidum may possibly have been a British word, Cæsar's testimony being: "The Britons apply the name of oppidum to any woodland spot difficult to access, and fortified with a rampart and trench to which they are in the habit of resorting in order to escape a hostile raid".[594] That the dum of oppidum was equivalent to dun is manifest from the place-name Dumbarton, which was originally Dunbrettan.
In view of the natural situation of St. Alban's there is a growing opinion among archæologists that London, and not St. Alban's, was the stronghold which stood the shock of Roman conquest when Cæsar took the oppidum of Cassivellaunus.
The inscriptions EP, EPPI, and IPPI figure frequently on British coins, and there were probably local hobby stones, hobby towns, and oppi duns in the tribal centre of every settlement of hobby-horse worshippers. In Durham is Hoppyland Park, near Bridgewater is Hopstone, near Yarmouth is Hopton, and Hopwells; and Hopwood's, Happy Valley's, Hope Dale's, Hope Point's, Hopgreen's, Hippesley's and Apsley's may be found in numerous directions. It is noteworthy that none of these terms can have had any relation to the hop plant, for the word hops is not recorded until the fifteenth century; nor, speaking generally, have they any direct connection with hope, meaning "the point of the low land mounting the hill whence the top can be seen".[595]
The word hope, meaning expectation, is in Danish haab, in German hoffe: Hopwood, near Hopton, is at Alvechurch (Elf Church?), apart from which straw one would be justified in the assumption that Hop, Hob, or Hoph, where it occurs in place-names, had originally reference to Hob-with-a-canstick, alias Hop-o'-my-Thumb. The Hebrew expression for the witch of Endor, consulted by King Saul, is ob or oub, but in Deuteronomy xviii. 11, the term oph is used to denote a familiar spirit.[596] As we find a reference in Shakespeare to "urchins, ouphes, and fairies," the English ouphes would seem to have been one of the orders of the Elphin realm: the authorities equate it with alph or alp, and the word has probably survived in the decadence of Kipling's "muddied oaf".
Offa, the proper name, is translated by the dictionaries as meaning mild, gentle: it is further remarkable that the root oph, op, or ob, is very usually associated with things diminutive and small. In Welsh of or ov means "atoms, first principles";[597] in French oeuf, in Latin ova, means an egg; the little egg-like berry of the hawthorn is termed a hip; to ebb is to diminish, and in S.W. Wiltshire is "a small river," named the Ebbe. Hob, with his flickering candlestick, or the homely Hob crouching on the hob, seems rarely to have been thought of otherwise than as the child Elf, such as that superscribed EP upon the British coin here illustrated: yet to the _ub_iquitous Hob may no doubt be assigned up, which means aloft or overhead, and hoop, the symbol of the Sun or Eye of Heaven.
Within and all around the oppida the military and sacerdotal hubbub was undoubtedly at times uproarious, and the vociferation used on these occasions may account for the word hubbub,[598] a term which according to Skeat was "imitative". This authority adds to his conjecture: "formerly also whoobub, a confused noise. Hubbub was confused with hoop-hoop, re-duplication of hoop and whoobub with whoop-hoop." But even had our ancestors mingled hip! hip! in their muddled minds even then the confusion would have been excusable.
Ope, when occurring in proper-names such as Panope or Europe, is usually translated Eye--thus, Panope as Universal Eye, and Europa as Broad Eye. The small red eye-like or optical berries of the hawthorn are termed hips or haws, and it is probable that once upon a time the hips were deemed the elphin eyes of Hob, the Ubiquitous or Everywhere. In India the favourite bead in rosaries is the seed named rudraksha, which means "the Eye of the god Rudra or S'iva": Rudra, or the ruddy one, is the Hub or centre of the Hindoo pantheon, and S'iva, his more familiar name (now understood to mean "kindly, gracious, or propitious") is more radically "dear little Iva or Ipha". In India millions of S'eva stones are still worshipped, and the rudraksha seeds or Eyes of S'iva are generally cut with eleven facets,[599] evidently symbolising the eleven Beings which are said to have sprung from the dual personalities--male and female--of the Creative Principle.
Epine, the French for thorn, is ultimately akin to Hobany, and hip may evidently be equated with the friendly Hob. According to Bryant Hip or Hipha was a title of the Phoenician Prime Parent, and it is probable that our Hip! Hip! Hip!--the parallel of the Alban Albani! Albani!--long antedated the Hurrah!
The Hobdays and the Abdys of Albion may be connoted with Good Hob, and that this Robin Goodfellow or benevolent elf was the personification of shrewdness and cunning is implied by apt and in_ept_, and that happy little Hob was considered to be pretty is implied by hübsch, the Teutonic for pretty: the word pretty is essentially British, and the piratical habits of the early British are brought home to them by the word pirate. We shall, however, subsequently see that pirates originally meant "attempters" or men who tried.
The surname Hepburn argues the existence at some time of a Hep bourne or brook; in Northumberland is Hepborne or Haybourne, which the authorities suppose meant "burn, brook, with the hips, the fruit of the wild rose": but hips must always have been as ubiquitous and plentiful as sparrows. In Yorkshire is Hepworth, anciently written Heppeword, and this is confidently interpreted as meaning Farm of Heppo: in view, however, of our hobby-horse festivals, it is equally probable that in the Hepbourne the Kelpie, the water horse, or hippa was believed to lurk, and one may question the historic reality of farmer Heppo.
The hobby horse was principally associated with the festivals of May-Day, but it also figured at Yule Tide. On Christmas Eve either a wooden horse head or a horse's skull was decked with ribbons and carried from door to door on the summit of a pole supported by a man cloaked with a sheet: this figure was known as "Old Hob":[600] in Welsh hap means fortune--either good or bad.
Apparently the last recorded instance of the Hobby-Horse dance occurred at Abbot's Bromley, on which occasion a man carrying the image of a horse between his legs, and armed with a bow and arrow (the emblems of Barry the Sovereign Archer), played the part of Hobby: with him were six companions wearing reindeer heads (the emblems of the Dayspring) who danced the hey and other ancient dances. Tollett supposes the famous hobby horse to be the King of the May "though he now appears as a juggler and a buffoon with a crimson foot-cloth fretted with gold, the golden bit, the purple bridle, and studded with gold, the man's purple mantle with a golden border which is latticed with purple, his golden crown, purple cap with a red feather, and with a golden knop".[601]
A knop or knob means a boss, protuberance, or rosebud--originally, of course, a wild rosebud which precedes the hip--and it is probably the same word as the CUNOB which occurs so frequently in British coins. In Fig. 314 CUNOB occurs alone, and I am not sure that Figs. 315 and 318 should not be read ELINI CUNOB. The knob figured not only on our Hobby Horse, but also as a symbol on the head-dress of Tyrian kings, and there is very little doubt that the charming small figure on the obverse of CUNOB ELINI is intended for King Ob, or Ep. There is a Knap Hill at Avebury, a Knapton in Yorkshire, and a Knapwell in Suffolk: Knebworth in Herts was Chenepenorde in Domesday, and the imaginary farmer Cnapa or Cnebba, to whom these place-names are assigned, may be equated with the afore-mentioned farmer Heppo of Hepworth.
Knaves Castle (Lichfield), now a small mound--a heap?--is ascribed to "cnafa, a boy or servant, later a knave, a rogue": Cupid is a notorious little rogue, nevertheless, proverbially Love makes the world go round, and constitutes its nave, navel, hub, or boss: with snob Skeat connotes snopp, meaning a boy or anything stumpy.
In course of time like boss, Dutch baas, knob seems to have been applied generally to mean a lord or master, and the Londoner who takes an agreeable interest in the "nobs"[602](and occasional snobs) riding in Hyde Park is possibly following an ancestral custom dating from the time when the Ring was originally constructed. Apsley House, now standing at the east end of Rotten Row, occupies the site of the park ranger's lodge, the Ranger was a highly important personage, and it is not improbable that the site of Apsley House was once known as Ap's lea or meadow. The immediately adjacent Stanhope Gate and Stanhope Street, or Stanhope in Durham, may mark the site of a stone hippa or horse similar to the famous stone horse in Brittany upon which--I believe to this day--women superstitiously seat themselves with the same purpose as they sit upon the Brahan stone in Ireland: Bryanstone Square in London is not more than a mile from Stanhope Street and Apsley House.
The Breton statue of Quinipily may be deemed a portrait of holy Queen Ip, and Gwennap, near Redruth, where is a famous amphitheatre, was probably a Queen Hip lea or seat of the same Queen's worship.
Gwen Ap was presumably the same as Queen Aph or Godiva, the Lady of the White Horse, and Godrevy on the opposite side of St. Ives Bay may be equated with Good rhi Evy, or Good Queen Evie. A few miles from Liskeard there is a village named St. Ive, which the natives pronounce St. Eve: the more western, better-known Saint Ive's, is mentioned in a document of 1546 as "Seynt Iysse," and what apparently is this same dedication reappears at a place four miles west of Wadebridge termed St. Issey. "Whose name is it," inquires W. C. Borlase, "that the parish of St. Issey bears?" He suggests somewhat wildly that it may be the same as Elidius, corrupted to Liddy, Ide, or Idgy, endeavouring to prove that this Elidius is the same as the great Welsh Teilo.
It would be simpler and more reasonable to assume that St. Issey is a trifling corruption of "Eseye," which was one of the titles of the old British Mother of Life. The goddess Esseye--alternatively and better known as Keridwen--is described by Owen in his Cambrian Biography as "a female personage, in the mythology of the Britons considered as the first of womankind, having nearly the same attributes with Venus, in whom are personified the generative powers".
With Eseye and with St. Issey, alias St. Ive, may be connoted the deserted town of Hesy in Judea: on the mound now known as Tell el Hesy, or the hill town of Hesy, the remains of at least eight super-imposed prehistoric cities have been excavated, and among the discoveries on this site was a limestone lampstand subscribed on the base APHEBAL.[603] The winged maiden found at the same time is essentially Cretan, and it is not an unreasonable assumption that on this Aphe fragment of pottery from Hesy we have a contemporary portrait of the Candian Aphaia or Britomart, alias Hesy, or St. Issy, or St. Ive: the British Eseye was alternatively known as Cendwen.
The British built their oppida not infrequently in the form of an eye or optic, and also of an oeuf, ova, or egg. The perfect symmetry of these designs point conclusively to the probability that the earthworks were not mere strongholds scratched together anyhow for mere defence: the British burial places or barrows were similarly either circular or oval, and that the Scotch dun illustrated in Fig. 324 was British, is implied not only by its name Boreland-Mote, but by its existence at a place named Parton, this word, like the Barton of Dumbarton, no doubt signifying Dun Brettan or Briton.
[Illustration: FIG. 325.--"Spindle-whorls" from Troy. From Prehistoric London (Gordon, E. O.). [To face page 534.]
Egypt was known as "The Land of the Eye":[604] the amulet of the All-seeing Eye was perhaps even more popular in Egypt than in Etruria, and the mysterious and unaccountable objects called "spindle whorls," which occur so profusely in British tombs, and which also have been found in countless numbers underneath Troy, were probably Eye amulets, rudely representative of the human iris. The Trojan examples here illustrated are conspicuously decorated with the British Broad Arrow, which is said to have been the symbol of the Awen or Holy Spirit. In their accounts of the traditional symbols, speech, letters, and signs of Britain, according to their preservation by means of memory, voice, and usages of the Chair and Gorsedd, the Welsh Bards asserted that the three strokes of the Broad Arrow or bardic hieroglyph for God originated from three diverging rays of light seen descending towards the earth. Out of these three strokes were constituted all the letters of the bardic alphabet, the three strokes / | \ reading in these characters respectively 0 1 0, and thus spelling the mystic OHIO or YEW; hence it would seem that this never-to-be-pronounced Name[605] was a faerie conception originating in the mind of some primitive poet philosophising from a cloud-encumbered sunrise or sunset. According to tradition there were five ages of letters: "The first was the age of the three letters, which above all represented the Name of God, and which were a sign of Goodness and Truth, and Understanding and Equity, of whatsoever kind they might be".[606] On these rays, it is said, were inscribed every kind and variety of Science and Knowledge, and on His return to Heaven the Almighty Architect is described as--
Followed with acclamation, and the sound Symphonious of ten thousand harps that tun'd Angelic harmonies.
The philosophers of Egypt believed that the universe was created by the pronunciation of the divine name; similarly the British bards taught that: "The universe is matter as ordered and systematised by the intelligence of God. It was created by God's pronouncing His own name--at the sound of which light and the heavens sprang into existence. The name of God is itself a creative power. What in itself that name is, is known to God only. All music or natural melody is a faint and broken echo of the creative name."[607]
Everywhere and in everything the Druids recognised this celestial Trinity: not only did their Hierarchy consist of three orders, i.e., Druids, Bards, and Seers, each group being again subdivided into three, but also, as we have seen, they uttered their Triads or aphorisms in triple form. There is little doubt that the same idea animated the Persian philosophy of Good Thought, Good Deed, Good Word, and Micah's triple exordium: "Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly". The bards say distinctly: "The three mystic letters signify the three attributes of God, namely, Love, Knowledge, and Truth, and it is out of these three that justice springs, and without one of the three there can be no justice".[608]
This is a simpler philosophy than the incomprehensibilities of the Athanasian Creed,[609] and it was seemingly drilled with such living and abiding force into the minds of the Folk, that even to-day the Druidic Litanies or Chants of the Creed still persist. Throughout Italy and Sicily the Chant of the Creed is known as The Twelve Words of Verita or Truth, and it is generally put into the mouth of the popular Saint Nicholas of Bari.[610] The Sicilian or Hyperean festival of the Bara has already been noted ante, p. 320.
The British chant quoted ante, page 373, continues: "What will be our three boys"? "What will be our four"? five? six? and onwards up to twelve, but always the refrain is--
My only ain she walks alane And ever mair has dune, boys.
In Irish mythology we are told that the Triad similarly "infected everything," hence Trinities such as Oendia (the one god), Caindea (the gentle god), and Trendia (the mighty god): other accounts specify the three children of the Boyne goddess, as Tear Bringer, Smile Bringer, and Sleep Bringer: the word sleep is in all probability a corruption of sil Eep.
Among the Trojan "spindle whorls" some are decorated with four awens, corresponding seemingly to the Four Kings of the Wheel of Fortune; others with three groups constituting a total of nine strokes. As each ray represented a form of Truth, the number nine--which as already noted is invariably true to itself--was essentially the symbol of Truth, and that this idea was absorbed by Christianity is obvious from representations such as Figs. 326 and 327.
[Illustration: FIG. 328.--"Cross" at Sancreed (Cornwall). From _The Cornish Riviera_ (Stone, J. Harris). [To face page 538. ]
At Sancreed in Cornwall--supposedly a dedication to the holy Creed--there is a remarkable "cross" which is actually a holed stone on a shank:[611] and in the same parish is a "castle" which was once evidently a very perfect Eye. In the Scilly Islands, lying within a stone circle, is what might be a millstone with a square hole in its centre: this Borlase ranks among the holed stones of Cornwall, and that it was a symbol of the Great Eye is a reasonable inference from the name Salla Key where it is still lying. We have seen the symbolic Eye on the KIO coin illustrated ante, page 253; the word eye pronounced frequently oy and ee, is the same as the hey of Heydays and the Shepherds' Dance or Hey, hence in all probability Salla Key or Salakee Downs[612] were originally sacred to the festivals of Sala Kee, i.e., silly, innocent, or happy, 'Kee or Great Eye. The old plural of eye was eyen or een, and it is not unlikely that the primeval Ian, John, or Sinjohn, was worshipped as the joint Sun and Moon, or Eyes of Day and Night. On the hobby-horse coins here illustrated, the body consists of two curiously conspicuous circles or eyen, possibly representing the awen.
My only ane she walks alane And ever mair has dune, boys.
On Salla Key Downs is Inisidgen Hill, which takes its name from an opposite island: in old MSS. this appears as Enys au geon, which the authorities assume meant "Island of St. John". Geon, however, was the Cornish for giant; on Salla Key Downs is "Giant's Castle," and close at hand is the Giant's Chair: this is a solid stone worked into the form of an arm-chair: "It looks like a work of art rather than nature, and, according to tradition, it was here the Arch Druid was wont to sit and watch the rising Sun".[613] The neighbouring island of Great Ganilly was thus in all probability sacred to Geon, the Great King, or Queen Holy.
The Saints' days, heydays, and holidays of our predecessors seem to have been so numerous that the wonder is that there was ever any time to work: apparently from such evidence as the Bean-setting dance, even the ancient sowing was accomplished to the measure of a song, and the festivities in connection with old Harvest Homes are too multifarious and familiar to need comment.
The attitude of the clergy towards these ancient festivals seems to have been uniform and consistent.
These teach that dancing is a Jezebel, And barley-break the ready way to hell; The morrice-idols, Whitsun-ales, can be But profane relics of a jubilee.[614]
One of the greatest difficulties of the English Church was to suppress the dancing which the populace--supported by immemorial custom--insisted upon maintaining, even within the churches and the churchyards. Even to-day English churches possess reindeer heads and other paraphernalia of archaic feasts, and in Paris, as recently as the seventeenth century, the clergy and singing boys might have been seen dancing at Easter in the churches.[615] In Cornwall on the road from Temple to Bradford Bridge is a stone circle known as The Trippet Stones, and doubtless many churches occupy the sites of similar places where from time immemorial the Folk tripped it jubilantly on jubilees: custom notoriously dies hard.
In the Eastern counties of England the two principal reapers were known as the Harvest Lord and Lady, who presided over the Hoppings, and other festivities of the season. Sometimes the Harvest Lady was known as the Hop Queen,[616] and this important potentate may be connoted with the harvest doll which, in Kent particularly, was termed the Ivy Girl. As Prof. Weekley connotes the surname Hoppe with Hobbs, Hobson, and Hopkins, we may infer from the name _Hopkin_son, there must once have been a Hop King as well as a Hop Queen, and the rôle of this English Hopkin was probably similar to that enacted by other Jack-in-Greens, King-of-the-Years, or Spirit-of-the-Years. The pomp and circumstance of the parallel of the Hopkin ceremony in Greece may be judged from the following particulars: "They wreathe," says Plato, "a pole of olive wood with laurel and various flowers. On the top is fitted a bronze globe from which they suspend smaller ones. Midway round the pole they place a lesser globe, binding it with purple fillets, but the end of the pole is decked with saffron. By the topmost globe they mean the sun, to which they actually compare Apollo. The globe beneath this is the moon; the smaller globes hung on are the stars and constellations, and the fillets are the course of the year, for they make them 365 in number. The Daphnephoria is headed by a boy, both whose parents are alive, and his nearest male relation carries the filleted pole. The Laurel-Bearer himself, who follows next, holds on to the laurel; he has his hair hanging loose, he wears a golden wreath, and he is dressed out in a splendid robe to his feet and he wears light shoes. There follows him a band of maidens holding out boughs before them, to enforce the supplication of the hymns."[617]
With this Greek festival of the Laurel-Bearer may be connoted the "one traditional dance connected with all our old festivals and merry makings" in Guernsey, and known as A mon beau Laurier. In this ceremony the dancers join hands, whirl round, curtsey, and kiss a central object, in later days either a man or a woman, but, in the opinion of Miss Carey, "perhaps originally either a sacred stone or a primeval altar".[618] Adulation of this character is calculated to create snobs, the word as we have seen being fundamentally connected with stump. I have already suggested a connection between the salutation A mon beau Laurier and the kissing or bussing of Paul's stump at Billingsgate, which is situated almost immediately next Ebgate. On Mount Hube, in Jersey, have been found the remains of a supposed Druidic temple, and doubtless Mount Hube, like Apechurch or Abechurch, was a primitive Hopeton, oppidum, or Abbey.
The Hoop is a frequent inn sign generally associated with some additional symbol such as is implied in the familiar old signs, Swan-on-the-Hoop, Cock-on-the-Hoop, Crown-on-the-Hoop, Angel-on-the-Hoop, Falcon-on-the Hoop, and Bunch-of-Grapes-on-the-Hoop.[619] That the hoop or circle was a sacred form need not be laboured, for the majority of our megalithic monuments are circular, and there is no doubt that these rude circles are not simply and solely "adjuncts of stone age burials," but were the primitive temples of the Hoop Lady or Fairy Queen. It was customary to represent the Hop Lady within hoops or wheels; and that the Virgin was regarded indifferently as either One, Two, Three or Four is clear from the indeterminate number of dolls which served on occasion as the idola or ideal. In Irish oun or ain means the cycle or course of the seasons, and the great Queen Anu or Aine who was regarded as the boss, hub, or centre of the Mighty Wheel may be equated with Una, the Fairy Queen.
The Druids are said to have considered it impious to enclose or cover their temples, presumably for the same reasons as prevailed among the Persians. These are explained by Cicero who tells us that in the expedition of Xerxes into Greece all the Grecian temples were destroyed at the instigation of the Magi because the Grecians were so impious as to enclose those gods within walls who ought to have all things around them open and free, their temple being the universal world. In Homer's time--
On rough-hewn stones within the sacred cirque Convok'd the hoary sages sat.
and there is little doubt that similarly in these islands the priest-chiefs held their solemn and ceremonial sessions.
The word Druid is in disfavour among modern archæologists; nevertheless, apparently all over Britain the Druids were traditionally associated in the popular memory with megalithic monuments. Martin, in the relation of his Tour of the Hebrides, made in the middle of the eighteenth century, observes: "In the Western Islands where there are many, what are called by the common people Druin Crunny, that is Druids' Circles," and the same observer recounts: "I inquired of the inhabitants what tradition they had concerning these stones, and they told me it was a place appointed for worship in the time of heathenism, and that the chief Druid stood near the big stone in the centre from whence he addressed himself to the people that surrounded him".[620]
There is presumptive and direct evidence that the stone circles of Britain served the combined uses of Temple, Sepulchre, Place of Assembly, and Law Court. The custom of choosing princes by nobles standing in a circle upon rocks, prevailed until comparatively recent times, and Edmund Spenser, writing in 1596 on the State of Ireland, thus described an installation ceremony: "One of the Lords arose and holding in his hand a white wand perfectly straight and without the slightest bend, he presented it to the chieftain-elect with the following words, 'Receive the emblematic wand of thy dignity, now let the unsullied whiteness and straightness of this wand be thy model in all thy acts, so that no calumnious tongue can expose the slightest stain on the purity of thy life, nor any favoured friend ever seduce thee from dealing out even-handed justice to all'."[621]
The white wand figuring in this ceremony is evidently the magic rod or fairy wand with which the Elphin Queen is conventionally equipped, and which was figured in the hand of the Cretan "Hob," ante, page 494.
Sometimes in lieu of a centre stone the circles contained stone chairs. Many of these old Druidic thrones have been broken up into gate-posts or horse-troughs, but several are still in existence, and some are decorated with a carving of two footprints. These two footprints were in all probability one of the innumerable forms in which the perennial Pair were represented, vide the Vedic invocation: "Like two lips speaking sweetly to the mouth, like two breasts feed us that we may live. Like two nostrils as guardians of the body, like two ears be inclined to listen to us. Like two hands holding our strength together ... like two hoofs rushing in quickly," etc.
In the British coin here illustrated the Giant Pair are featured as joint steeds: "Coming early like two heroes on their chariots ... ye bright ones every day come hither like two charioteers, O ye strong ones! Like two winds, like two streams your motion is eternal; like two eyes[622] come with your sight toward us! Like two hands most useful to the body; like two feet lead us towards wealth."[623]
Occasionally the two footprints are found cut into simple rock: in Scotland the King of the Isles used to be crowned at Islay, standing on a stone with a deep impression on the top of it made on purpose to receive his feet. The meaning of the feet symbol in Britain is not known, but Scotch tradition maintained that it represented the size of the feet of Albany's first chieftain. On Adam's Peak in Ceylon (ancient Tafrobani) there is a super-sacred footprint which is still the goal of millions of devout pilgrims, and on referring to India where the foot emblem is familiar we find it explained as very ancient, and used by the Buddhists in remembrance of their great leader Buddha. In the tenth century a Hindu poet sang:--
In my heart I place the feet The Golden feet of God.
and it would thus seem that the primeval Highlander anticipated by many centuries Longfellow's trite lines on great men, happily, however, before departing, graving the symbolic footprints of his "first Chieftain," not upon the sands of Time, but on the solid rocks.
The Ancients, believing that God was centred in His Universe, a point within a circle was a proper and expressive hieroglyph for Pan or All. The centre stone of the rock circles probably stood similarly for God, and the surrounding stones for the subsidiary Principalities and Powers thus symbolising the idea: "Thou art the Eternal One, in whom all order is centred; Lord of all things visible and invisible, Prince of mankind, Protector of the Universe".[624] A tallstone or a longstone is physically and objectively the figure one, 1.
If it were possible to track the subsidiary Powers of the Eternal One to their inception we should, I suspect, find them to have been personifications of Virtues, and this would seem to apply not merely to such familiar Trinities as Faith, Hope, and Charity; Good Thought, Good Deed, and Good Word, but to quartets, quintets, sextets, and septets such as the Seven Kings or Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, i.e., "Ye gifte of wisdome; ye gifte of pittie; ye gifte of strengthe; ye gifte of comfaite; ye gifte of understandinge; ye gifte of counyinge; ye gifte of dreede".
The Persian Trinity of Thought, Deed, and Word, is perfectly expressed in the three supposed Orders of the Christian hierarchy. As stated in The Golden Legend these are--sovereign Love as touching the order of Seraphim, perfect Knowledge, and perpetual Fruition or usance. "There be some," continues De Voragine, "that overcome and dominate over all vices in themselves, and they by right be called of the world, gods among men."[625]
It is related of King Arthur that he carried a shield named Prydwen, and if the reader will trouble to count the dots ranged round the centre boss of the shield on page 120 the number will be found to be eleven. At Kingston on Thames, where the present market stone is believed to be the surviving centre-piece of a stone-circle, a brass ring ornamented with eleven bosses was discovered.[626] In Etruria eleven mystic shields were held in immense veneration:[627] it will further be noted that the majority of the wheatears on British and Celtiberian coins consist of eleven corns.
The word eleven, like its French equivalent onze, ange, or angel, points to the probability that for some reason eleven was essentially the number sacred to the elven, anges, or onzes. Elphinstone, a fairly common surname, implies the erstwhile existence of many Elphinstones: there is an Alphian rock in Yorkshire; bronze urns have been excavated at Alphamstone in Essex, and the supposititious Aelfin, to whom the Alphington in Exeter is attributed, was far more probably Elphin.
The dimensions of many so-called longstones--whether solitary or in the centres of circles--point to the probability that menhirs or standing-stones were frequently and preferably 11 feet high. In Cornwall alone I have noted the following examples of which the measurements are extracted from The Victoria County History. The longstone at Trenuggo, Sancreed, now measures 11 feet 2 inches; that at Sithney 11 feet; that at Burras "about 10 feet," that at Parl 12 feet; and that at Bosava 10 feet. In the parish of St. Buryan the longstones standing at Pridden, Goon Rith, Boscawen Ros, and Trelew, now measure respectively 11 feet 6 inches, 10 feet 6 inches, 10 feet, and 10 feet 4 inches.
If one takes into account such casualties of time as weathering, washing away of subsoil, upcrop of undergrowth, subsidence, and other accidents, the preceding figures are somewhat presumptive that each of the monuments in question was originally designed to stand 11 feet high.
Frequently a circle of stones is designated The Nine Maids, or The Virgin Sisters, or The Merry Maidens. The Nine Maidens is suggestive of the Nine Muses, and of the nine notorious Druidesses, which dwelt upon the Island of Sein in Brittany. The Merry Maidens may be equated with the Fairy or Peri Maidens, and that this phairy theory holds good likewise in Spain is probable from the fact that at Pau there is a circle of nine stones called La Naou Peyros.[628]
"When we inquired," says Keightley, "after the fairy system in Spain, we were told that there was no such thing for that the Inquisition had long since eradicated such ideas." He adds, however, "we must express our doubt of the truth of this charge": I concur that not even the Inquisition was capable of carrying out such fundamental destruction as the obliteration of all peyros. Probably the old plural for peri or fairy was peren or feren, in which case the great Fernacre circle in the parish of St. Breward, Cornwall, was presumably the sacred eye or hoop of some considerable neighbourhood. About 160 feet eastward of Fernacre (which is one of the largest circles in Cornwall), and in line with the summit of Brown Willy (the highest hill in Cornwall) is a small erect stone. The neighbouring Row Tor (Roi Tor or Rey Tor?) rises due north of Fernacre circle, and as the editors of Cornwall point out: "If as might appear probable this very exact alignment north and south, east and west, was intentional, and part of a plan where Fernacre was the pivot of the whole, it is a curious feature that the three circles mentioned should have been so effectively hidden from each other by intervening hills".[629]
The major portion of this district is the property of an Onslow family; there is an Onslow Gardens near Alvastone Place in Kensington, and there is a probability that every Alvastone, Elphinstone, or _On_slow neighbourhood was believed to be inhabited by Elven or Anges: it is indeed due to this superstition that the relatively few megalithic monuments which still exist have escaped damnation, the destruction where it has actually occurred having been sometimes due to a deliberate and bigoted determination, "to brave ridiculous legends and superstitions".[630] Naturally the prevalent and protective superstitions were fostered and encouraged by prehistoric thinkers for the reasons doubtless quite rightly surmised by an eighteenth century archæologist who wrote: "But the truth of the story is, it was a burying place of the Britons before the calling in of the heathen sexton (sic query Saxon) into this Kingdom. And this fable invented by the Britons was to prevent the ripping up of the bones of their ancestors." The demise of similar fables under the corrosive influence of modern kultur, has involved the destruction of countless other stone-monuments, so that even of Cornwall, their natural home, Mr. T. Quiller Couch was constrained to write: "Within my remembrance the cromlech, the holy well, the way-side cross and inscribed stone, have gone before the utilitarian greed of the farmer and the road man, and the undeserved neglect of that hateful being, the cui bono man".
Parish Councils of to-day do not fear to commit vandalisms which private individuals in the past shrank from perpetrating.[631] A Welsh "Stonehenge" at Eithbed, Pembrokeshire, shown on large-scale Ordinance maps issued last century, has disappeared from the latest maps of the district, and a few years ago an archæologist who visited the site reported that the age-worn stones had been broken up to build ugly houses close by--"veritable monuments of shame".
In the Isle of _Pur_beck near _Bourne_mouth, _Brank_sea, _Bronks_ea (Bronk's ea or island) _Branks_ome and numerous other Bron place-names which imply that the district was once haunted by Oberon, is a barrow called Puckstone, and on the top of this barrow, now thrown down, is a megalith said to measure 10 feet 8 inches. In all probability this was once 11 feet long, and was the Puckstone or Elphinstone of that neighbourhood: near Anglesea at Llandudno is a famous longstone which again is eleven feet high.
In Glamorganshire there is a village known as Angel Town, and in Pembroke is Angle or Nangle: Adamnan, in his Life of Columba, records that the saint opened his books and "read them on the Hill of the Angels, where once on a time the citizens of the Heavenly Country were seen to descend to hold conversation with the blessed man". Upon this his editor comments: "this is the knoll called 'great fairies hill'. Not far away is the 'little fairies hill'. The fairies hills of pagan mythology became angels hills in the minds of the early Christian saints."[632] One may be permitted to question whether this metamorphosis really occurred, and whether the idea of Anges or Angles is not actually older than even the Onslows or ange lows. The Irish trinity of St. Patrick, St. Bride, and St. Columba, are said all to lie buried in one spot at Dunence, and the place-name Dunence seemingly implies that that site was an on's low, or dun ange. The term angel is now understood to mean radically a messenger, but the primary sense must have been deeper than this: in English ingle--as in inglenook--meant fire, and according to Skeat it also meant a darling or a paramour. Obviously ingle is here the same word as angel, and presumably the more primitive Englishman tactfully addressed his consort as "mine ingle". The Gaelic and the Irish for fire is aingeal; we have seen that the burnebee or ladybird was connected with fire, and that similarly St. Barneby's Day was associated with Barnebee Bright: hence the festival held at _Engle_wood, or _Ingle_wood (Cumberland) yearly on the day of St. Barnabas would appear to have been a primitive fire or aingeal ceremony. It is described as follows: "At Hesket in Cumberland yearly on St. Barnabas Day by the highway side under a Thorn tree according to the very ancient manner of holding assemblies in the open air, is kept the Court for the whole Forest of Englewood, the 'Englyssh wood' of the ballad of Adam Bel".[633]
Stonehenge used to be entitled Stonehengels, which may be modernised into the Stone Angels,[634] each stone presumably standing as a representative of one or other of the angelic hierarchy. When the Saxons met the British in friendly conference at Stonehenge--apparently even then the national centre--each Saxon chieftain treacherously carried a knife which at a given signal he plunged into the body of his unarmed, unsuspecting neighbour; subsequently, it is said, hanging the corpses of the British royalties on the cross rocks of Stonehenge: hence ever after this exhibition of Teutonic realpolitik Stonehenge has been assumed to mean the Hanging Stones, or Gallow Stones.[635] We find, however, that Stonehenge was known as Sta_hengues_ or Est_anges_, a plural form which may be connoted with Hengesdun or Hengston Hill in Cornwall: Stonehenge also appears under the form Senhange, which may have meant either Old Ange or San Ange, and as the priests of ancient cults almost invariably assumed the character and titles of their divinity it is probable that the Druids were once known as Anges. In Irish the word aonge is said to have meant magician or sorcerer, which is precisely the character assigned by popular opinion to the Druids. In Rode hengenne, another title of Stonehenge,[636] we have apparently the older plural hen_gen_ with the adjectival rood or ruddy, whence Stonehenge would seem to have been a shrine of the Red Rood Anges.
As this monument was without doubt a national centre it is probable that as I have elsewhere suggested Stonehenge meant also the Stone Hinge: the word cardinal means radically hinge; the original Roman cardinals whose round red hats probably typified the ruddy sun, were the priests of Janus, who was entitled the Hinge, and there is no reason to suppose that the same idea was not equally current in England.
That the people of CARDIA associated their angel or ange with cardo, a hinge or angle is manifest from the coin illustrated in Fig. 336.
According to Prof. Weekley, "Ing, the name of a demi-god, seems to have been early confused with the Christian angel in the prefix Engel common in German names, e.g., Engelhardt anglicised as Engleheart. In Anglo-Saxon we find both Ing and Ingel. The modern name Ingoll represents Ingweald (Ingold) and Inglett is a diminutive of similar origin. The cheerful Inglebright is from Inglebeort. The simple Ing has given through Norse Ingwar the Scottish Ivor."[637] But is it not possible that Ivor never came through Ingwar, but was radically a synonym--fairy = Ing, or fire = ingle? Inga is a Scandinavian maiden-name, and if the Inge family--of gloomy repute--are unable to trace any cheerier origin it may be suggested that they came from the Isle of Man where the folk claim to be the descendants of fairies or anges: "The Manks confidently assert that the first inhabitants of their island were fairies, and that these little people have still their residence amongst them. They call them the 'Good people,' and say they live in wilds and forests, and mountains, and shun great cities because of the wickedness acted therein."[638]
As there is no known etymology for inch and ounce it is not improbable that these diminutive measures were connected with the popular idea of the ange's size and weight: Queen Mab, according to Shakespeare, was "no bigger than an agate stone on the forefinger of an alderman," and she weighed certainly not more than an ounce. The origin of Queen Mab is supposedly Habundia, or La Dame Abonde, discussed in a preceding chapter, and there connoted with Eubonia, Hobany, and Hob: in Welsh Mab means baby boy, and the priests of this little king were known as the Mabinogi, whence the Mabinogion, or books of the Mabinogi.
Whether there is any reason to connect the three places in Ireland entitled Inchequin with the Ange Queen, or the Inchlaw (a hill in Fifeshire) with the Inch Queen Mab I have had no opportunity of inquiring.
The surnames Inch, Ince, and Ennis, are all usually connoted with enys or ins, the Celtic and evidently more primitive form of _in_sula, an island, ea or Eye.
The Inge family may possibly have come from the Channel Islands or insulæ, where as we have seen the Ange Queen, presumably the Lady of the Isles or inces, was represented on the coinage, and the Lord of the Channel Isles seems to have been Pixtil or Pixy tall. That this Pixy tall was alternatively ange tall is possibly implied by the name Anchetil, borne by the Vicomte du Bessin who owned one of the two fiefs into which Guernsey was anciently divided. It will be remembered that in the ceremony of the Chevauchee de St. Michel, eleven Vavasseurs functioned in the festival; further, that the lance-bearer carried a wand 11-1/4 feet long. The Welsh form of the name Michael is Mihangel, and as Michael was the Leader of all angels, the mi of this British mihangel may be equated with the Irish mo which, as previously noted, meant greatest.
As Albion or albi en, is the equivalent to Elphin or elven, it is obvious that England--or _Inghil_terra, as some nations term it--is a synonym for Albion, in both cases the meaning being Land of the Elves or Angels. For some reason--possibly the Masonic idea of the right angle, rectitude, and square dealing--angle was connected with angel, and in the coin here illustrated the angel has her head fixed in a photographic pose by an angle. In Germany and Scandinavia, Engelland means the mystic land of unborn souls, and that the Angles who inhabited the banks of the Elbe (Latin Alva) believed not only in the existence of this spiritual Engelland, but also in the living existence of Alps, Elves, Anges, or Angels is a well-recognised fact. The Scandinavians traced their origin to a primal pair named Lif and Lifthraser: according to Rydberg it was the creed of the Teuton that on arriving with a good record at "the green worlds of the gods"; "Here he finds not only those with whom he became personally acquainted while on earth, but he may also visit and converse with ancestors from the beginning of time, and he may hear the history of his race, nay, the history of all past generations told by persons who were eye-witnesses".[639] The fate of the evil-living Teuton was believed to be far different, nevertheless, in sharp distinction to the Christian doctrine that all unbaptised children are lost souls, and that infants scarce a span in size might be seen crawling on the fiery floor of hell, even the "dull and creeping Saxon" held that every one who died in tender years was received into the care of a Being friendly to the young, who introduced them into the happy groves of immortality.
The suggestion that the land of the Angels derived its title from the angelic superstitions of the inhabitants, may be connoted with seemingly a parallel case in Sweden, i.e., the province of Elfland. According to Walter Scott this district "had probably its name from some remnant of ancient superstition":[640] during the witch-finding mania of the sixteenth century at one village alone in Elfland, upwards of 300 children "were found more or less perfect in a tale as full of impossible absurdities as ever was told round a nursery fire". Fifteen of these hapless little visionaries were led to death, and thirty-six were lashed weekly at the church doors for a whole year: an unprofitable "conspiracy" for the poor little "plotters"!
There figures in Teutonic mythology not only Lif the first parent, but also a divinity named Alf who is described as young, but of a fine exterior, and of such remarkably white splendour that rays of light seemed to issue from his silvery locks. Whether the Anglo-Saxons, like the Germans, attributed any significance to eleven I do not know: if they did not the grave here illustrated which was found in the white chalk of Adisham, Kent, must be assigned to some other race. It is described by its excavator as follows: "The grave which was cut very neatly out of the rock chalk was full 5 feet deep; it was of the exact shape of a cross whose legs pointed very minutely to the four cardinal points of the compass; and it was every way eleven feet long and about 4 feet broad. At each extremity was a little cover or arched hole each about 12 inches broad, and about 14 inches high, all very neatly cut like so many little fireplaces for about a foot beyond the grave into the chalk."[641] It would seem possible that these crescentic corner holes were actually ingle nooks, and one may surmise a primitive lying-in-state with corner fires in lieu of candles. As the Saxons of the fifth and sixth centuries were notoriously in need of conversion to the Cross it is difficult to assign this crucial sepulchre to any of their tribes.
Whether Albion was ever known as Inghilterra or Ingland before the advent of the Angles from the Elbe need not be here discussed, but, at any rate, it seems highly unlikely that Anglesea, the sanctuary or Holyhead of British Druidism, derived its name from Teutonic invaders who can hardly have penetrated into that remote corner for long after their first friendly arrival. At the end of the second century Tertullian made the surprising and very puzzling statement: "Places in Britain hitherto unvisited by the Romans were subjected to Christianity":[642] that the cross was not introduced by the Romans is obvious from the apparition of this emblem on our coinage one to two hundred years before the Roman invasion; the famous megalithic monument at Lewis in the Hebrides is cruciform, and the equally famed pyramid at New Grange is tunnelled in the form of a cross.
According to Pownal, New Grange was constructed by the Magi "or Gaurs as they were sometimes called":[643] Stonehenge or Stonehengels is referred to by the British Bards as Choir Gawr, a term which is of questioned origin: the largest stone circle in Ireland is that by Lough Gur; the amphitheatre at St. Just is known as Plan an Guare or Plain of Guare, and the place-name _Gor_hambury or Verulam, where are the remains of a very perfect amphitheatre, suggests that this circle, as also that at Lough Gur, and Choir Gawr, was, like Bangor, a home, seat, or Gorsedd of the Gaurs or Aonges. Doubtless the gaurs of Britain like the guru or holy men of India, and the augurs of Rome, indulged in augury: in Hebrew gor means a congregation, and that the ancients congregated in and around stone circles choiring, and gyrating in a gyre or wheel, is evident from the statement of Diodorus Siculus, which is now very generally accepted as referring to Stonehenge or Choir Gawr. "The inhabitants [of Hyperborea] are great worshippers of Apollo to whom they sing many many hymns. To this god they have consecrated a large territory in the midst of which they have a magnificent round temple replenished with the richest offerings. Their very city is dedicated to him, and is full of musicians and players on various instruments who every day celebrate his benefits and perfections."
Among the superstitions of the British was the idyll that the music of the Druids' harps wafted the soul of the deceased into heaven: these harps were constructed with the same mysterious regard to the number three as characterised the whole of the magic or Druidic philosophy: the British harp was triangular, its strings were three, and its tuning keys were three-armed: it was thus essentially a harp of Tara. That the British were most admirable songsters and musicians is vouched for in numerous directions, and that Stonehenge was the Hinge of the national religion is evident from the fact that it is mentioned in a Welsh Triad as one of the "Three Great Cors of Britain in which there were 2400 saints, that is, there were 100 for every hour of the day and night, in rotation perpetuating the praise of God without intermission".[644] That similar choirs existed among the gaurs of ancient Ireland would appear from an incident recorded in the life of St. Columba: the popularity of this saint was, we are told, so great, even among the pagan Magi, that 1200 poets who were in Convention brought with them a poem in his praise: they sang this panegyric with music and chorus, "and a surpassing music it was"; indeed, so impressive was the effect that the saint felt a sudden emotion of complacency and gave way to temporary vanity.
The circle of St. Just was not only known as Plan an guare, but also as Guirimir, which has been assumed to be a contraction of Guiri mirkl, signifying in Cornish a mirkl or miracle play.[645] Doubtless not only Miracle Plays, but sports and interludes of every description were centred in the circles: that the Druids were competent and attractive entertainers is probable in view of the fact that the Arch Druid of Tara is shown as a leaping juggler with golden ear-clasps, and a speckled coat: he tosses swords and balls into the air "and like the buzzing of bees on a beautiful day is the motion of each passing the other".[646]
The circles were similarly the sites of athletic sports, duels, and other "martial challenges": the prize fight of yesterday was fought in a ring, and the ring still retains its popular hold. The Celts customarily banquetted in a circle with the most valiant chieftain occupying the post of honour in the centre.
We know from Cæsar that the Gauls who were "extremely devoted to superstitious rites," sent their young men to Britain for instruction in Druidic philosophy: we also know that it was customary when a war was declared to vow all captured treasures to the gods: "In many states you may see piles of these things heaped up in their consecrated spots, nor does it often happen that anyone disregarding the sanctity of the case dares either to secrete in his house things captured or take away those deposited: and the most severe punishment with torture has been established for such a deed".[647] As British customs "did not differ much" from those of Gaul it is thus almost a certainty that Stonehenge was for long periods a vast national treasure-house and Valhalla.
Notwithstanding the abundance of barrows, earthworks, and other evidences of prehistoric population it is probable that Salisbury Plain was always a green spot, and we are safe in assuming that Choir Gawr was the seat of Gorsedds. By immemorial law and custom the Gorsedd had always to be held on a green spot, in a conspicuous place in full view and hearing of country and aristocracy, in the face of the sun, the Eye of Light, and under the expansive freedom of the sky that all might see and hear. As sedum is the Latin for seat, and there seems to be some uncertainty as to what the term Gorsedd really meant, I may be permitted to throw out the suggestion that it was a Session, Seat, or Sitting of the Gaurs or Augurs: by Matthew Arnold the British Gorsedd is described as the "oldest educational institution in Europe," and moreover as an institution not known out of Britain.
Slightly over a mile from Stonehenge or Choir Gawr is the nearest village now known as Amesbury, originally written Ambrosbury or Ambresbury: here was the meeting-place of Synods even in historic times, and here was a monastery which is believed to have taken its name from Ambrosius Aurelius, a British chief. It is more probable that the monastery and the town were alike dedicated to the "Saint" Ambrose, particulars of whose life may be found in De Voragine's Golden Legend. According to this authority the name Ambrose may be said "of ambor in Greek which is to say as father of light, and soir that is a little child, that is a father of many sons by spiritual generations, clear and full of light". Or, says De Voragine, "Ambrose is said of a stone named ambra which is much sweet, oderant, and precious, and also it is much precious in the church". That amber was likewise precious in the eyes of the heathen is obvious from its frequent presence in prehistoric tombs, and from the vast estimation in which it was held by the Druids. Not only was the golden amber esteemed as an emblem of the golden sun, but its magical magnetic properties caused it to be valued by the ancients as even more precious than gold. There was also a poetic notion connecting amber and Apollo, thus expressed by a Greek poet:--
The Celtic sages a tradition hold That every drop of amber was a tear Shed by Apollo when he fled from heaven For sorely did he weep and sorrowing passed Through many a doleful region till he reached The sacred Hyperboreans.[648]
It will be remembered that Salisbury Plain was sometimes known as Ellendown, with which name may be connoted the statement of Pausanias that Olen the Hyperborean was the first prophet of Delphi.[649]
On turning to The Golden Legend we seem to get a memory of the Tears of Apollo in the statement that St. Ambrose was of such great compassion "that when any confessed to him his sin he wept so bitterly that he would make the sinner to weep". The sympathies of St. Ambrose, and his astonishing tendency to dissolve into tears, are again emphasised by the statement that he wept sore even when he heard of the demise of any bishop, "and when it was demanded of him why he wept for the death of good men for he ought better to make joy, because they went to Heaven," Ambrose made answer that he shed tears because it was so difficult to find any man to do well in such offices. The legend continues, "He was of so great stedfastness and so established in his purpose that he would not leave for dread nor for grief that might be done to him". In connection with this proverbial constancy it may be noted that at the village of Constantine there is a Longstone--the largest in Cornwall--measuring 20 feet high and known as Maen Amber, or the Amber Stone: this was apparently known also as Men Perhen, and was broken up into gateposts in 1764. In the same parish is a shaped stone which Borlase describes as "like the Greek letter omega, somewhat resembling a cap": from the illustration furnished by Borlase it is evident that this monument is a knob very carefully modelled and the measurements recorded, 30 feet in girth, eleven feet high,[650] imply that it was imminently an Elphinstone, Perhenstone, or Bryanstone. With this constantly recurrent combination of 30 and 11 feet, may here be connoted the measurements of the walls of Richborough or Rutupiæ: according to the locally-published Short Account "the north wall is the most perfect of the three that remain, 10 feet 8 inches in thickness and nearly 30 feet in height; the winding courses of tiles to the outer facing are in nearly their original state".[651] The winding courses here mentioned consists of five rows of a red brick, and if one allows for inevitable detritus the original measurements of the quadrangle walls may reasonably be assumed as having been 30 × 11 feet: the solid mass of masonry upon which Rutupiæ's cross is superimposed reaches "downward about 30 feet from the surface". Four or five hundred yards from the castle and upon the very summit of the hill are the remains of an amphitheatre in the form of an egg measuring 200 × 160 feet. To this, the first walled amphitheatre discovered in the country, there were three entrances upon inclined planes, North, South, and West.
The first miracle recorded of St. Ambrose is to the effect that when an infant lying in the cradle a swarm of bees descended on his mouth; then they departed and flew up in the air so high that they might not be seen. Greek mythology relates that the infant Zeus was fed by bees in his cradle upon Mount Ida, and a variant of the same fairy-tale represents Zeus as feeding daily in Ambrosia--
The blessed Gods those rooks Erratic call. Birds cannot pass them safe, no, not the doves Which his ambrosia bear to Father Jove.[652]
Ambrosia, the fabled food of the gods, appears to have been honey: it is said that the Amber stones were anointed with Ambrosia, hence it is significant to find in immediate proximity to each other the place-names Honeycrock and Amberstone in Sussex. The Russians have an extraordinary idea that Ambrosia emanated from horses' heads,[653] and as there is a "Horse Eye Level" closely adjacent to the Sussex Honeycrock and Amberstone we may assume that the neighbouring Hailsham, supposed to mean "Home of Aela or Eile," was originally an Ellie or Elphin Home. Layamon refers to Stonehenge, "a plain that was pleasant besides Ambresbury," as Aelenge, which probably meant Ellie or Elphin meadow, for ing or inge was a synonym for meadow. The correct assumption may possibly be that all flowery meads were the recognised haunts of the anges or ingles: the fairy rings are usually found in meadows, and the poets feigned Proserpine in a meadow gathering flowers ere she was ravished below by Pluto: as late as 1788 an English poet expressed the current belief, "'Tis said the fairy people meet beneath the bracken shade on mead and hill".
Across the Sussex mead known as Horse Eye Level runs a "Snapsons Drove": Snap is a curious parental name and is here perhaps connected with Snave, a Kentish village, presumably associated with San Aphe or San Ap.[654] Not only was the hipha or hobby horse decorated with a knop or knob, but a radical feature of its performance seems to have been movable jaws with which by means of a string the actor snapped at all and sundry: were these snappers, I wonder, the origin of the Snapes and Snapsons? In view of the fact that the surname Leaper is authoritatively connoted with an entry in a fifteenth century account-book: "To one that leped at Chestre 6s. 8d.," the suggestion may possibly be worth consideration.
In Sussex there are two Ambershams and an Amberley: in Hants is Amberwood. St. Ambrose is recorded to have been born in Rome, whence it is probable that he was the ancient divinity of Umbria: in Derbyshire there is a river Amber, and in Yorkshire a Humber, which the authorities regard as probably an aspirated form of cumber, "confluence". The magnetic properties of amber, which certainly cause a humber or confluence, may have originated this meaning; in any case cumber and umber are radically the same word. Probably Humberstones and Amberstones will be found on further inquiry to be as plentiful as Prestons or Peri stones: there is a Humberstone in Lincolnshire, another at Leicester, near Bicester is Ambrosden, and at Epping Forest is Ambresbury. This Epping Ambresbury, known alternatively as Ambers' Banks, is admittedly a British oppidum: the remains cover 12 acres of ground and are situated on the highest plateau in the forest. As there is an Ambergate near _Bux_ton it is noteworthy that Ambers' Banks in Epping are adjacent to Beak Hill, Buckhurst Hill, and High Beech Green. I have already connoted Puck or Bogie with the beech tree, and it is probable that Fairmead Plain by High Beech Green was the Fairy mead where once the pixies gathered: close by is Bury Wood, and there is no doubt the neighbourhood of Epping and Upton was always very British.
In old English amber or omber meant a pitcher--query a honey-crock[655]--whence the authorities translate the various Amberleys as meadow of the pitcher, and Ambergate, near Buxton, as "probably pitcher road". The Amber Hill near Boston, we are told, "will be from Old English amber from its shape," but as it is extremely unusual to find hills in the form of a pitcher this etymology seems questionable. At the Wiltshire Ambresbury there is a Mount Ambrosius at the foot of which, according to local tradition, used to exist a college of Druidesses,[656] in which connection it is noteworthy that just as Silbury Hill is distant about a mile from the Avebury Circle, so Mount Ambrosius is equally distant from Choir Gawr.
To Amber may be assigned the words umpire and empire; Oberon, the lovely child, is haply described as the Emperor of Fairyland, whence also no doubt he was the lord and master of the Empyrean. When dealing elsewhere with the word amber I suggested that it meant radically Sun Father,[657] and there are episodes in the life of St. Ambrose which support this interpretation, e.g., "it happened that an enchanter called devils to him and sent them to St. Ambrose for to annoy and grieve him, but the devils returned and said that they might not approach to his gate because there was a great fire all about his house". Among the Persians it was customary to halo their divinities, not with a circle but with a pyre or pyramid of fire, and in all probability to the auburn Auberon the Emperor of the Empyrean may be assigned not only burn and brand, but also bran in the sense of bran new. That St. Ambrose was Barnaby Bright or the White god of day is implied by the anecdote "a fire in the manner of a shield covered his head, and entered into his mouth: then became his face as white as any snow, and anon it came again to his first form".[658] The basis of this story would seem to have been a picture representing Ambrose with fire not entering into, but emerging from, his mouth and forming a surrounding halo "in the manner of a shield". Embers now mean ashes, and the Ember Days of Christianity probably trace backward to the immemorial times of prehistoric fire-worship. At Parton, near Salisbury, one meets with the curious surname Godber: and doubtless inquiry would establish a connection between this Godber of Parton and Godfrey.
The weekly fair at Ambresbury used to be held on _Fri_day; the maid Freya, to whom Friday owes its name, was evidently Fire Eye; the Latin feriæ were the hey-days or holidays dedicated to some fairy. Fairs were held customarily on the festival of the local saint, frequently even to-day within ancient earthworks: the most famous Midsummer Fair used to be that held at Barnwell: Feronia, the ancient Italian divinity at whose festival a great fair was held, and the first-fruits of the field offered, is, as has been shown, equivalent to Beronia or Oberon.
According to Borlase there is in Anglesea "a horse-shoe 22 paces in diameter called Brangwyn or Supreme court; it lies in a place called Tre'r Drew or Druids' Town".[659] Stonehenge consists of a circle enclosing a horse-shoe or hoof--the footprint and sign of Hipha the White Mare, or Ephialtes the Night Mare, and a variant of this idea is expressed in the circle enclosing a triangle as exhibited in the Christian emblem on p. 571. That Christianity did not always conceive the All Father as the Ancient of Days is evident from Fig. 341, where the central Power is depicted within the writhings of what is seemingly an acanthus wreath: the CUNOB fairy on the British coin illustrated ante, page 528, is extending what is either a ball of fire or else a wreath. The word wraith, meaning apparition, is connoted by Skeat with an Icelandic term meaning "a pile of stones to warn a wayfarer," hence this heap may be connoted with rath the Irish, and rhaith the Welsh, for a fairy dun or hill. Skeat further connotes wraith with the Norwegian word vardyvle, meaning "a guardian or attendant spirit seen to follow or precede one," and he suggests that vardyvle meant ward evil. Certainly the wraiths who haunted the raths were supposed to ward off evil, and the giant Wreath,[660] who was popularly associated with Port_reath_ near Redruth, was in all probability the same wraith that originated the place-name Cape Wrath. In Welsh a speech is called ar raith or on the mound, hence we may link _rhe_toric to this idea, and assume that the raths were the seats of public eloquence as we know they were.
As wreath means a circle it is no doubt the same word as rota, a wheel, and Rodehengenne or Stonehengels may have meant the Wheel Angels. The cruciform rath, illustrated ante, page 55, is pre-eminently a rota, and in Fig. 343 Christ is represented in a circle supported by four somewhat unaerial Evangelists or Angels.
Mount Ida in Phrygia was the reputed seat of the Dactyli, a word which means fingers, and these mysterious Powers were sometimes identified with the Cabiri. The Dactyli, or fingers, are described as fabulous beings to whom the discovery of iron and the art of working it by means of fire was ascribed, and as the philosophy of Phairie is always grounded upon some childishly simple basis, it is probable that the Elphin eleven in its elementary sense represented the ten fingers controlled by Emperor Brain. The digits are magic little workmen who level mountains and rear palaces at the bidding of their lord and master Brain: the word digit, French doight, is in fact Good god, and dactyli is the same word plus a final yli.
In Folklore as an Historical Science Sir Laurence Gomme lays some stress upon a tale which is common alike to Britain and Brittany, and is therefore supposed to be of earlier date than the separation of Britons and Bretons. This tale which centres at London, is to the effect that a countryman once upon a time dreamed there was a priceless treasure hidden at London Bridge: he therefore started on a quest to London where on arrival he was observed loitering and was interrogated by a bystander. On learning the purpose of his trip the Cockney laughed heartily at such simplicity, and jestingly related how he himself had also dreamed a dream to the effect that there was treasure buried in the countryman's own village. On his return home the rustic, thinking the matter over, decided to dig where the cockney had facetiously indicated, whereupon to his astonishment he actually found a pot containing treasure. On the first pot unearthed was an inscription reading--
Look lower, where this stood Is another twice as good.
Encouraged he dug again, whereupon to his greater astonishment he found a second pot bearing the same inscription: again he dug and found a third pot even yet more valuable. This fabulously ancient tale is notably identified with Upsall in Yorkshire; it is, we are told, "a constant tradition of the neighbourhood, and the identical bush yet exists (or did in 1860) beneath which the treasure was found; a _bur_tree or elder."[661] Upsall was originally written Upeshale and Hupsale (primarily Ap's Hall?) and the idea is a happy one, for in mythology it is undeniably true that the deeper one delves the richer proves the treasure trove. In suggesting that eleven may have been the number of the ten digits guided and controlled by the Brain one may thus not only remark the injunction to the Jews: "Thou shalt make curtains of goatshair to be a covering upon the tabernacle: eleven curtains shalt thou make,"[662] but one may note also the probable elucidation of this Hebrew symbolism:--
Shall any gazer see with mortal eyes Or any searcher know by mortal mind; Veil after veil will lift, but there must be Veil upon veil behind.[663]
Assuming that in the simplest sense the elphin eleven were the ten digits and the Brain, one may compare with this combination the ten Powers or qualities which according to the Cabala emanated from "The Most Ancient One". "He has given existence to all things. He made ten lights spring forth from His midst, lights which shone with the forms which they had borrowed from Him and which shed everywhere the light of a brilliant day. The Ancient One, the most Hidden of the hidden, is a high beacon, and we know Him only by His lights which illuminate our eyes so abundantly. His Holy Name is no other thing than these lights."[664]
According to The Golden Legend the Emperor of Constantinople applied to St. Ambrose to receive the sacred mysteries, and that Ambrose was Vera or Truth is hinted by the testimony of the Emperor. "I have found a man of truth, my master Ambrose, and such a man ought to be a bishop." The word bishop, Anglo-Saxon biscop, supposed to mean overseer, is like the Greek episcopus, radically op, an eye.[665] Egyptian archæologists tell us that in Egypt the Coptic Land of the Great Optic, even the very games had a religious significance; whence there was probably some ethical idea behind the British "jingling match by eleven blind-folded men and one unmasked and hung with bells". This joyous and diverting jeu is mentioned as part of the sports-programme at the celebrated Scouring of the White Horse: we have already noted the blind-folded Little Leaf Man, led blind Amor-like from house to house, also the Blind Man who is said to have sat for eleven years in the Church of St. Maur (or Amour?), and among other sports at the Scouring, eleven enters again into an account of chasing the fore wheel of a wagon down the hill slope. The trundling of a fiery wheel--which doubtless took place at the several British Trendle Hills--is a well-known feature of European solar ceremonies: the greater interest of the Scouring item is perhaps in the number of competitors: "eleven on 'em started and amongst 'em a sweep-chimley and a millard [milord], and the millard tripped up the sweep-chimley and made the zoot fly a good 'un--the wheel ran pretty nigh down to the springs that time".[666]
The Jewish conception of The Most Ancient One, the most Hidden of the hidden, reappears in Jupiter Ammon, whose sobriquet of Ammon meant the hidden one: "Verily, Thou art a God that hidest Thyself". In England the game of Hide and Seek used to be known as Hooper's Hide,[667] and this curious connection between Jupiter, the Hidden one, and Hooper's Hide somewhat strengthens my earlier surmise that Hooper = Iupiter.
In the opinion of Sir John Evans "there can be little doubt" of the head upon the obverse of Fig. 344 being intended for Jupiter Ammon;[668] in Cornish Blind Man's Hide and Seek, the players used to shout "Vesey, vasey vum: Buckaboo has come!"[669]
If as now suggested the wheel and the "spindle whorl" were alike symbols of the Eye of Heaven, it is equally probable that the amber, and many other variety of bead, was also a talismanic eyeball:[670] among grave deposits the blue bead was very popular, assumedly for the reason that blue was the colour of heaven. Large quantities of blue "whorls" were discovered by Schliemann[671] at Mykenæ, and among the many varieties of beads found in Britain one in particular is described as "of a Prussian Blue colour with three circular grooves round the circumference, filled with white paste".[672] This design of three circles reappears in Fig. 347 taken from the base of a British Incense-cup; likewise in a group of rock sculpturings (Fig. 348) found at Kirkmabreck in Kirkcudbrightshire. Mr. Ludovic Mann, who sees traces of astronomical intention in this sculpture, writes: "If the pre-historic peoples of Scotland and indeed Europe had this conception, then the Universe to their mind would consist of eleven units, namely, the nine celestial bodies already referred to, and the Central Fire and the 'Counter-Earth'. Very probably they knew also of elliptical motions. Oddly enough the cult of eleven units (which I detected some fifteen years ago) representing the universe can be discerned in the art of the late Neolithic and Bronze Ages in Scotland and over a much wider area. For example, in nearly all the cases of Scottish necklaces of beads of the Bronze Age which have survived intact, it will be found that they consist of a number of beads which is eleven or a multiple of eleven. I have, for example, a fine Bronze Age necklace from Wigtownshire consisting of 187 beads (that is of 17 × 11) and a triangular centre piece. The same curious recurrence of the number and its multiples can often be detected in the number of standing stones in a circle, in the number of stones placed in slightly converging rows found in Caithness, Sutherland, some parts of England, Wales, and in Brittany. The number eleven is occasionally involved in the Bronze Age pottery decorations, and in the patterns on certain ornaments and relics of the Bronze Age.... The Cult of eleven seems to survive in the numerous names of Allah, who was known by ninety-nine names, and hence it is invariably the case that the Mahommedan has a necklace consisting of either eleven or a multiple of eleven beads but not exceeding ninety-nine, as he is supposed to repeat one of the names for each bead which he tells."[673]
We have seen that the rudraksha or eye of the god S'iva seeds are usually eleven faceted, and my surmise that the whorls of Troy were universal Eyes is further implied by the group here illustrated. According to Thomas, our British Troy Towns or Caer Troiau were originally astronomical observatories, and he derives the word troiau from the verb troi to turn, or from tro signifying a flux of time:--[674]
By ceaseless actions all that is subsists; Constant rotation of th' unwearied wheel That Nature rides upon, maintains her health, Her beauty and fertility. She dreads An instant's pause and lives but while she moves.
The Trojan whorls are unquestionably tyres or tours, and the notion of an eye is in some instances clearly imparted to them by radiations which resemble those of the iris. The wavy lines of No. 1835 and 1840 probably denote water or the spirit, in No. 1847 the "Jupiter chain" of our SOLIDO coin reappears; the astral specks on 1841 and 1844 may be connoted with the stars and planets, and in 1833 the sense of rolling or movement is clearly indicated.
Schliemann supposes that the thousands of whorls found in Troy served as offerings to the tutelary deity of the city, i.e., Athene: some of them have the form of a cone, or of two cones base to base, and that Troy was pre-eminently a town of the Eternal Eye is perhaps implied by the name Troie.
Fig. 351 is a ground plan of Trowdale Mote in Scotland which, situated on a high and lonely marshland within near sight of nothing but a few swelling hillocks amongst reeds and mosses and water, has been described as the "strangest, most solitary, most prehistoric looking of all our motes".[675]
It was popularly supposed that all the witches of West Cornwall used to meet at midnight on Midsummer Eve at Trewa (pronounced Troway) in the parish of Zennor, and around the dying fires renewed their vows to the Devil, their master. In this wild Zennor (supposedly holy land) district is a witch's rock which if touched nine times at midnight reputedly brought good luck.
The "Troy Town" of Welsh children is the Hopscotch of our London pavements; at one time every English village seems to have possessed its maze (or Drayton?), and that the mazes were the haunts of fairies is well known:--
... the yellow skirted fays Fly after the night steeds Leaving their moon-loved maze.
In A Midsummer-Night's Dream Titania laments:--
The nine men's morris is filled up with mud And the quaint mazes in the wanton green For lack of tread are indistinguishable.
At St. Martha's Church near Guildford, facing Newlands Corner are the remains of an earthwork maze close by the churchyard, and within this maze used to be held the country sports.[676] We shall consider some extraordinarily quaint mazes and Troy Towns in a subsequent chapter, but meanwhile it may here be noted that in the Scilly Islands (which the Greeks entitled Hesperides) is a monument thus described: "Close to the edge of the cliff is a curious enclosure called Troy Town, taking its name from the Troy of ancient history; the streets of ancient Troy were so constructed that an enemy, once within the gates, could not find his way out again. The enclosure has an outer circle of white pebbles placed on the turf, with an opening at one point, supposed to represent the walls and gate of Troy. Within this there are several rows of stones; the spaces between them represent the streets. It presents quite a maze, and but few who enter can find their way out again without crossing one of the boundary lines. It is not known when or by whom it was constructed, but it has from time to time been restored by the islanders."[677]
This Troy Town is situated on _Camper_dizil Point; in the same neighbourhood is Carn Himbra Point, and Himbrian, Kymbrian, or Cambrian influences are seemingly much evident in this district, as doubtless they also were at Comberton[678] famous for its maze.
At the very centre, eye, or San Troy of St. Mary's Island is situated Holy Vale, and here also are the place-names Maypole, Burrow, and Content. It has already been suggested that Bru or Burrow was originally pure Hu or pere Hu, Hu being, as will be remembered, the traditional Leader of the Kymbri into these islands, and the first of the Three National Pillars of Britain: the chief town of St. Mary's is Hugh Town, and running through Holy Vale is what is described as a paved way (in wonderful preservation) known as the Old Roman Road, formerly supposed to be the main-way to Hugh Town. One may be allowed to question whether the Legions of Imperial Rome ever troubled to construct so fine a causeway in so insignificant an island; or if so, for what reason? The houses of Holy Vale are embowered in trees of larger growth than those elsewhere in the neighbourhood: they "complete a picture of great calm and repose," and that this Holy Vale was anciently an abri is fairly self-evident apart from the interesting place-name Burrow, and the neighbouring Bur Point.
The Romans entitled the Scillies Sillinæ Insulæ: I have already suggested they were a seat of the Selli; we have met with Selene in connection with St. Levan's, and it is not improbable that the deity of Sillinæ Insulæ was Selene, Helena, or Luna. The Silus stone from the ruined chapel of St. Helen's at Helenium or Land's End (Cape Cornwall) has been already noted: the most ancient building in all the Sillinæ Insulæ or the Scillies is the ruined chapel on St. Helen's of which the northern aisle now measures 12 feet wide and 19 feet 6 inches long. As the Hellenes usually had ideas underlying all their measurements it is probable that the 19 feet 6 inches was primarily 19 feet, for nineteen was a highly mystic Hellenic number. Of the Hyperboreans Diodorus states: "They say, moreover, that Apollo once in nineteen years comes into the island in which space of time the stars perform their courses and return to the same points, and therefore the Greeks call the revolutions of nineteen years the Great Year". Nineteen nuns tended the sacred fire of St. Bridget, and according to some observers the inmost circle of Stonehenge consisted of nineteen "Blue Stones".[679] These nineteen Stone Hengles may be connoted with the nineteen ruined huts on the summit of Ingleborough in Yorkshire: the summit of Ingleborough is a plateau of about a mile in circuit and hereupon are "vestiges of an ancient British camp of about 15 acres inclosing traces of nineteen ancient horseshoe shaped huts".[680]
As the word ingle, meaning fire, is not found until 1508 the authorities are unable to interpret Ingleborough as meaning Fire hill, although without doubt it served as a Beacon: the same etymological difficulty likewise confronts them at Ingleby Cross, Inglesham, numerous Ingletons, and at Ingestre. We have seen that Inglewood was known as Englysshe Wood;[681] in Somerset is Combe English, and in the Scillies is English Island Hill: 500 yards from this English Hill is a stone circle embracing an upright stone the end of which is 18 inches square.
Eighteen courtiers were assigned to the ange Oberon: the megalith Long Meg is described as a square unhewn freestone column 15 feet in circumference by 18 feet high, and there is no doubt that eighteen or twice nine possessed at one time some significance. I suspect that the double nine stood for the Twain, each of which was reckoned as nine or True: on the top of Hellingy Downs in the Scillies is a barrow covered with large stones nine feet long, and built upon a mound which is surrounded by inner and outer rows of stone.[682]
On Salakee Downs there is a monolith resting on a large flat rock, on three projections situated at a distance of eighteen inches from one another and each having a diameter of about 2 inches:[683] this is known as the Druid's throne, and about 5 yards to the east are two more upright rocks of similar size and shape named the Twin Sisters.[684] The Twin Sisters of Biddenden, whose name was Preston, were associated with five pieces of ground known as the Bread and Cheese Lands, in which connection it is interesting to find that near English Island Hill is Chapel Brow, constituting the eastern point of a deep bay known by the curious name of Bread and Cheese Cove.[685] In connection with Biddenden we connoted Pope's Hall and Bubhurst; it is thus noteworthy that near Bread and Cheese Cove is a Bab's Carn, and a large sea cavern known as Pope's Hole.
In Germany and Scandinavia the stone circles are known not as Merry Maidens, but as Adam's Dances. Close to Troy Town on St. Agnes in the Scillies are two rocks known as Adam and Eve: these are described as nine feet high with a space about nine inches between them: "Here, too, is the Nag's Head, which is the most curious rock to be met with on the islands; it has a remote resemblance to the head of a horse, and would seem to have been at one time an object of worship, being surrounded by a circle of stones".[686]
On the lower slopes of Hellingy are the remains of a primitive village, and the foundations of many circular huts: among these foundations have been found a considerable quantity of crude pottery, and an ancient hand-mill which the authorities assign to about 2000 B.C. We have seen that the goddesses of Celtdom were known as the Mairæ, Matronæ, Matres, or Matræ (the mothers): further, that the Welsh for Mary is Fair, whence the assumption becomes pressing that the "Saint" Mary of the Scillies was primarily the Merry Fairy. The author of The English Language points out that in Old English merry meant originally no more than "agreeable, pleasing". Heaven and Jerusalem were described by old poets as "merry" places; and the word had supposedly no more than this signification in the phrase "Merry England," into which we read a more modern interpretation.[687] That the Scillies were permeated with the Fairy Faith is sufficiently obvious; at Hugh Town we find the ubiquitous Silver Street, and the neighbouring Holvear Hill was not improbably holy to Vera.
Near the Island of St. Helen's is a group of rocks marked upon the map as Golden Ball Bar; near by is an islet named Foreman. The farthest sentinel of the Scillies is an islet named the Bishop, now famous to all sea-farers for its phare. It is quite certain that no human Bishop would ever have selected as his residence an abode so horribly exposed, whence it is more likely that the Bishop here commemorated was the Burnebishop or Boy Bishop whose ceremonies were maintained until recent years, notably and particularly at Cambrai. In England it is curious to find the Lady-bird or Burnie Bee equated with a Bishop, yet it was so; and hence the rhyme:--
Bishop, Bishop Burnebee, tell me when my wedding will be, Fly to the east, fly to the west, Fly to them that I love best.
In connection with the Island of St. Agnes it may be noted that ignis is the Latin for fire, whence it is possible that the islets, Big Smith and Little Smith, Burnt Island and Monglow, all had some relation to the Fieryman, Fairy Man, or Foreman: it is also possible that the neighbouring Camperdizil Point is connected with deiseul, the Scotch ejaculation, and with dazzle. Troy Town in St. Agnes is almost environed by Smith Sound, and this curious combination of names points seemingly to some connection between the Cambers and the metal smiths.[688]
It will be remembered that Agnes was a title of the Papesse Jeanne, who was said to have come from Engelheim or Angel's Home: in Germany the Lady Bird used to be known as the Lady Mary's Key-bearer, and exhorted to fly to Engelland: "Insect of Mary, fly away, fly away, to Engelland. Engelland is locked, its key is broken."[689] Sometimes the invocation ran: "Gold chafer up and away to thy high storey to thy Mother Anne, who gives thee bread and cheese. 'Tis better than bitter death."[690]
Thanks to an uncultured and tenacious love of Phairie, the keys of rural Engelland have not yet been broken, nor happily is Engelland locked. Our history books tell us of a splendid pun[691] perpetrated by a Bishop of many centuries ago: noticing some captured English children in the market-place at Rome, he woefully exclaimed that had they been baptised then would they have been non Angli sed angeli. Has this episcopal pleasantry been overrated? or was the good Bishop punning unconsciously deeper than he intended?
FOOTNOTES:
[593] Gomme, Sir L., London, p. 74.
[594] De bello Gallico, v., 21.
[595] Blackie, C., Dictionary of Place-names, p. 21.
[596] Garnier, Col., The Worship of the Dead, p. 240.
[597] Thomas, J., Brit. Antiquissima, p. 108.
[598] The choral music of the Teutons did not create a favourable impression on the mind of Tacitus, vide his account of a primitive Hymn of Hate: "The Germans abound with rude strains of verse, the reciters of which, in the language of the country, are called Bards. With this barbarous poetry they inflame their minds with ardour in the day of action, and prognosticate the event from the impression which it happens to make on the minds of the soldiers, who grow terrible to the enemy, or despair of success, as the war-song produces an animated or a feeble sound. Nor can their manner of chanting this savage prelude be called the tone of human organs: it is rather a furious uproar; a wild chorus of military virtue. The vociferation used upon these occasions is uncouth and harsh, at intervals interrupted by the application of their bucklers to their mouths, and by the repercussion bursting out with redoubled force."--Germania, I., iii., p. 313.
[599] Blackman, Winifred S., The Rosary in Magic and Religion, Folklore, xxiv., 4.
[600] Wright, E. M., Rustic Speech and Folklore, p. 303.
[601] Cf. Hazlitt, W. Carew, Faiths and Folklore, i., p. 314.
[602] Cockney dialect is closely akin to Kentish, and abounds in venerable verbal relics: "The stranger enters, but he nonetheless pays his toll; he does not leave any mark on London, but London leaves an indelible stamp upon him. The children of the foreigner, the children of the Yorkshireman or Lancastrian, belong in speech neither to Yorkshire nor Lancashire, they become more Cockney than the Cockneys; and even the alien voices of the east end, notably less musical than those of our own people, take on the tones of London's ancient speech."--MacBride, Mackenzie, London's Dialect, An Ancient form of English Speech, with a Note on the Dialects of the North of England, and the Midlands and Scotland, p. 8.
[603] Bliss, J. B., A Mound of Many Cities or Tell el Hesy Excavated.
[604] I was unaware of this rather corroborative evidence when I put forward the suggestion five years ago that Egypt was radically ypte or Good Eye.
[605] The Iberians and Jews also possessed a never-to-be-uttered sacred Name.
[606] Barddas, p. 95.
[607] Ibid., p. 251.
[608] Barddas, p. 23.
[609] As also was the Bardic conception of God, summed up in the Triad:--
"Three things which God cannot but be; whatever perfect Goodness ought to be; whatever perfect Goodness would desire to be; and whatever perfect Goodness can be."
Again--
"There is nothing beautiful but what is just; There is nothing just but love; There is no love but God."
And thus it ends. Tydain, the Father of Awen, sang it, says the Book of Sion Cent (Barddas, p. 219).
[610] Eckenstein, L., Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes, p. 146.
[611] Illustrated on page opposite.
[612] This name appears on maps sometimes as Salla Key, sometimes as Salakee.
[613] Tonkin, J. C., Lyonesse, p. 38.
[614] Randolph (1657).
[615] Johnson, W., Byways, p. 185.
[616] Hazlitt, W. Carew, Faiths and Folklore, i., 309.
[617] Quoted from Harrison, J., Ancient Art and Ritual, p. 188.
[618] Folklore, XXV., iv., p. 426.
[619] Larwood and Hotten, Hist. of Signboards, p. 504.
[620] Cf. Borlase, W., Cornwall, pp. 193, 201.
[621] One may connote this ceremony with the Bardic triad: "God is the measuring rod of all truth, all justice, and all goodness, therefore He is a yoke on all, and all are under it, and woe to him who shall violate it".
[622] See Fig. 331, p. 538.
[623] Quoted from Science of Language, Max Müller, p. 540.
[624] Sabean Litany attributed to Enoch.
[625] G. L., v. 185, 195.
[626] Walford E., Greater London, vol. ii., p. 299.
[627] Dennis G., Cities of Etruria.
[628] Cornwall, vol. i., 397; Victoria County Histories.
[629] Cornwall, vol. i., 394; Victoria County Histories.
[630] Blackie's Dictionary of Place-Names defines Godmanham as follows: "the holy man's dwelling, the site of an idol temple destroyed under the preaching of Paulinus whose name it bears," p. 98.
[631] "The year before last I went to Bodavon Mountain to take photographs of the cromlech that used to lie there. When I got there, however, I found the place absolutely bare, not a vestige of the cromlech remaining. On making inquiries, a road newly metalled was pointed out to me, and I was told that the cromlech had been used for that purpose. This was done despite the fact that many tons of loose stone are lying on the mountain-side close by."--Griffith, John E., _The Cromlechs of Anglesey and Carnarvon_, 1900.
[632] Huyshe, W., Life of St. Columba, p. 176.
[633] Hazlitt, W. Carew, Faiths and Folklore, i., 210.
[634] "The metrical historian Hardyng twice employed but without explaining the appellation stone Hengels, 'which called is the Stone Hengles certayne'. This reads like lapides Anglorum or lapides Angelorum."--Herbert, A., Cyclops Christianus, p. 165.
[635] "Who would ween, in this worlds realm, that Hengest thought to deceive the king who had his daughter. For there is never any man, that men may not over-reach with treachery. They took an appointed day, that these people should come together with concord and with peace, in a plain that was pleasant beside Ambresbury; the place was Aelenge; now hight it Stonehenge. There Hengest the traitor, either by word or by writ, made known to the king; that he would come with his forces, in honour of the king; but he would not bring in retinue but three hundred knights, the wisest men of all that he might find. And the king should bring as many on his side bold thanes, and who should be wisest of all that dwelt in Britain, with their good vestments, all without weapons, that no evil, should happen to them, through confidence of the weapons. Thus they it spake, and eft they it brake; for Hengest the traitor thus gan he teach his comrades, that each should take a long saex (knife), and lay be his shank, within his hose, where he it might hide. When they came together, the Saxons and Britons, then quoth Hengest, most deceitful of all knights: 'Hail be thou, lord king, each is to thee thy subject! If ever any of thy men hath weapon by his side, send it with friendship far from ourselves, and be we in amity, and speak we of concord; how we may with peace our lives live.' Thus the wicked man spake there to the Britons. Then answered Vortiger--here he was too unwary--'If here is any knight so wild, that hath weapon by his side, he shall lose the hand through his own brand, unless he soon send it hence'. Their weapons they sent away, then had they nought in hand; knights went upward, knights went downward, each spake with other as if he were his brother.
"When the Britons were mingled with the Saxons, then called Hengest of knights most treacherous: 'Take your saexes, my good warriors, and bravely bestir you and spare ye none!' Noble Britons were there, but they knew not of the speech, what the Saxish men said them between. They drew out the saexes, all aside; they smote on the right side, they smote on the left side; before and behind they laid them to the ground; all they slew that they came nigh; of the king's men there fell four hundred and five, woe was the king alive!"--Layamon, Brut..
[636] Cf. Herbert, A., Cyclops Christianius, p. 163.
[637] Surnames, p. 31.
[638] Cf. Hazlitt, W. Carew, Faith and Folklore, ii., 389.
[639] Teutonic Mythology, Rydberg, p. 360.
[640] Demonology, 177.
[641] Cf. Wright, T., Essays on Archæological Subjects, i., 120.
[642] Davies, D., The Ancient Celtic Church of Wales, p. 14.
[643] Cf. Sketches of Irish History, anon., Dublin, 1844.
[644] Cf. Gordon, E. O., Prehistoric London, its Mounds and Circles, p. 67.
[645] Borlase, Cornwall, p. 208.
[646] Cf. Bonwick, J., Irish Druids, p. 11.
[647] De Bello Gallico, VI., x., 17.
[648] Quoted by Bryant from Appollon Argonaut, L. 4, V. 611.
[649] Cf. Wilkes, Anna, Ireland, Ur of the Chaldees, p. 88.
[650] Borlase, Antiquities of Cornwall, p. 173.
[651] p. 6.
[652] Odyssey, XII.
[653] Johnson, W., Byways, p. 440.
[654] As all our Avons are traced to Sanscrit ap, meaning water, one may here note the Old English word snape, meaning a spring in arable ground.
[655] In the mediæval Story of Asenath, the Angel who describes himself as "Prince of the House of God and Captain of His Host," and was thus presumably Michael, says to Asenath; "Look within thine Aumbrey, and thou shall find withal to furnish thy table". Then she hastened thereto and found "a store of Virgin honey, white as snow of sweetest savour". The archangel tells Asenath that "all whom Penitence bringeth before Him shall eat of this honey gathered by the bees of Paradise, from the dew of the roses of Heaven, and those who eat thereof shall never see death but shall live for evermore."--Aucassin and Nicolette and other Mediæval Romances, p. 209 (Everyman's Library).
[656] Gordon, A. O., Prehistoric London, p. 66.
[657] Lost Language, ii., 141.
[658] Golden Legend, iii., 117.
[659] Cornwall, p. 207.
[660] Hunt, J., Popular Romances of the West of England, p. 76.
[661] P. 20
[662] Exod. xxvi. 7.
[663] Arnold, E., Light of Asia.
[664] Cf. Abelson, J., Jewish Mysticism, p. 137.
[665] The Bryan of popular ballad seems to have been famed for the casting of his glad eye:--
"Bryan he was tall and strong Right blithsome rolled his een." --Percy Reliques, i., 276.
[666] Hughes, T., Scouring the White Horse, p. 110.
[667] Taylor, J., The Devil's Pulpit, ii., 297.
[668] P. 344.
[669] Courtney, Miss M. L., Cornish Feasts and Folklore, p. 175.
[670] Among the Maoris potent powers were supposed to reside in the human eye. "When a warrior slew a chief, he immediately gouged out his eyes and swallowed them, the atua tonga, or divinity, being supposed to reside in that organ; thus he not only killed the body, but also possessed himself of the soul of his enemy, and consequently the more chiefs he slew, the greater did his divinity become."--Taylor, R., Te Ika A Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants.
[671] Mykenæ, p. 77.
[672] B.M., Guide to the Early Iron Age, p. 107.
[673] Archaic Sculpturings, p. 23.
[674] Britannia Antiquissima, p. 50.
[675] Coles, F. R., The Motes of Kirkcudbrightshire, p. 151.
[676] Johnson, W., Byways, p. 195.
[677] Lyonesse, a Handbook for the Isles of Scilly, p. 70.
[678] The Cambridgeshire Comberton is situated on the Bourn brook: there is also a Great and Little Comberton underlying Bredon Hill in the Pershore district of Worcester.
[679] The term "Bluestone" in the West of England meant _holy stone_.
[680] Wilson, J. G., Imperial Gazetteer.
[681] On the tip-top of Highgate Hill is now standing an Englefield House immediately adjacent to an Angel Inn.
[682] Lyonesse, p. 41.
[683] Ibid., p. 39.
[684] Ibid., p. 39.
[685] Ibid., p. 79.
[686] Ibid., p. 78.
[687] P. 112.
[688] Writing not in connection with either Monglow or Camperdizil Miss Gordon observes: "We may conjure up the scene where the watery stretches reflected in molten gold the 'pillars of fire' symbolising the presence of God; we seem to behold the reverend forms of the white clad Druids revolving in the mystic 'Deasil' dance from East to West around the glowing pile, and so following the course of the Sun, the image of the Deity".--Prehistoric London, p. 72.
[689] Eckenstein, L., Comp. St. Nursery Rhymes, p. 97.
[690] P. 98.
[691] Skeat believed pun meant something punched out of shape. Is it not more probably connected with the Hebrew pun meaning dubious?
XI. THE FAIR MAID
"We could not blot out from English poetry its visions of the fairyland without a sense of irreparable loss. No other literature save that of Greece alone can vie with ours in its pictures of the land of fantasy and glamour, or has brought back from that mysterious realm of unfading beauty treasures of more exquisite and enduring charm."--ALFRED NUTT.
"We have already shown how long and how faithfully the Gaelic and Welsh peasants clung to their old gods in spite of all the efforts of the clerics to explain them as ancient kings, or transform them into wonder-working saints, or to ban them as demons of Hell."--CHARLES SQUIRE.
In the preceding chapter it was shown that the number eleven was for some reason peculiarly identified with the Elven, or Elves: in Germany eleven seems to have carried a somewhat similar significance, for on the eleventh day of the eleventh month was always inaugurated the Carnival season which was celebrated by weekly festivities which increased in mirthful intensity until Shrove Tuesday.[692] Commenting upon this custom it has been pointed out that "The fates seem to have displayed a remarkable sense of artistry in decreeing that the Great War should cease at the moment when it did, for the hostilities came to an end at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month".[693]
Etymologists connect the word Fate with fay; the expression fate is radically good fay, and it is merely a matter of choice whether Fate or the Fates be regarded as Three or as One: moreover the aspect of Fate, whether grim or beautiful, differs invariably to the same extent as that of the two fairy mothers which Kingsley introduces into The Water Babies, the delicious Lady Doasyouwouldbedoneby and the forbidding Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid.
The Greek Moirae or Fates were represented as either three austere maidens or as three aged hags: the Celtic mairae, of which Rice Holmes observes that "no deities were nearer to the hearts of Celtic peasants," were represented in groups of three; their aspect was that of gentle, serious, motherly women holding new-born infants in their hands, or bearing fruits and flowers in their laps; and many offerings were made to them by country folk in gratitude for their care of farm, and flock, and home.[694]
In the Etrurian bucket illustrated on page 474, the Magna Mater or Fate was represented with two children, one white the other black: in the emblems herewith the supporting Pair are depicted as two Amoretti, and the Central Fire, Force, or Tryamour is portrayed by three hearts blazing with the fire of Charity. There is indeed no doubt that the Three Charities, Three Graces, and Three Fates were merely presentations of the one unchanging central and everlasting Fire, Phare, or Force. Among the Latins the Moirae were termed Parcae, and seemingly all mythologies represent the Great Pyre, Phare, or Fairy as at times a Fury. In Britain Keridwen--whose name the authorities state meant perpetual love--appears very notably as a Fury, and on certain British coins she is similarly depicted. What were the circumstances which caused the moneyers of the period to concentrate such anguish into the physiognomy of the pherepolis it would be interesting to know: the fact remains that they did so, yet we find what obviously is the same fiery-locked figure with an expression unmistakably serene.
Tradition seems to have preserved the memory of the Virgin Mary as one of the Three Greek Moirae or Three Celtic Mairae or Spinners, for according to an apocryphal gospel Mary was one of the spinsters of the Temple Veil: "And the High priest said; choose for me by lot who shall spin the gold and the white and fine linen, and the blue and the scarlet, and the true purple. And the true purple and the scarlet fell to the lot of Mary, and she took them and went away to her house."[695] The purple heart-shaped mulberry in Greek is moria, and the Athenian district known as Moria is supposed to have been so named from its similitude to a mulberry leaf. In Cornwall the scarlet-berried holly is known as Aunt Mary's Tree, and as aunt in the West of England was a title applied in general to old women, it is evident that Aunt Mary of the Holly Tree must have been differentiated from the little Maid of Bethlehem. According to The Golden Legend St. Mary died at the age of seventy-two, a number of which the significance has been partially noted, and she was reputed to have been fifteen years of age when she gave birth to the Saviour of the World: the number fifteen is again connected with St. Mary in the miracle thus recorded of her early childhood: "And when the circle of three years was rolled round, and the time of her weaning was fulfilled, they brought the Virgin to the Temple of the Lord with offerings. Now there were round the temple according to the fifteen Psalms of Degrees, fifteen steps going up."[696] Up these mystic fifteen steps we are told that the new-weaned child miraculously walked unaided.
The New Testament refers to three Marys; in the design overleaf the figure might well represent Fate, and that there was once a Great and a Little Mary is somewhat implied by the fact that in Jerusalem adjoining the church of St. Mary was "another church of St. Mary called the Little":[697] that there was also at one time a White Mary and a Black Mary is indubitable from the numerous Black Virgins which still exist in continental churches. Even the glorious Diana of Ephesus was, as has been seen, at times represented as black: the name Ephesus, where the Magna Mater was pre-eminently worshipped, is radically Ephe, and that Godiva of Coventry was alternatively associated with night is clear from the fact that the Godiva procession at a village near Coventry included two Godivas, one white, the other black.[698]
Near King's Cross, London, in the ward of Farendone, used to exist a spring known as Black Mary's Hole: this name was popularly supposed to have originated from a negro woman who kept a black cow and used to draw water from the spring, but tradition also said that it was originally the Blessed Mary's Well, and that this having fallen into disrepute at the time of the Reformation the less attractive cognomen was adopted.[699]
The immense antiquity of human occupation of this site is indicated by the fact that opposite Black Mary's Hole there was found at the end of the seventeenth century a pear-shaped flint instrument in the company of bones of some species of elephant: after lying unappreciated for many years the tool in question has since been recognised as a piece of human handiwork, and may fairly claim to be the first of its kind recorded in this or any other country.[700] That the contemporaries of the mammoth were no mean artists is proved by the Bruniquel objects--particularly the engraving on pebble--here illustrated: not only does the elephant figure on our prehistoric coinage, but it is also found carved on upwards of a hundred stones in Scotland and notably upon a broch at Brechin in Forfarshire. Such was the skill of the Brigantian flintworkers who were settled around Burlington or Bridlington (Yorkshire, anciently Deira) that they successfully fabricated small fish-hooks out of flint, a feat forcing one to endorse the dictum of T. Quiller Couch: "This is a matter not unconnected with our present subject, as the hand which fashioned so skilfully the barbed arrow-head of flint, and the polished hammer-axes may be fairly associated with a brain of high capabilities".[701]
We have seen that in Scandinavia Mara--doubtless Black Mary--was a ghastly spectre associated with the Night Mare: to this Black Mary may perhaps be assigned mar, meaning to injure or destroy, and probably also morose, morbid, and murder. We again get the equation mar = Mary in marrjan the old German for mar, for marrjan is equivalent to the name Marian which is merely another form of Mary. The Maid Marian who figured in our May-day festivities in association with the sovereign archer Robin Hood, was obviously not the marrer nor the morose Mary but the Merry Lady of the Morris Dance, alias the gentle Maiden Vere or daughter deare of Flora. To White Mary or Mary the Weaver of the scarlet and true purple, may be assigned mere, meaning true and also merry, mirth, and marry: to Black Mary may be assigned myrrh or mar, meaning bitterness, and it is characteristic of the morose tendency of clericalism that it is to this root that the authorities attribute the Mary of Merry England.
The association of the May-fair or Fairy Mother with fifteen, and merriment is pointed by the custom that the great fair which used to be held in the Mayfair district of London began on May 1 and lasted for fifteen days: this fair, we are told, was "not for trade and merchandise, but for musick, showes, drinking, gaming, raffling, lotteries, stage plays, and drolls".[702] That the Mayfair district was once dedicated to Holy Vera is possible from Oliver's Mount, the site of which, now known as Mount Street, is believed to mark a fort erected by Oliver Cromwell. We have noted an Oliver's Castle at Avebury or Avereberie, hence it becomes interesting to find an Avery Row in northern Mayfair, and an Avery Farm Row in Little Ebury Street. The term Ebury is supposed to mark the site of a Saxon ea burgh or island fort, an assumption which may be correct: at the time of Domesday there existed here a manor of Ebury, and that this neighbourhood was an abri or sanctuary dedicated to Bur or Bru is hinted in the neighbouring place-names Bruton Street (adjoining Avery Row, which is equivalent to Abery Row), _Bour_don Street, _Bur_ton Street, and _Bur_wood Place. Among the charities of Mayfair is one derived from a benefactor named Abourne: we have noticed that the tradition of the neighbourhood is that Kensington Gardens were the haunt of Oberon's fair daughter, and I have already ventured the suggestion that Bryanstone Square--by which is Brawn Street--marks the site of a Brawn, Bryan, Obreon, or Oberon Street. Northwards lies Brondesbury or Bromesbury: at Bromley in Kent the parish church was dedicated to St. Blaze, and the local fair used to be held on St. Blaze's Day,[703] and that the Broom or planta genista was sacred to the primal Blaze is further pointed by the ancient custom of firing broom-bushes on 1st May--the Mayfair's day.[704] In Cornwall furze used to be hung at the door on Mayday morning: at Bramham or Brimham Rocks in Yorkshire the custom of making a blaze on the eve of the Summer Solstice prevailed until the year 1786.[705] By Bromesbury or Brondesbury is Primrose Hill, which was also known as Barrow Hill: there are, however, no traces of a barrow on this still virgin soil which was probably merely a brownlow, brinsley, or brinsmead, unmarked except by fairy bush or stone.[706] The French for primrose is primevere, and that the Mayfair was the Prime and Princess of all meads is implied by Herrick's lines:--
Come with the Spring-time forth, fair Maid, and be This year again the Meadow's Deity. Yet ere ye enter, give us leave to set Upon your head this flowry coronet; To make this neat distinction from the rest, You are the Prime, and Princesse of the feast: To which with silver feet lead you the way, While sweet-breath'd nymphs attend you on this day. This is your houre; and best you may command, Since you are Lady of this fairie land. Full mirth wait on you, and such mirth as shall Cherrish the cheek, but make none blush at all.
With the "silver feet" of the Meadow Maid may be connoted the curious custom of the London Merrymaids thus described by a French visitor to England in the time of Charles II.: "On the first of May, and the five or six days following, all the pretty young country girls, that serve the town with milk, dress themselves up very neatly and borrow abundance of silver plate whereof they make a pyramid which they adorn with ribbons and flowers, and carry upon their heads instead of their common milk-pails."[707] That this pyramid or pyre of silver represented a crown or halo is further implied by an engraving of the eighteenth century depicting a fiddler and two milk-maids dancing, one of the maids having on her head a silver plate. It is probable that this symbolised the moon, and that the second dancer represented the sun, the twain standing for the Heavenly Pair, or the Powers of Day and Night.
In Ireland there is little doubt that St. Mary was bracketed inextricably with St. Bride, whence the bardic assertion:--
There are two holy virgins in heaven By whom may I be guarded Mary and St. Brighed.[708]
In a Latin Hymn Brighid--"the Mary of the Gael"--is startlingly acclaimed as the Magna Mater or Very Queen of Heaven:--
Brighid who is esteemed the Queen of the true God Averred herself to be Christ's Mother, and made herself such by words and deeds.[709]
At Kildare where the circular pyreum assuredly symbolised the central Fire, the servants of Bride were known indeterminately as either Maolbrighde or Maolmuire, i.e., servants of Brighde, or servants of Muire, and it is probable that Muire, the Gaelic form of Mary, was radically mother ire, the word ire being no doubt the same as ur, an Aryan radical meaning fire, whence _ar_son, _ar_dent, etc. The circular pyreum of Bride or Brighit the Bright, may be compared with the "round church of St. Mary" in Gethsemane: here the Virgin was said to have been born, and on the round church in question containing her sepulchre it was fabled that "the rain never falls although there is no roof above it".[710] This circular church of St. Mary was thus like the circular hedge of St. Bride open to the skies, and it is highly probable that the word Mary, Mory, Maree, etc., sometimes meant mor, mawr, or Big Eye. The golden centre or Bull's Eye will be subsequently considered, meanwhile it is relevant to Mor eye to point out that less than 200 years ago it was customary to sacrifice a bull on 25th August--a most ardent period of the year--to the god Mowrie and his "devilians" on the Scotch island of Inis Maree, evidently Mowrie's island.[711] At other times and in other districts, Mowrie, Muire, or Mary was no doubt equated with the Celtic Saints Amary and Omer: the surviving words amor, amour, pointing logically to the conclusion that love was Mary's predominant characteristic. There is no radical distinction between amour and humour, both words probably enshrining the adjectival eu, meaning soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious: humour is merriment. A notable connection with Mary and amour is found in Germany where Mother Mary is alternately Mother Ross or Rose: not only is the rose the symbol of amour, but the word rose is evidently a corrosion of Eros, the Greek title of Cupid or Amor. Miss Eckenstein states: "I have come across Mother Ross in our own [English] chapbook literature,"[712] whence it becomes significant to find that Myrrha, the Virgin Mother of the Phrygian Adonis, was the consort of a divine Smith, or Hammer-god named Kinyras. The word Kinyras may thus reasonably be modernised into King Eros, and it is not unlikely that inquiries at Ross, Kinross, and Delginross would elicit a connection between these places and the God of Love.
The authorities are slovenly content to equate Mary with Maria, Muire, Marion, etc., assigning all these variations without distinction to mara, or bitterness: with regard to Maria, however, it may be suspected that this form is more probably to be referred to Mother Rhea, and more radically to ma rhi, i.e., Mother Queen, Lady, or Princess. That the word was used as generic term for Good Mother or Pure Mother is implied by its almost universal employment: thus not only was Adonis said to be the son of Myrrha, but Hermes was likewise said to be the child of Maia or Myrrha. The Mother of the Siamese Saviour was entitled Maya Maria, i.e., the Great Mary; the Mother of Buddha was Maya; Maia was a Roman Flower goddess, and it is generally accepted that May, the month of the Flower goddess, is an Anglicised form of Maia.
The earliest known allusion to the morris dance occurs in the church records of Kingston-on-Thames, where the morris dancers used to dance in the parish church.[713] There are in Britain not less than forty or fifty Kingstons, three Kingsburys, four Kentons, seven Kingstons, one Kenstone, and four Kingstones: all these may have been the towns or seats of tribal Kings, but under what names were they known before Kings settled there? It is highly improbable that royal residences were planted in previously uninhabited spots, and it is more likely that our Kings were crowned and associated with already sacred sites where stood a royal and super-sacred stone analogous to the Scotch Johnstone. This was certainly the case at Kingston-on-Thames where there still stands in the market-place the holy stone on which our ancient Kings were crowned: near by is _Can_bury Park, and it would not surprise me if the original barrow or mound of Can were still standing there. The surname Lovekyn, which appears very prominently in Kingston records, may be connoted with the adjective kind, and it is probable that Moreford, the ancient name of Kingston-on-Thames, did not--as is supposed--mean big ford, but Amor or Mary ford. In Spain and Portugal (Iberia) the name Maria is bestowed indiscriminately upon men and women: that the same indistinction existed in connection with St. Marine may be inferred from the statement in The Golden Legend: "St. Marine was a noble virgin, and was one only daughter to her father who changed the habit of his daughter so that she seemed and was taken for his son and not a woman".[714]
If the Mary of the Marigolds or "winking marybuds," which "gin to ope their golden eyes," was Mary or Big Eye, it may also be surmised that San Marino was the darling of the Mariners, and was the chief Mary-maid, Merro-maid or Mermaid: although the New Testament does not associate the Virgin Mary with mare the sea, amongst her titles are "Myrhh of the Sea," "Lady of the Sea," and "Star of the Sea". At St. Mary's in the Scillies, in the neighbourhood of Silver Street, is a castle known as Stella Maria: this castle is "built with salient angles resembling the rays of a star," and Pelistry Bay on the opposite side of the islet was thus presumably sacred to Belle Istry, the Beautiful Istar or Star. It has often been supposed that Start Point was named after Astarte, and there is every probability that the various rivers Stour, including the Kentish Great Stour and Little Stour, were also attributed to Istar or Esther. The Greek version of the Book of Esther--a varient of Istar--contains the remarkable passage, "A little fountain became a river, and there was light, and the sun, and much water": in the neighbourhood of the Kentish Stour is Eastry; in Essex there is a Good Easter and a High Easter, and in Wilts and Somerset are Eastertowns. In England the sun was popularly supposed to dance at Eastertide, and in Britain alone is the Easter festival known under this name: the ancient Germans worshipped a Virgin-mother named Ostara, whose image was common in their consecrated forests.
What is described as the "camp" surrounding St. Albans is called the Oyster Hills, and amid the much water of the Thames Valley is an Osterley or Oesterley. On the Oyster Hills at St. Albans was an hospice for infirm women, dedicated to St. Mary de Pree, the word pree here being probably pre, the French for a meadow--but Verulam may have been pre land, for in ancient times it was known alternatively as Vrolan or _Bro_lan.[715] The Oesterley or Oester meadow in the Thames Valley, sometimes written Awsterley, was obviously common ground, for when Sir Thomas Gresham enclosed it his new park palings were rudely torn down and burnt by the populace, much to the offence of Queen Elizabeth who was staying in the place at the time. Notwithstanding the royal displeasure, complaints were laid against Gresham "by sundry poor men for having enclosed certain common ground to the prejudice of the poor".
Next Osterley is Brentford, where once stood "the Priory of the Holy Angels in the Marshlands": other accounts state that this organisation was a "friary, hospital, or fraternity of the Nine holy orders of Angels". With this holy Nine may be connoted the Nine Men's Morrice and the favourite Mayday pageant of "the Nine Worthies". As w and v were always interchangeable we may safely identify the "worthies" with the "virtues," and I am unable to follow the official connection between worth and verse: there is no immediate or necessary relation between them. The Danish for worth is vorde, the Swedish is varda, and there is thus little doubt that worthy and virtue are one and the same word. In Love's Labour's Lost Constable Dull expresses his willingness to "make one in a dance or so, or I will play the tabor to the Worthies and let them dance the Hey".
Osterley is on the river Brent, which sprang from a pond "vulgarly called Brown's Well,"[716] whence it is probable that the Brent vulgarly derived its name from Oberon, the All Parent. Brentford was the capital of Middlesex; numerous pre-historic relics have been found there, and that it was a site of immemorial importance is testified by its ancient name of Breninford, supposed to mean King's Road or Way. But bren_en_ is the plural of bren--a Prince or King, and two fairy Princes or two fairy Kings were traditionally and proverbially associated with the place. In Cowper's Task occur the lines:--
United yet divided twain at once So sit two kings of Brentford on one throne.
Prior, in his Alma, refers to the two Kings as being "discreet and wise," and it is probable that in Buckingham's The Rehearsal, of which the scene is laid at Brentford, we have further scraps of genuine and authentic tradition. The Rehearsal introduces us to two true Kings and two usurpers: the true Kings who are represented as being very fond of one another come on to the stage hand-in-hand, and are generally seen smelling at one rose or one nosegay. Imagining themselves being plotted against, one says to the other:--
Then spite of Fate we'll thus combined stand And like true brothers still walk hand in hand.
Driven from their throne by usurpers, nevertheless, towards the end of the play, "the two right Kings of Brentford descend in the clouds singing in white garments, and three fiddlers sitting before them in green". Adjacent to Brentford is the village of Twickenham where at the parish church used to prevail a custom of giving away on Easter Day the divided fragments of two great cakes.[717] This apparently innocuous ceremony was, however, in 1645 deemed to be a superstitious relic and was accordingly suppressed. We have seen that charity-cakes were distributed at Biddenden in commemoration of the Twin Sisters; we have also seen that St. Michael was associated with a great cake named after him, hence it is exceedingly probable that Twickenham of the Two Easter Cakes was a seat of the Two or Twa Kings who survived in the traditions of the neighbouring Breninford or King's Ford.
That the Two or Twa Kings of Twickenham were associated with Two Fires is suggested by the alternative name Twi_ttan_ham: in Celtic tan meant fire, and the term has survived in _tan_dsticker, i.e., fire-sticks, or matches: it has also survived in tinder, "anything for kindling fires from a spark," and in etincelle, the French for spark. In Etruria Jupiter was known as Tino or Tin, and on the British Star-hero coin here illustrated the legend reads TIN: the town of Tolentino, with which one of the St. Nicholas's was associated in combination with a star, was probably a shrine of Tall Ancient Tino; in modern Greece Tino is a contracted form of Constantine. The Bel_tan_ or Bel_tein_ fires were frequently in pairs or twins, and there is a saying still current in Ireland--"I am between Bels fires," meaning "I am on the horns of a dilemma". The Dioscuri or Two Kings were always associated with fires or stars: they were the beau-ideal warriors or War Boys, and to them was probably sacred the "Warboy's Wood" in Huntingdon, where on May Day the poor used to go "sticking" or gathering fuel. The Dioscuri occur frequently on Roman coins, and it will be noticed that the British Warboy is often represented with a star, and with the palm branch of Invictus. On the assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary it is said that an angel appeared before her bearing "a bough of the palm of paradise--and the palm shone by right great clearness and was like to a green rod whose leaves shone like to the morrow star".[718] There is very little doubt that the mysterious fish-bone, fern-leaf, spike, ear of corn, or back-bone, which figures so frequently among the "what-nots" of our ancient coinage represented the green and magic rod of Paradise.
At Twickenham is Bushey Park, which is assumed to have derived its name from the bushes in which it abounded: for some reason our ancestors combined their Bush and Star inn-signs into one, vide the design herewith: we have already traced a connection between bougie--a candle, and the Bogie whose habitation was the brakes and bushes: whence it is not unlikely that Bushey Park derived its title from the Elphin fires, Will-o-the-wisps, or bougies which must have danced nightly when Twickenham was little better than a swamp. The Rev. J. B. Johnston decodes Bushey into "Byssa's" isle or peninsula, and it is not improbable that Bushey in Hertfordshire bears the same interpretation, only I do not think that the supposititious Byssa, Bissei, or Bisi was an Anglo-Saxon. That "Bisi" was Bogie or Puck is perhaps implied further by the place-name Den_bies_ facing Boxhill: we have already noted in this district Bagdon, Pigdon, Bookham, and Pixham, whence Denbies, situated on the brow of Pigdon or Bagdon, suggests that here seemingly was the actual Bissei's den. The supposititious Bissei assigned to Bushey may be connoted with the giant Bosow who dwelt by repute on Buzza's Hill just beyond Hugh Town, St. Mary's. According to Miss Courtney the Cornish family of Bosow are traceable to the giant of Buzza's Hill.[719] Presumably to Puck or Bog, are similarly traceable the common surnames Begg, Bog, etc.
By the Italians the phosphorescent lights or bougies of St. Elmo are known not as Castor and Pollux, but as the fires of St. Peter and St. Nicholas: the name Nicholas is considered to mean "Victory of the People"; in Greek nike means victory: we have seen that in Russia Nicholas was equated with St. Michael, in face of which facts it is presumptive that St. Nicholas was Invictus, or the Unconquerable. In London, at Paternoster Lane used to stand "the fair parish church of St. Michael called Paternoster,"[720] and that St. Nicholas was originally "Our Father" or Paternoster is implied by the corporate seal of Yarmouth: this represents St. Nicholas supported on either side by angels, and bears the inscription O Pastor Vere Tibi Subjectis Miserere. It must surely have savoured of heresy to hail the supposed Nicholas of Patara in Lycia as O Pastor Vere, unless in popular estimation St. Nicholas was actually the Great Pastor or True Feeder: that Nicholas was indeterminately either the Father or the Mother is deducible from the fact that in Scotland the name Nicholas is commonly bestowed on girls.
In France and Italy prayers are addressed to Great St. Nicholas, and it is probable that there was always a Nichol and a Nicolette or nucleus: we are told that St. Nicholas, whose mother's name was Joanna, was born at Patara, and that he became the Bishop of Myra: on his fete day the proper offering was a cock, and that Nicholas or Invictus was the chanteur or Chanticleer, is implied by the statement: "St. Nicholas went abroad in most part in London singing after the old fashion, and was received with many people into their houses, and had much good cheer, as ever they had in many places": on Christmas Eve St. Nicholas still wanders among the children, notwithstanding the sixteenth century censure--"thus tender minds to worship saints and wicked things are taught".
Nicholas is an extended form of Nike, Nick, or Neck, and the frequent juxtaposition of St. Nicholas and St. George is an implication that these Two Kings were once the Heavenly Twins. We have already noted an Eleven Stone at Trenuggo--the abode of Nuggo? and there is a likelihood that Nuggo or Nike was there worshipped as One and Only, the Unique: that he was Lord of the Harvests is implied by the fabrication of a harvest doll or Neck. According to Skeat neck originally meant the nape or knop of the neck; it would thus seem that neck--Old English nekke--was a synonym for knob or knop. In Cornwall Neck-day was the great day of the year, when the Neck was "cried"[721] and suspended in the ingle nook until the following year: in the words of an old Cornishwoman: "There were Neck cakes, much feasting and dancing all the evening. Another great day was Guldise day when the corn was drawn: Guldise cakes and a lump of pease-pudding for every one."[722]
Near London Stone is the Church of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, and at Old Jewry stood St. Mary Cole Church: it is not unlikely that this latter was originally dedicated to Old King Cole, the father of the lovely Helen and the Merry Old Soul whose three fiddlers may be connoted with the three green fiddlers of the Kings of Brentford. The great bowl of Cole, the ghoul of other ages, may be equated with the cauldron or calix of the Pastor Vere: the British word for cauldron was pair, and the Druidic bards speak with great enthusiasm of "their cauldron," "the cauldron of Britannia," "the cauldron of Lady Keridwen," etc. This cauldron was identified with the Stone circles, and the Bardic poets also speak of a mysterious pair dadeni which is understood to mean "the cauldron of new birth or rejuvenescence".[723] The old artists seemingly represented the Virtues as emerging from this cauldron as three naked boys or Amoretti, for it is said that St. Nicholas revived three murdered children who had been pickled in brine by a wicked inn-keeper who had run short of bacon. This miracle is his well-known emblem, and the murder story by which the authorities accounted for the picture is probably as silly and brutal an afterthought as the horrid "tortures" and protracted dolours of other saints. Nevertheless some ghoulish and horrible practices seem to have accompanied the worship of the cauldron, and the author of Druidism Exhumed reproduces a Scotch sculpture of a cauldron out of which protruding human legs are waving ominously in the air.
St. Nicholas of Bari is portrayed resuscitating three youths from three tubs: that Nicholas was radically the Prince of Peace is implied, however, from the exclamation "Nic'las!" which among children is equivalent to "fainites": the sign of truce or fainites is to cross the two fore-fingers into the form of the treus or cross.
St. Nicholas is the unquestioned patron of all children, and in the past bands of lads, terming themselves St. Nicholas' Clerks or St. Nicholas' Knights, added considerably to the conviviality of the cities. Apparently at all abbeys once existed the custom of installing upon St. Nicholas' Day a Boy Bishop who was generally a choir or singing boy: this so-called Bearn Bishop or Barnebishop was decked, according to one account, in "a myter of cloth and gold with two knopps of silver gilt and enamelled," and a study of the customs prevailing at this amazing festival of the Holy Innocent leaves little doubt that the Barnebishop personified the conception of the Pastor Vere in the aspect of a lad or "knave". The connection between knop and knave has already been traced, and the "two knopps" of the episcopal knave or bairnbishop presumably symbolised the bren or breasts of Pastor Vere, the celestial Parent: it has already been suggested that the knops on Figs. 30 to 38 (p. 149) represented the Eyes or Breasts of the All Mighty.
In Irish ab meant father or lord, and in all probability St. Abb's Head, supposedly named after a Bishop Ebba, was once a seat of Knebba worship: that Cunobe was the Mighty Muse, singing like St. Nicholas after the old fashion, is evident from the British coin illustrated on page 305, a sad example of carelessness, declension, and degradation from the Macedonian Philippus.
The festival of the Burniebishop was commemorated with conspicuous pomp at Cambrai, and there is reason to think that this amazing institution was one of Cambrian origin: so fast and furious was the accompanying merriment that the custom was inevitably suppressed. The only Manor in the town of Brentford is that of Burston or Boston, whence it is probable that Brentford grew up around a primeval Bur stone or "Denbies". That the place was famous for its merriment and joviality is sufficiently evidenced by the fact that in former times the parish rates "were mainly supported by the profits of public sports and diversions especially at Whitsuntide".[724]
According to The Rehearsal when the True Kings or Two Kings, accompanied by their retinue of three green-clad fiddlers, descended from the clouds, a dance was then performed: "an ancient dance of right belonging to the Kings of Brentford, but since derived with a little alteration to the Inns of Court". On referring to the famous pageants of the Inns of Court we find that the chief character was the Lord of Misrule, known otherwise as the King of Cockneys or Prince of Purpool. We have seen that the Hobby Horse was clad in purple, and that Mary was weaver of the true purple--a combination of true blue and scarlet. The authorities connote purple, French purpre, with the Greek porphureos, "an epithet of the surging sea," and they ally it with the Sanscrit bhur, meaning to be active. The cockney, and very active Prince of Purpool or Portypool was conspicuously celebrated at Gray's Inn which occupies the site of the ancient Manor of Poripool, and the ritual--condemned and suppressed by the Puritans as "popish, diabolical, and antechristian"--seems invariably to have started by a fire or phare lighted in the hall: this at any rate was the custom and status with which the students at St. John's, Oxford, opened the proceedings on All Hallows' Eve.
The Druidic Bards allude to their sacred pyreum, or fire-circle, as a pair dadeni, and that a furious Fire or Phare was the object of their devotion is obvious from hymns such as--
Let burst forth ungentle The horse-paced ardent fire! Him we worship above the earth, Fire, fire, low murmuring in its dawn, High above our inspiration, Above every spirit Great is thy terribleness.[725]
Pourpre or purple, the royal or imperial colour, was doubtless associated with the Fire of Fires, and the connection between this word and porphureos must, I think, be sought in the idea of pyre furious or fire furious, rather than any epithet of the surging sea. The Welsh for purple is porffor.
Either within or immediately adjacent to the Manor of Poripool or Purpool were some famous springs named Bagnigge Wells: at the corner of Bathhurst Street, Paddington, was a second Bagnigge Wells, and the river Fleet used also at one time to be known as the Bagnigge. This ubiquitous Bagnigge was in all probability Big Nigge or Big Nicky--
Know you the Nixies gay and fair? Their eyes are black and green their hair, They lurk in sedgy shores.
The fairy Nokke, Neck, or Nickel, is said to have been a great musician who sat upon the water's edge and played a golden harp, the harmony of which operated on all nature:[726] sometimes he is represented as a complete horse who could be made to work at the plough if a bridle of particular kind were used: he is also represented as half man and half horse, as an aged man with a long beard, as a handsome young man, and as a pretty little boy with golden hair and scarlet cap. That Big Nigge once haunted the Bagnigge Wells is implied by the attendant legend of Black Mary, Black Mary's Hole being the entrance, or immediately adjacent, to one of the Bagnigge springs: similarly, as has been noted, Peg Powler, and Peg this or that, haunted the streams of Lancashire.
We have seen that Keightley surmised the word pixy to be the endearing diminutive sy added to Puck, whence, as in Nancy, Betsy, Dixie, and so forth, Nixy may similarly be considered as dear little Nick. In Suffolk, the fairies are known as farisees, seemingly, dear little fairies, and our ancestors seem to have possessed a pronounced partiality for similar diminutives: we find them alluding to the Blood of the Lambkin, an expression which Adamnan's editors remark as "a bold instance of the Celtic diminutive of endearment so characteristic of Adamnan's style": they add: "Throughout Adamnan's work, diminutives are constantly used, and these in most cases are used in a sense of endearment difficult to convey in English, perfectly natural as they are in the mouth of the kindly and warm-hearted Irish saint. In the present case Dr. Reeves thinks the diminutives may indicate the poorness of the animals from the little there was to feed them upon."[727] As the traditions of Fairyland give no hint for the assumption of any rationing or food-shortage it seems hardly necessary to consider either the pixies, the farisees, or the nixies as either half-starved or even impoverished.
In Scandinavia and Germany the nixies are known as the nisses, and they there correspond to the brownies of Scotland: according to Grimm the word nisse is "Nicls, Niclsen, i.e., Nicolaus, Niclas, a common name in Germany and the North, which is also contracted to Klas, Claas"; but as k seems invariably to soften into ch, and again into s, it is a perfectly straight road from Nikke to Nisse, and the adjective nice is an eloquent testimonial to the Nisses' character. Some Nisses were doubtless nice, others were obviously nasty, noxious, and nocturnal: the Nis of Jutland is in Friesland called Puk, and also Niss-Puk, Nise-Bok, and Niss-Kuk: the Kuk of this last mentioned may be connoted with the fact that the customary offering to St. Nicholas was a cock--the symbol of the Awakener--and as St. Nicholas was so intimately connected with Patara, the cock of St. Peter is no doubt related to the legend.
St. Nicholas, or Santa Claus, customarily travels by night: the nixies were black-eyed; Old Nick was always painted black; nox, or night, is the same word as nixy; and nigel, night, or nicht all imply blackness. According to Cæsar: "all the Gauls assert that they are descended from the god Dis, and say that this tradition has been handed down by the Druids. For that reason they compute the divisions of every season not by the number of days but by nights; they keep birthdays, and the beginnings of months and years in such an order that the day follows the night."[728] The expressions fortnight, and sen'night thus not only perpetuate an idea of great antiquity but one which is philosophically sound: to our fore-runners Night was no wise evil, but the beneficent Mother of a Myriad Stars: the fairies revelled in the dark, and in eyes of old "the vast blue night was murmurous with peris wings"[729].
The place-name Knightsbridge is probably a mis-spelling of Neyte, one of the three manors into which Kensington was once divided: the other two were Hyde and Ebury, and it is not unlikely that these once constituted a trinity--Hyde being the Head, Ebury the Brightness, and Neyte--Night. The Egyptian represented Nut, Naut, or Neith as a Mother Goddess with two children in her arms, one white the other black: to her were assigned the words: "I am what has been, what is, and what will be," and her worshippers declared: "She hath built up life from her own body". In Scandinavia Nat was the Mother of all the gods: she was said to be an awe-inspiring, adorable, noble, and beneficent being, and to have her home on the lower slopes of the Nida mountains: nid is the French for nest, and with Neyte may be connoted nuit, the French for night. That St. Neot was le nuit is implied by the tradition that the Church of St. Neot in Cornwall was built not only by night, but entirely by Neot himself who drew the stones from a neighbouring quarry, aided only by the help of reindeer. These magic reindeer are obviously the animals of St. Nick, and it is evidently a memory of Little Nick that has survived in the tradition that St. Neot was a saint of very small stature--somewhere about 15 inches high.[730] With Mother Nat of Scandinavia, and Mother Naut or Neith of Egypt, may be connoted Nutria, a Virgin-Mother goddess of Etruria; a divine nurse with whose name may be connected nutrix (nurse) and nutriment.
St. Nicholas is the patron saint of seafarers and there are innumerable dedications to him at the seaside: that Nikke was Neptune is unquestionable, and connected with his name is doubtless nicchio the Italian for a shell. From nicchio comes our modern niche, which means a shell-like cavity or recess: in the British EPPI coin, illustrated on page 284, the marine monster may be described as a nikke, and the apparition of the nikke as a perfect horse might not ineptly be designated a nag.
I have elsewhere illustrated many representations of the Water-Mother, the Mary-Maid, the Mermaid, the Merrow-Maid, or as she is known in Brittany--Mary Morgan. The resident nymph or genius of the river Se_vern_ was named Sa_brina_; the Welsh for the Severn is Ha_vren_, and thus it is evident that the radical of this river name is brina, vren, or vern: the British Druids recognised certain governing powers named feraon: fern was already noted as an Iberian word meaning anything good, whence it is probable that in Havren or Severn the affix ha or se was either the Greek eu or the British and Sanscrit su, both alike meaning the soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious.
Sabrina fair, Listen where thou art sitting Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, In twisted braids of lilies, knitting The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair.
In the neighbourhood of Bryanstone Square is Lissom Grove, a corruption of Lillestone Grove: here thus seemingly stood a stone sacred to the Lily or the All Holy, and the neighbouring church of St. Cyprian probably marks the local memory of a traditional sy brian, Sabrina, or dear little brownie.
Near Silchester, on the boundary line between Berks and Hants, is a large stone known as the Imp stone, and as this was formerly called the Nymph stone,[731] it is probable that in this instance the Imp stone was a contraction of Imper or Imber stone--the Imp being the Nymph of the amber-dropping hair. The Scandinavians believed that the steed of the Mother Goddess Nat produced from its mouth a froth, which consisted of honey-dew, and that from its bridle dropped the dews in the dales in the morning: the same idea attached to the steeds of the Valkyre, or War Maidens, from whose manes, when shaken, dew dropped into the deep dales, whence harvests among the people.[732]
Originally, imp meant a scion, a graft, or an offspring, a sprout, or sprig: sprig, spright, spirit, spirt, sprout, and sprack (an old English word meaning lively, perky, or pert), are all radically pr: in London the sparrow "was supposed to be the soul of a dead person";[733] in Kent, a sparrow is termed a sprug, whence it would appear that this pert, perky, little bird was once a symbol of the sprightly sprout, sprite, or spirit.
Stow mentions that the fair parish church of St. Michael called Paternoster when new built, was made a college of St. Spirit and St. Mary. All birds in general were symbols of St. Spirit, but more particularly the Columba or Culver,[734] which was pre-eminently the emblem of Great Holy Vere: we have already illustrated a half white, half black, six-winged representation of this sacred sign of simplicity and love, and the six-winged angel here reproduced is, doubtless, another expression of the far-spread idea:--
The embodied spirit has a thousand heads, A thousand eyes, a thousand feet, around On every side, enveloping the earth, Yet filling space no larger than a span. He is himself this very universe; He is whatever is, has been, and shall be; He is the lord of immortality.[735]
It is difficult to conceive any filthiness or evil of the dove, yet the hagiologists mention "a foul dove or black culver," which is said to have flown around the head of a certain holy Father named Nonnon.[736] We may connote this Nonnon with Nonna or Non, the reputed mother of St. David, for of St. David, we are told, his birth was heralded by angels thirty years before the event, and that among other miracles (such as restoring sight to the blind), doves settled on his shoulders. Dave or Davy is the same word as dove; in Welsh dof means gentle, and it is more probable that the gentle dove derived its title from this word than as officially surmised from the Anglo-Saxon dufan, "to plunge into". According to Skeat, dove means literally diver, but doves neither dive nor plunge into anything: they have not even a diving flight. The Welsh are known familiarly as Taffys, and the Church of Llan_daff_ is supposed to mean Church on the River Taff: it is more probable that Llandaff was a shrine of the Holy Dove, and that David with the doves upon his shoulder was a personification of the Holy Spirit or Wisdom. Non is the Latin for not, and the black dove associated with Nonnon or not not was no doubt a representation of that _Neg_ation, non-existence or inscrutable void, which existed before the world was, and is otherwise termed Chaos or Cause. That Wisdom or the Holy Spirit was conceived as the primal and inscrutable Darkness, is evident from the statement in The Wisdom of Solomon: "For God loveth none but him that dwelleth with Wisdom. For she is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the orders of stars: being compared with the light she is found before it."
The Nonnon of whom "it seemed that a foul dove or black culver flew about him whilst he was at Mass at the alter" was said to be the Bishop of Heliopolis, i.e., the city of the Sun, and he comes under notice in connection with St. Pelagienne--"said of pelagus which is as much to say as the sea". The interpretation further placed upon St. Pelagienne is that "she was the sea of iniquity, and the flood of sins, but she plunged after into the sea of tears and washed her in the flood of baptism". That poor Pelagienne was the Water Mother of Mary Morgan is implied further by the fragment of autobiography--"I have been called from my birth Pelagienne, but for the pomp of my clothing men call me Margaret":[737] we have seen that Pope Joanna of Engelheim was also called Margaret, whence it is to be suspected that although it is true that pelagus meant the sea St. Pelagienne was primarily the Bella or beautiful Jeanne, i.e., Mary Morgan or Morgiana.
On the coins of King Janus of Sicily there figured a dove; jonah, yuneh, or Ione are the Hebrew and Greek terms for dove; the Ionian Greeks were worshippers of the dove, and the consociation of St. Columbe Kille or the "little dove of the church" with the Hebridean island of Iona is presumptive evidence of the worship of the dove in Iona. In the Rhodian Greek coins here illustrated the reverse represents the rhoda or rose of Rhodes, and the obverse head may be connoted with the story of St. Davy with the dove settled on his shoulder: that the dove was also an English emblem is obvious from the British coins, Figs. 377 to 384; the dove will also be found frequently introduced on the contemned sceattae illustrated ante, page 364.
Among the golden treasures unearthed by Schliemann at Mykenae was a miniature "model of a temple" on which are seated two pigeons with uplifted wings:[738] among the curious and interesting happenings which occurred during the childhood of the Virgin Mary it is recorded that "Mary was in the Temple of the Lord as if she were a dove that dwelt there, and she received food as from the hand of an angel": Fig. 380 appears to illustrate this dove dwelling in a Temple. The legend continues that when the Holy Virgin attained the age of twelve years the Angel of the Lord caused an assembly of all the widowers each of whom was ordained to bring with him his rod: the High Priest then took these rods and prayed over them, but there came no sign: at last Joseph took his rod "and behold a dove came out of the rod and flew upon Joseph's head".[739] It is said by Lucian that in the most sacred part of the temple of Hieropolis, the holy city of Syria, were three figures of which the centre one had a golden dove upon its head: not only was no name given to this, but the priests said nothing concerning its origin or form, calling it simply "The sign": according to the British Bards--"To Addav came the sign. It was taught by Alpha, and it was the earliest polished melody of Holy God, and by a wise mouth it was canticled." There is little doubt that the descending dove with wings outstretched was a variant of the three rays or Broad Arrow, that the awen was the Iona, and that this same idea was conveyed by the Three ains, or eyen, Eyes, Golden Balls, or pawnbroker's sign. It is recorded of St. Nicholas of Bari, the patron saint of pawnbrokers, that immediately he was born he stood up in the basin in which he was being washed and remained with hands clasped, and uplifted eyes, for two hours: in later life he became wealthy, and threw into a window on three successive nights a bag of gold as a dowry for three impoverished and sore-tempted maidens. In commemoration of these three bags of gold St. Nicholas became the patron saint of pawnbrokers whose sign of the Three Golden Balls is a conversion of the three anonymous gifts.
In Hebrew the Three Apples, Eyes, or Golden Balls are called ains or fountains of living water, and to this day in Wales a spring of water is called in Welsh the Eye of the Fountain or the Water Spring. It will be remembered that the sister of St. Nonna, and therefore the aunt of St. Davy, was denominated Gwen of the Three Breasts, Tierbron, or three breasts, may be connoted with three-eyed Thor, and the combination of Eyes and Sprigs is conspicuously noticeable in Fig. 39, page 364: one will also note the head of No. 49 on the same plate.
The Three Holy Children on the reverse of Fig. 391--a Byzantine coin--are presumably the offspring of St. Michael alias Nichol on the obverse: the arms of Cornwall consist of fifteen golden balls called besants; the county motto is One and All. Of St. Nicholas of Tolentino who became a friar at the age of eleven, we are told that a star rested over his altar and preceded him when he walked, and he is represented in Art with a lily in his hand--the symbol of his pure life--and a star over his head: that Nicolette was identified with the Little Star or Stella Maris is clear from Troubadour chansons, such as the following from that small classic Aucassin and Nicolette--
Little Star I gaze upon, Sweetly drawing to the moon, In such golden haunt is set Love, and bright-haired Nicolette. God hath taken from our war Beauty, like a shining star. Ah, to reach her, though I fell From her Heaven to my Hell. Who were worthy such a thing, Were he emperor or king? Still you shine, oh, perfect Star, Beyond, afar.
It is impossible to say whether the three-eyed elphin faces illustrated ante, page 381, are asters, marguerites, marigolds, or suns: in the centre of one of them is a heart, and without doubt they one and all symbolised the Great Amour or Margret. During excavations at Jerusalem in 1871, the symbol of Three Balls was discovered under the Temple of King Solomon on Mount Moriah: this temple was circular, and it is probable that the name Moriah meant originally Moreye or Big Eye. That the three cavities in question were once ains or eyes is implied by the explorer's statement: "Within this recess are three cylindrical holes 5-1/4 inches in diameter, the lines joining their centres forming the sides of an equilateral triangle. Below this appears once to have been a basin to collect the water, but whatever has been there, it has been violently removed ... there can be little doubt that this is an ancient overflow from the Birket Israil."[740] It is probable that the measure of these three cup-like holes was once 5 inches, and that the resultant fifteen had some original connection with the fifteen besants or basins of Byzantine Britain.
With the brook Birket Israil at Mount Moriah may be connoted the neighbouring "large pool called El Burak": the existence on Mount Moriah of subterranean cisterns or basins known as Solomon's Stables renders it probable that El Burak was El Borak, the fabulous white steed upon which the faithful Mussulman expects one day to ride. The Eyes of the British broks or nags here illustrated are curiously prominent, and in Fig. 396 the eleven-eared wheat sprig is springing from a trefoil: with the lily surmounting the CUNO steed may be connoted the two stars or morrow stars which frequently decorate this triune emblem of Good Deed, Good Thought, Good Word: they may be seen to-day on the badges of those little Knights of To-morrow, the Boy Scouts.
The lily appears in the hand of the PIXTILOS figure here illustrated, and among the Pictish emblems found on the vitrified fort at Anwath in Scotland is the puckish design illustrated on page 496, Fig. 293. This was probably a purely symbolic and elementary form of the dolorous and pensive St. John which Christianity figured with a pair of marigolds or marguerites in lieu of feathers or antennae.
Accompanying the Pictish inscription in question were the elaborate barnacles or spectacles reproduced ante, page 495: in Crete the barnacles, as illustrated on page 494, are found humanised by a small winged figure holding a wand, and the general effect of the two circles when superimposed is that of the figure 8. The nine-rayed ABRACAX lion as portrayed by the Gnostics, and doubtless a variant of Abracadabra, has its serpentine body twined into an 8; on a Longstone in Brittany there is a figure holding an 8 tipped staff, and the same emblem will be noticed on the coins of the Longostaliti, a _Gaul_ish people who seemingly were so ghoulish as to venerate a _cal_ix or _caul_dron: from the pair dadeni or cauldron of renaissance represented on these astral coins it will be noticed there are emerging two stars and other interesting nicknacks. The locks of hair on the astral figure represented on the coins of Marseilles--a city founded by a colony of Phocean Greeks from Ionia--number exactly eight: in Scotland we have traced the memory of eight ancient hags, the Mothers of the World: in Valencia we have noted the procession of eight scrupulously coiffured Giants, and there is very little doubt that the eight survivors of the Flood,[741] by whom the world was re-peopled, is a re-statement of the same idea of the Gods of the four quarters and their Consorts. In connection with the Ogdoad or Octet of eight gods one may connote the curious erection which once decorated the London Guildhall, the seat of Gogmagog:[742] here, "on each side of the flight of steps was an octangular turreted gallery, balustraded, having an office in each, appropriated to the hallkeeper: these galleries assumed the appearance of arbours from being each surrounded by six palm-trees in ironwork, the foliage of which gave support to a large balcony, having in front a clock (with three dials) elaborately ornamented, and underneath a representation of the Sun, resplendent with gilding; the clock frame was of oak. At the angles were the cardinal virtues, and on the top a curious figure of Time with a young child in his arms."[743] At the village of Thame-on-Thames, which the authorities state meant rest, quiet, otherwise tame or kindly, gentle Time, there is a celebrated figure of St. Kitt, alias Father Time, with the little figure of New Time or Change upon his shoulder. In Etruria a parallel idea would seem to have been current, for Mrs. Hamilton Gray describes an Etruscan work of art inscribed "Isis nourishing Horus, or Truth teaching Time".[744] It is most unusual to find the Twins depicted as old men, or Bald ones with the mystic Lock of Horus on their foreheads, but in the eighteenth-century emblem here reproduced the intention of the deviser is unmistakable, and the central Sun is supported by two Times.
In a cave situated at the cross roads at Royston in Hertfordshire, there is the figure of St. Kitt beneath which are apparently eight other figures: these are assumedly "other saints," but the Christian Church does not assign any singular pre-eminence to St. Christopher, and the decorators of the Royston Cave evidently regarded St. Kitt as the Supreme One or God Himself. It is abundantly evident that to our ancestors Kit or Kate was God, Giant, Jeyantt,[745] or Good John: that he was deemed the deity of the ocean is obvious from instances where the water in which he stands is full of crabs, dolphins, and other ocean creatures. I have suggested that Christopher was a representation of dad or Death carrying the soul over the river of Death, i.e., "Dowdy" with the spriggan on his back. Among sailors Death is known familiarly as "Old Nick," "Old Davy," or "Davy Jones," and in Cornwall they have a curious and inexplicable saying: "as ancient as the Flood of Dava". I think this Dava must have been the genius of the rivers Dove, Taff and Tavy.
[Illustration: FIG. 405.--St. Christopher. From Royston Cave. [To face page 640. ]
That Kit was connected with the eight of the Cretan Eros figure is further implied by the fact that on the summit of a lofty hill near Royston or Roystone there is, or was, a "hollow oval". The length of this prehistoric monument was stated in 1856 as about 31 feet (originally 33?) and its breadth about 22 feet. "Within this bank are two circular excavations meeting together in the middle and nearly forming the figure eight. Both excavations descend by concentric and contracting rings to the walls which form the sides of the chambers."[746] From this description the monument would appear to be identical in design with the 8-in-an-oval emblem here illustrated, a mediæval papermark traceable to the Italian town of St. Donino. Examples of twin earthwork circles forming the figure 8 are not unknown in Ireland.
At Royston, which, as we shall see, was the Lady Roesia's town, is a place called Cocken Hatch, but whether this is the site of the eight-form monument in question, I am unaware: in the megalithic stone illustrated on p. 638 the Cadi is not only holding an 8 on the tip of his caduceus, but he has also a cadet or little son by the hand: cadi is Arabic for a judge, and in Wales the Cadi no doubt acted as the final judge. In Celtic the word cad meant war, an implication that in one of his aspects Ked or St. Kitt was the ever-victorious Michael or the all-conquering Nike: there is a Berkshire ballad extant, in which the word caddling, meaning fighting, is employed, yet caddling is the same word as cuddling. In Scotland, caddie means a messenger or errand boy: Mercury or Hermes was the Messenger of the Gods: among the Greeks, Iris was the Messenger, and Iris was unquestionably the Turkish Orus or St. George. In Arabia, St. George is known as El Khoudr, and it is believed that El Khoudr is not yet dead, but still flies round and round the world: in a subsequent chapter it will be shown that Orus is the same as Horus the Egyptian dragon-slayer; hence Giggras, another of St. George's titles, may be resolved into Mighty Mighty Horus or Eros, and it is possible that the Pictish town of Delginross should read Tall King Eros.
The eleven rows of rocks at Carnac extend, it is said, for eight miles, and at the neighbouring Er-lanic are two megalithic circles, one dipping into the sea, the other submerged in deep water: according to Baring-Gould, these two rings are juxtaposed, forming an 8, and lie on the south-east of the island; the first circle consists of 180 stones (twice nine), but several are fallen, and it can only be seen complete when the tide is out; one stone is 16 feet high; the second circle can be seen only at low tide.[747]
It is probable that the measurements of the Venus de Quinipily, illustrated on p. 530, are not without significance: the statue stands upon a pedestal, 9 feet high, and the figure itself rises 8 feet high.[748] With eight may be further connoted the eastern teaching of the "Noble Eightfold Path," and also the belief of Western Freemasonry as stated in Mackey's Lexicon of Freemasonry: "Eight was esteemed as the first cube (2 × 2 × 2), and signified friendship, prudence, counsel, and justice. It designated the primitive Law of Nature, which supposes all men to be equal." The root of eight, octave, and octet or ogdoad is Og, the primeval giant, who, as we have seen, was reputed to have waded alongside the ark with its eight primordial passengers.
When flourishing, the megalithic monument at Carnac must have dwarfed our dual-circled, two-mile shrine at Avebury: "The labour of its erection," to quote from Deane, "may be imagined from the fact that it originally consisted of eleven rows of stones, about 10,000 in number, of which more than 300 averaged from 15 to 17 feet in height, and from 16 to 20 or 30 feet in girth; one stone even measuring 42 feet in circumference".
One of the commonest of sepulchral finds in Brittany is the stone axe, sometimes banded in alternate stripes of black and white: the axe was pre-eminently a Cretan emblem, and my suggestion that the Carnac stones were originally erected to the honour of St. Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins is somewhat strengthened by the coincidence that the London Church of St. Mary Axe was closely and curiously identified with the legend. According to Stow: "In St. Marie Street had ye of old time a parish church of St. Marie the Virgin, St. Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins, whose church was commonly called St. Marie at the Axe of the sign of an axe over against the east, and thereof on St. Marie Pellipar". In view of the fact that the town of Ypres boasted an enormous collection of relics of the 11,000 Virgins, the title Pellipar may be reasonably resolved into Belle power: the Cretan axe or double axe symbolised almighty power.[749]
According to an Assyrian hymn, Istar, the immaculate great Star, the "Lady Ruler of the Host of Heaven," the "Lady of Ladies," "Goddess without peer," who shaped the lives of all mankind was the "Stately world-Queen sov'ran of the Sky".
Adored art thou in every sacred place, In temples, holy dwellings, and in shrines. Where is thy name not lauded? Where thy will Unheeded, and thy images not made?[750]
In the caves or "fetish shrines" of Crete have been found rude figurines of the Mother and the Child, and it is probable that the pathetically crude bronze statuettes here illustrated represent the austere wielder of the wand of doom. Fig. 407 comes from Iberia where it was discovered in the vicinity of what was undoubtedly a shrine near the pass over the Sierra Morena at Despena Perros: Fig. 408 comes from the English village of Aust-on-Severn. The place-name Aust appears in Domesday as Austreclive, and the authorities suppose it to have meant "not East as often thought, but the Roman Augusta": I doubt whether any Roman Augusta ever troubled to claim a mere cleeve, and it is more probable that Austreclive was a cleft or pass sacred to the austere Austre. There is an Austrey at Atherstone, an Austerfield at Bawtry, and an "Austrells" at Aldridge: this latter, which may be connoted with the Oyster Hills round Verulam, the authorities assume to have meant "Austerhill, hill of the hearth, forge or furnace". That Istar was the mighty Hammer Smith is probable, for the archaic hymnist writes:--
I thee adore-- The gift of strength is thine for thou art strong.
In all likelihood the head-dress of our figurines was intended to denote the crescent moon for the same hymnist continues:--
O Light divine, Gleaming in lofty splendour over the earth, Heroic daughter of the moon, O hear! O stately Queen, At thought of thee the world is filled with fear, The gods in heaven quake, and on the earth All spirits pause and all mankind bow down With reverence for thy name ... O Lady Judge Thy ways are just and holy; thou dost gaze On sinners with compassion, and each morn Leadest the wayward to the rightful path. Now linger not, but come! O goddess fair, O Shepherdess of all, thou drawest nigh With feet unwearied.
I have suggested that the circle of Long Meg and her daughters originally embodying the idea of a Marygold, Marguerite, or Aster, was erected to the honour of St. Margaret the Peggy, or Pearl of Price, and it is possible that the oyster or producer of the pearl may have derived its name from Easter or Ostara: that Astarte was St. Margaret is obvious from the effigies herewith, and the connection is further pointed by the already noted fact that in the neighbourhood of St. Margaret's, Westminster, there prevailed traditions of a Giantess named Long Meg. This powerful Maiden was evidently Margaret or Invicta, on the War-path, her pugilistic exploits being far-famed: it is particularly related that Long Meg distinguished herself in the wars at Bulloigne, whence it will probably prove that "Bulloigne" was associated with the War Maid whom the Romans termed Bellona, and that both Bulloigne and Bologna were originally shrines of Bello gina, either the Beautiful Woman or the War Queen.
That Istar, "the heroic daughter of the moon," was Bellona or the Queen of War is clear from the invocation--
O hear! Thou dost control our weapons and award In battles fierce the Victory at will, O crowned majestic Fate. Ishtar most high, Who art exalted above all the gods, Thou bringest lamentation; thou dost urge With hostile hearts our brethren to the fray. The gift of strength is thine for thou art strong, Thy will is urgent brooking no delay, Thy hand is violent, thou queen of war, Girded with battle and enrobed with fear, Thou sov'ran wealder of the wand of Doom, The heavens and earth are under thy control.
There is very little doubt that the heroic Long Meg of Westminster was alternatively the Mary Ambree of old English ballad: in Ben Jonson's time apparently any remarkable virago was entitled a Mary Ambree, and the name seems to have been particularly associated with Ghent.[751] As the word Ambree is radically bree, it is curious to find John of Gaunt, who is associated with Kensington, also associated with Carn Brea in Cornwall: here, old John of Gaunt is believed to have been the last of the giants, and to have lived in a castle on the top of Carn Brea, whence in one stride he could pass to a neighbouring town four miles distant. The Heraldic Chain of SSS was known as John of Gaunt's chain: the symbol of SSS occurs frequently on Candian or Cretan monuments, and it is probable that John of Gaunt's chain was originally Jupiter's, or Brea's chain.[752]
The name Ghent, Gand, or Gaunt may be connoted not only with Kent or Cantium, and Candia or Crete, but also with Dr. Lardner's statement: "That the full moon was the chief feast among the ancient Spaniards is evident from the fact that Agandia or Astartia is the name for Sunday among the Basques".
We have already seen that Cain was identified with "the Man in the Moon," that cann was the Cornish for full moon, and we have connoted the fairy Kenna of Kensington with the New Moon: the old English cain, meaning fair or bright, is clearly connected with candid and candescent. Kenna is the saint to whom the village of Keynsham on the Somersetshire Avon is dedicated, and St. Kenna is said there to have lived in the heart of a wood. To the north of Kensington lies St. John's Wood, and also the ancient seat named Caen or Ken Wood: this Ken Wood, which is on the heights of Highgate, and is higher than the summit of St. Paul's, commands a panoramic view of the metropolis that can nowhere else be matched. Akin to the words ken, cunning, and canny, is the Christian name Conan which is interpreted as being Celtic for wisdom. The Celtic names Kean and Kenny--no doubt akin to Coyne--meant vast, and in Cornish ken meant pity. On the river Taff there is a Llan_gain_ of which the church is dedicated to St. Canna, and on the Welsh river Canna there is a Llan_ganna_ or Llan_gan_: at Llan_daff_ by Car_diff_ is Canon's Park.
There is a celebrated well in Cornwall known as St Kean's, St. Kayne's, St. Keyne's, or St. Kenna's, and the supposed peculiarity of this fountain is that it confers mastery or chieftainship upon whichever of a newly-wedded couple first drinks at it after marriage. St. Kayne or St. Kenna is also said to have visited St. Michael's Mount, and to have imparted the very same virtue to a stone seat situated dizzily on the height of the chapel tower: "whichever, man or wife, sits in this chair first shall rule through life": this double tradition associating rule and mastery with St. Kayne makes it justifiable to equate the "Saint" with kyn, princess and with khan the great Han or King. There was a well at Chun Castle whose waters supposedly bestowed perpetual youth: can, meaning a drinking vessel, is the root of canal, channel, or kennel, meaning water course: we have already connoted the word demijohn or Dame Jeanne with the Cornish well termed Joan's Pitcher, and this root is seemingly responsible for canopus, the Egyptian and Greek term for the human-headed type of vase as illustrated on page 301. A writer in Notes and Queries for 3rd January, 1852, quotes the following song sung by children in South Wales on New Year's morning, i.e., 1st January, when carrying a can of water newly drawn from the well:--
Here we bring new water From the well so clear, For to worship God with The happy New Year. Sing levez dew, sing levez dew, The water and the wine; The seven bright gold wires And the bugles they do shine.
Sing reign of Fair Maid With gold upon her toe, Open you the west door, and let the old Year go. Sing reign of Fair Maid With gold upon her chin, Open you the east door, And let the New Year in.
We have traced Maggie Figgy of St. Levan on her titanic chair supervising the surging waters of the ocean, and there is little doubt that the throne of St. Michael's was the corresponding seat of Micah, the Almighty King or Great One. The equation of Michael = Kayne may be connoted with the London Church now known as St. Nicholas Acon: this name appearing mysteriously in ancient documents as alternatively "Acun," "Hakoun," "Hakun," and "Achun" it is supposed may have denoted a benefactor of the building. In Cornish ughan or aughan meant supreme; in Welsh echen meant origins or sources,[753] and as Nicholas is the same word as nucleus it is impossible now to say whether St. Nicholas Acon was a shrine of the Great One or of echen the little Nicholas or nucleus. Probably as figured at Royston where Kitt is bearing the Cadet or the small chit upon his shoulder, the two conceptions were concurrent: on the opposite side of the Royston Cave is figured St. Katherine, Kathleen, or Kate: Catarina means the pure one, but catha as in catholic also means the universal, and there is no doubt that St. Kathleen or Kate was a personification of the Queen of the Universe.
Cendwen or Keridwen, alias Ked, was represented by the British Bards as a mare, whale, or ark, whence emerged the universe: the story of Jonah and the whale is a variant of the Ark legend, and it is not without significance that the Hebridean island of Iona is identified as the locale of a miraculous "Whale of wondrous and immense size lifting itself up like a mountain floating on the surface".[754] Notwithstanding the forbidding aspect of this monster, St. Columba's disciple quiets the fears of his companion by the assurance: "Go in peace; thy faith in Christ shall defend thee from this danger, I and that beast are under the power of God".
It has been seen that Night was not necessarily esteemed as evil, nor were the nether regions considered to be outside the radius of the Almighty: that Nicholas, Nixy, or Nox was the black or nether deity is obvious, yet without doubt he was the same conception as the Babylonish "exalted One of the nether world, Him of the radiant face, yea radiant; the exalted One of the nether world, Him of the dove-like voice, yea dove-like".[755]
That St. Margaret was the White Dove rather than the foul Culver is probable from her representation as the Dragon-slayer, and it is commonly accepted that this almost world-wide emblem denoted Light subduing Darkness, Day conquering Night, or Good overcoming Evil. But there is another legend of St. Margaret to the effect that the maid so meek and mild was swallowed by a Dragon: her cross, however, haply stuck in its throat, and the beast perforce let her free by incontinently bursting (date uncertain); in Art St. Margaret therefore appears as holding a cross and rising from a dragon, although as Voragine candidly admits--"the story is thought to be apocryphal". We have seen that Magus or the Wandering Jew was credited with the feat of wriggling out of a post--"and they saw that he was no other than a beardless youth and fair faced": that the adventure of Maggie was the counterpart to that of Magus is rendered probable by the fact that St. Margaret's birth is assigned to Antioch, a city which was alternatively known as Jonah. With Jonah or Iona may be connoted the British Aeon--
Aeon hath seen age after age in long succession, But like a serpent which has cast its skin, Rose to new life in youthful vigour strong.
In Calmet's Biblical Dictionary there is illustrated a medal of ancient Corinth representing an old man in a state of decrepitude entering a whale, but on the same medal the old man renewed is shown to have come out of the same fish in a state of infancy.
Among the Greeks Apollo or the Sun was represented as riding on a dolphin's back: the word dolphin is connected with delphus, the womb, and doubtless also with Delphi, the great centre of Apollo worship and the legendary navel of the Universe. Alpha has been noted as the British name of Noah's wife, and it is probable that Delphi meant at one time the Divine Alpha or Elf: in the Iberian coin here illustrated (origin uncertain) the little Elf or spriggan is equipped with a cross; in the coin of Carteia (Spain) the inscription XIDD probably corresponds to the name which the British Bards wrote--"Ked".
In India the Ark or Leviathan of Life is represented as half horse or half mare, and among the Phoenicians the word hipha denoted both mare and ship: in Britain the Magna Mater, Ked, was figured as the combination of an old giantess, a hen, a mare, and as a ship which set sail, lifted the Bard from the earth and swelled out like a ship upon the waters. Davies observes: "And that the ancient Britons actually did portray this character in the grotesque manner suggested by our Bard appears by several ancient British coins where we find a figure compounded of a bird, a boat, and a mare". The coin to which Davies here refers is that illustrated on page 596, Fig. 356: that the Babylonians built their ships in the combined form of a mare and fish is clear from the illustration overleaf.
The most universal and generally understood emblem of peace is a dove bearing in its beak an olive-branch,[756] or sprig, and this emblem is intimately associated with the Ark: among the poems of the Welsh Bard Aneurin is the expectation--
The crowned Babe will come like Iona Out of the belly of the whale; great will be his dignity. He will place every one according to his merits, He is the principal strong tower of the Kingdom.[757]
As Iona means dove, the culver on the hackney's back (Fig. 415) is evidently St. Columba, and the crowned Babe in Fig. 414 is in all probability that same "spriggan on Dowdy's back," or Elphin, as the British Bards speak so persistently and mysteriously of "liberating". In Egypt the spright is portrayed rising from a maculate or spotted beast, and in all these and parallel instances the emblem probably denoted rejuvenescence or new birth; either Spring ex Winter, Change ex Time, the Seen from the Unseen, Amor ex Nox, Visible from Invisible, or New from Old.
The eight parents from the Ark may be connoted with Aught from Naught, for eight is the same word as aught and naught is the same word as night, nuit, or not: naughty means evil, whence the legend of Amor being born from Nox or Night might perhaps have been sublimated into the idea of Good emerging even from things noxious or nugatory.[758] Yet in the Cox and Box like rule of Night and Day the all-conquering Nikky was no doubt regarded as unique: "Shining and vanishing in the beauteous circle of the Hours, dwelling at one time in gloomy Tartarus, at another elevating himself to Olympus giving ripeness to the fruits": it is not unlikely that the ruddy nectarine was assigned to him, and similarly nectar the celestial drink of the gods, or ambrosia in a liquid form.
Of the universally recognised Dualism the black and white magpie was evidently an emblem, and the superstitions in connection with this bird are still potent. The Magpie is sometimes called Magot-pie, and Maggoty-pie, and for this etymology Skeat offers the following explanation: "Mag is short for Magot--French Margot, a familiar form of Marguerite, also used to denote a Magpie. This is from Latin Margarita, Greek Margarites, a pearl." There is no material connection between a pearl and a Magpie, but both objects were alike emblems of the same spiritual Power or Pair: between Margot and Istar the same equation is here found, for in Kent magpies were known popularly as haggisters.[759] Although I have deemed hag to mean high it will be remembered that in Greek hagia meant holy, whence haggister may well have been understood as holy ister.
Layamon in his Brut mentions that the Britons at the time of Hengist's invasion "Oft speak stilly and discourse with whispers of two young men that dwell far hence; the one hight Uther the other Ambrosie". Of these fabulous Twain--the not altogether forgotten Two Kings of their ancestors--we may equate Uther with the uter or womb of Night and Aurelie Ambrosie with Aurora the Golden Sunburst.
It is probable that the Emporiae, some of whose elphin horse coins were reproduced on page 281, were worshippers of Aurelie Ambrosie or "St. Ambrose" of whom it will be remembered: "some said that they saw a star upon his body": it is also not unlikely that our Mary Ambree or Fair Ambree was the daughter of Amber, the divine Umpire and the Emperor of the Empyrean. The ballad recalls:--
There was none ever like Mary Ambree, Shee led upp her souldiers in battaile array 'Gainst three times theyr number by breake of the day; Seven howers in skirmish continued shee, Was not this a brave bonny lasse, Mary Ambree?[760]
The sex of this braw Maiden was disguised under a knight's panoply, and it was only when the fight was finished that her personality was revealed.
No captain of England; behold in your sight Two breasts in my bosome, and therefore no knight, No knight, sons of England, nor captain you see, But a poor simple lass called Mary Ambree.
If the reader will turn back to the Virago coins illustrated ante, p. 596, which I think represent Ked in the aspect of Hecate--the names are no doubt cognate--he will notice the pastoral crook of the little Shepherdess or Bishop of all souls, and there is little doubt that these figures depict what a Welsh Bard termed "the winged genius of the splendid crosier".
Although Long Meg of Westminster was said to be a Virago, and was connected in popular opinion with "Bulloigne," it is not unlikely that Bulloigne was a misconception of Bulinga; the ornamental water of what is now St. James' Park is a reconstruction of what was originally known as Bulinga Fen, and in that swamp it is probable that Kitty-with-her-canstick, alias Belinga the Beautiful Angel, was supposed to dwell. The name Bolingbroke implies the existence somewhere of a Bolinga's brook where Belle Inga might also probably have been seen "dancing to the cadence of the stream"; in Shropshire is an earthwork known as Billings Ring, and at Truro there is a Bolingey which is surmised to have meant "isle of the Bollings". These Bollings were presumably related to the Billings of Billingsgate and elsewhere,[761] and the Bellinge or Billing families were almost certainly connected with Billing, the race-hero of the Angles and Varnians. According to Rydberg the celestial Billing "represents the evening and the glow of twilight, and he is ruler of those regions of the world where the divinities of light find rest and peace": Billing was the divine defender of the Varnians or Varinians, which word, says Rydberg, "means 'defenders' and the protection here referred to can be none other than that given to the journeying divinities of light when they have reached the Western horizon".[762]
That Billing and the Ingles were connected with Barkshire, the county of the Vale of the White Horse or Brok, is implied by place-names such as Billingbare by Inglemeer Pond in the East, by Inkpen Beacon--originally Ingepenne or Hingepenne--in the South, and by Inglesham near Fearnham and Farringdon in the West. Near Inglemeer is Shinfield and slightly westward is Sunning, which must once have been a place of uncanny sanctity for "it is amazing that so inconsiderable a village should have been the See of eight Bishops translated afterwards to Sherborn and at last to Salisbury."[763] The seal of Salisbury represents the Maiden of the Sun and Moon, and it is probable that the place-name Maidenhead, originally Madenheith, near Marlow (Domesday Merlawe--Mary low or hill?) did not, as Skeat so aggressively assumes, mean a hythe or landing place for maidens, but Maiden_heath_, a heath or mead sacred to the braw Maiden.
With the Farens and the Varenians may be connoted the Cornish village of Trevarren or the abode of Varren: this is in the parish of St. Columb, where Columba the Dove is commemorated not as a man but as a Virgin Martyr. Many, if not all, Cornish villages had their so-called "Sentry field" and the Broad Sanctuary at St. Margaret's, Westminster, no doubt marks the site of some such sanctuary or city of refuge as will be considered in a following chapter. That St. Margaret the Meek or Long Meg was the Bride of the adjacent St. Peter is a reasonable inference, and it is probable that "Broad Sanctuary" was originally hers. According to The Golden Legend: "Margaret is Maid of a precious gem or ouche[764] that is named a Margaret. So the blessed Margaret was white by virginity, little by humility, and virtuous by operation. The virtue of this stone is said to be against effusion of blood, against passion of the heart, and to comfortation of the spirit." I am unable to trace any immediate connection between St. Margaret and the Dove, but an original relation is implied by the epithets which are bestowed by the Gaels to St. Columbkille of Iona who is entitled "The Precious Gem," "The Royal Bright Star," "The Meek," "The Wise," and "The Divine Branch who was in the yoke of the Pure Mysteries of God". These are titles older than the worthy monk whose biography was written by Adamnan: they belong to the archetypal Columba or Culver. There is a river Columb in Devonshire upon which stands the town of Cullompton: in Kent is Reculver once a Royal town of which "the root is unknown, but the present form has been influenced by old English culfre, culfer, a culver-dove or wood-pigeon".
That St. Columba of Iona was both the White and the Black Culver is implied by his two names of Colum (dove) and Crimthain (wolf): that the great Night-dog or wolf was for some reason connected with the nutrix (vide the coin illustrated on page 364, and the Etrurian Romulus and Remus legend) is obvious, apart from the significance of the word wolf which is radically olf. Columbas' mother, we are told, was a certain royal Ethne, the eleventh in descent from Cathair Mor, a King of Leinster: Leinster was a stadr, ster, or place of the Laginenses, and that Columba was a personification of Young Lagin or the Little Holy King of Yule is implied (apart from much other evidence) in the story that one of his visitors "could by no means look upon his face, suffused as it was with a marvellous glow, and he immediately fled in great fear".
Among the Gaels the Little Holy King of Tir an Og, or the Land of the Young, was Angus Og or Angus the youthful: when discussing Angus (excellent virtue) in connection with the ancient goose and the cain goose I was unaware that the Greek for goose is ken. In the far-away Hebrides the men, women, and children of Barra and South Uist (or Aust?) still hold to a primitive faith in St. Columba, St. Bride, or St. Mary, and as a shealing hymn they sing the following astonishingly beautiful folk-song:--
Thou, gentle Michael of the white steed, Who subdued the Dragon of blood, For love of God and the Son of Mary Spread over us thy wing, shield us all! Spread over us thy wing, shield us all!
Mary, beloved! Mother of the White Lamb Protect us, thou Virgin of nobleness, Queen of Beauty! Shepherdess of the flocks! Keep our cattle, surround us together, Keep our cattle, surround us together.
Thou Columkille, the friendly, the kind, In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit Holy, Through the Three-in-One, through the Three, Encompass us, guard our procession, Encompass us, guard our procession.
Thou Father! Thou Son! Thou Spirit Holy! Be the Three-One with us day and night, On the Machair plain, on the mountain ridge, The Three-One is with us, with His arm around our head, The Three-One is with us, with His arm around our head.
But the Boatmen of Barray sing for the last verse:--
Thou Father! Thou Son! Thou Spirit Holy! Be the Three-One with us day and night, And on the crested wave, or on the mountain side, Our Mother is there, and Her arm is under our head, Our Mother is there, and Her arm is under our head.[765]
FOOTNOTES:
[692] The Evening Standard, 12th Nov., 1918.
[693] Ibid.
[694] Ancient Britain, p. 283.
[695] Cf. Stoughton, Rev. J., Golden Legends of the Olden Time, p. 9.
[696] Cf. Stoughton, Rev. J., Golden Legends of the Olden Time, p. 5.
[697] Wright, T., Travels in the East, p. 39.
[698] Windle, Sir B. C. A., Life in Early Britain, p. 116.
[699] Mitton, G. E., Clerkenwell, p. 79.
[700] B.M., Guide to Antiquities of Stone Age, p. 26.
[701] Holy Wells of Cornwall.
[702] Mitton, G. E., Mayfair, p. 1.
[703] Walford, E., Greater London.
[704] Bonwick, E., Irish Druids, p. 208.
[705] Hardwick, C., Traditions, Superstitions, and Folklore, p. 34.
[706] The surname Brinsmoad still survives in the Primrose Hill neighbourhood.
[707] Faiths and Folklore, ii., 401.
[708] Herbert, A., Cyclops Christianus, p. 114.
[709] Ibid., p. 114.
[710] Travels in the East, p. 28.
[711] Donnelly, I., Atlantis, p. 428.
[712] Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes, p. 82.
[713] Walford, E., Greater London, ii., 305.
[714] iii., 226.
[715] A New Description of England, p. 112.
[716] A New Description of England, p. 118.
[717] Walford, E., Greater London, i., 77.
[718] Golden Legend, iv., p. 235.
[719] Cornish Feasts and Folklore, p. 114.
[720] Stow, p. 217.
[721] In some parts this ceremony was known as "crying the Mare": in Wales the horse of the guise or goose dancers was known as Mari Lhwyd.
[722] Mrs. George of Sennen Cove.
[723] Irvine, C., St. Brighid and her Times, p. 6.
[724] Greater London, l., p. 40.
[725] Quoted, St. Brighid and Her Times, p. 7.
[726] Keightley, I., F. M., pp. 139-49.
[727] Huyshe, W., Life of Columba, p. 129.
[728] De Bello Gallico, p. 121.
[729] See Appendix B, p. 873.
[730] Cf. Courtney, Miss M. E., Cornish Feasts and Folklore, p. 105.
[731] Wilson, J., Imperial Gazetteer, i., 1042.
[732] Rydberg, V., Teutonic Mythology, p. 361.
[733] Windle, Sir B. C. A., Life in Early Britain, p. 63.
[734] The cul of culver or culfre and columba was probably the Irish Kil: hence the umba of columba may be connoted with imp.
[735] Rig-Veda (mandala X, 90).
[736] Golden Legend, v., 235.
[737] Golden Legend, v., 236.
[738] Mykenae, p. 267.
[739] Stoughton, Dr. J., Golden Legends of the Olden Time, p. 9.
[740] Wilson and Warren, The Recovery of Jerusalem, i., 166.
[741] Noah, Shem, Ham, Japhet, and their respective wives.
[742] Gogmagog is also found at Uriconium, now Wroxeter, in Shropshire. Since suggesting a connection between Gog and Coggeshall in Essex, I find that Coggeshall was traditionally associated with a giant whose remains were said to have been found. Cf. Hardwick, C., Traditions, Superstitions and Folklore, p. 205.
[743] Thornbury, W., Old and New London, i., 386.
[744] Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria, p. 16.
[745] The civic giant of Salisbury is named Christopher.
[746] Archæologia, from The Gentleman's Magazine, vol. i., p. 124.
[747] Brittany, p. 232.
[748] Aynsley, Mrs. Murray, Symbolism of the East and West, p. 87.
[749] I have elsewhere reproduced examples of the double axe crossed into the form of an ex (X). Sir Walter Scott observes that in North Britain "it was no unusual thing to see females, from respect to their supposed views into futurity, and the degree of divine inspiration which was vouchsafed to them, arise to the degree of HAXA, or chief priestess, from which comes the word Hexe, now universally used for a witch". He adds: "It may be worth while to notice that the word Haxa is still used in Scotland in its sense of a druidess, or chief priestess, to distinguish the places where such females exercised their ritual. There is a species of small intrenchment on the western descent of the Eildon hills, which Mr. Milne, in his account of the parish of Melrose, drawn up about eighty years ago, says, was denominated Bourjo, a word of unknown derivation, by which the place is still known. Here a universal and subsisting tradition bore that human sacrifices were of yore offered, while the people assisting could behold the ceremony from the elevation of the glacis which slopes inward. With this place of sacrifice communicated a path, still discernible, called the Haxellgate, leading to a small glen or narrow valley called the Haxellcleuch--both which words are probably derived from the Haxa or chief priestess of the pagans" (Letters on Demonology). It may be suggested that the mysterious bourjo was an abri of pere Jo or Jupiter. The Scotch jo as in "John Anderson my Jo," now signifying sweetheart, presumably meant joy.
[750] Cf. McKenzie, Donald A., Myths of Babylonia, p. 18.
[751] Mary Ambree Who marched so free, To the siege of Gaunt, And death could not daunt As the ballad doth vaunt.
[752] In Kirtlington Park (Oxon) was a Johnny Gaunt's pond in which his spirit was supposed to dwell. A large ash tree was also there known as Johnny Gaunt's tree.
[753] Herbert, A., Cyclops, p. 202.
[754] Life of Columba, p. 40.
[755] Cf. Mackenzie, D. A., Myths of Babylonia, p. 86.
[756] There is a London church entitled "St. Nicholas Olave".
[757] Cf. Morien, Light of Britannia, p. 67.
[758] Skeat connotes naughty with "na not, wiht a whit, see no and whit": it would thus seem to have been equivalent to no white, which is black or nocturnal.
[759] Hardwick, C., Traditions, Superstitions, and Folklore, p. 254.
[760] The seven hours in skirmish are suggestive of the Fair maid with gold upon her toe:--
The seven bright gold wires And the bugles they do shine,
ante, p. 650.
[761] Presumably Billingham River in Durham was a home of the Billings: there is a Billingley in Darfield parish, Yorkshire, a Billingsley in Bridgenorth, Salop: Billingbear in Berks is the seat of Lord Braybrook: Billingford _or Pirleston_ belonged to a family named Burley: at Billington in Bradley parish, Staffs, is a commanding British camp known as Billington Bury. Billinge Hill, near Wigan, has a beacon on the top and commands a view of Ingleborough.
[762] Teutonic Mythology.
[763] A New Description of England, 1724, p. 61.
[764] An ouche is a bugle: "the bugles they do shine".
[765] Quoted from Adamnan's Life of Columba (Huyshe, W.).