XII. PETER'S ORCHARDS
"But all the beauty of the pleasaunce drew its being from the song of the bird; for from his chant flowed love which gives its shadow to the tree, its healing to the simple, and its colour to the flower. Without that song the fountain would have ceased to spring, and the green garden become a little dry dust, for in its sweetness lay all their virtue."--Provençal Fairy Tale.
Among the relics preserved at the monastery of St. Nicholas of Bari is a club with which the saint, who is said to have become a friar at the age of eleven, was beaten by the devil: a club was the customary symbol of Hercules; the Celtic Hercules was, as has been seen, depicted as a baldhead leading a rout of laughter-loving followers by golden chains fastened to their ears, and as it was the habit of St. Nicholas-of-the-Club to wander abroad singing after the ancient fashion, one may be sure that Father Christmas is the lineal descendant of the British Ogmios or Mighty Muse, alias the Wandering Jew or Joy. That Bride "the gentle" was at times similarly equipped is obvious from a ceremony which in Scotland and the North of England used to prevail at Candlemas: "the mistress and servants of each family take a sheaf of oats and dress it up in woman's apparel, put it in a large basket and lay a wooden club by it, and this they call "Briid's Bed," and then the mistress and servants cry three times: "Briid is come, Briid is welcome"! This they do just before going to bed": another version of this custom records the cry as--"Bridget, Bridget, come is; thy bed is ready".
In an earlier chapter we connected Iupiter or Jupiter with Aubrey or Oberon, and that this roving Emperor of Phairie Land was familiar to the people of ancient Berkshire is implied not only by a river in that county termed the Auborn, but also by adjacent place-names such as Aberfield, Burfield, Purley, and Bray. Skeat connotes Bray (by Maidenhead) with "Old English braw, Mercian breg, an eyebrow," but what sensible or likely connection is supposed to exist between the town of Bray and an eyebrow I am unable to surmise: we have, however, considered the prehistoric "butterfly" or eyebrows, and it is not impossible that Bray was identified with this mysterious Epeur (Cupid) or Amoretto. The claims to ubiquity and antiquity put by the British poet into the mouth of Taliesin or Radiant Brow--the mystic child of Nine constituents[766]--is paralleled by the claims of Irish Ameurgin, likewise by the claims of Solomonic "Wisdom," and there is little doubt that the symbolic forms of the "Teacher to all Intelligences" are beyond all computation.
That Berkshire, the shire of the White Horse, was a seat of beroc or El Borak the White Horse is further implied by the name Berkshire: according to Camden this originated "some say from Beroc, a certain wood where box grew in great plenty"; according to others from a disbarked oak [i.e., a bare oak!] to which when the state was in more than ordinary danger the inhabitants were wont to resort in ancient times to consult about their public affairs".[767] Overlooking Brockley in Kent is an Oak of Honor Hill, and probably around that ancient and possibly bare Oak the natives of old Brockley or Brock Meadow met in many a consultation.[768] At Coventry is Berkswell: Berkeleys are numerous, and that these sites were abris or sanctuaries is implied by the official definition of Great Berkhamstead, i.e., "Sheltered, home place, or fortified farm".
At St. Breock in Cornwall there is a pair of Longstones, one measuring 12 feet 4 inches, the other 8 feet, and in all probability at some time or other these pierres or petras were symbols of the phairy Pair who were the Parents and Protectors of the district. At St. Columb in Cornwall there is a Longstone known as "The Old Man": now measuring 7 feet 6 inches, in all probability this stone was originally 8 feet high; it was also "once apparently surrounded by a small circle".
In the British coin here illustrated the Old Man jogging along with a club is probably CUN the Great One, or the Aged One. The brow of Honor Oak ridge is known as Canonbie Lea, which may be resolved into the "meadow of the abode of King On": from this commanding height one may contemplate all London lying in the valley; facing it are the highlands of Cuneburn, Kenwood, Caenwood, and St. John's Wood. London stone is situated in what is now termed Cannon Street--a supposed corruption of Candlewick Street: the greater probability is that the name is connected with the ancient Kenning or Watch Tower, known as a burkenning, which once occupied the site now marked by Tower Royal in Cannon Street: the ancient Cenyng Street by Mikelgate at York, or Eboracum--a city attributed to a King Ebrauc who will probably prove to be identical with Saint Breock--marked in all likelihood the site of a similar broch, burgkenning, barbican, or watch tower. One may account for ancient Candlewick by the supposition that this district was once occupied by a candle factory, or that it was the property of a supposititious Kendal, who was identical with the Brook, Brick, or Broken of the neighbouring Brook's wharf, Brickhill, and Broken wharf. At Kendal in Westmorland, situated on the river Can or Kent, around which we find Barnside, the river Burrow or Borrow, and Preston Hall, we find also a Birbeck, and the memories of a Lord Parr: this district was supposedly the home of the Concanni. The present site of Highbury Barn Tavern by Canonbury (London) was once occupied by a "camp" in what was known as Little St. John's Wood,[769] and as this part of London is not conspicuously "high," it is not improbable that Highbury was once an abri: in the immediate neighbourhood still exists Paradise Road, Paradise Passage, Aubert Park and a Calabria Road which may possibly mark the site of an original Kil abria. At Highbury is Canonbury Tower, whence tradition says an underground passage once extended to the priory of St. John's in Clerkenwell: from Highbury to the Angel at Islington there runs an Upper Street: upper is the Greek hyper meaning over (German uber), and that the celebrated "Angel" was originally a fairy or Bellinga, is somewhat implied by the neighbouring Fairbank Street--once a fairy bank?--and by Bookham Street--once a home of Bogie or Puck? From Canonbie Lea at Honor Oak, Brockley (London), one overlooks Peckham, Bickley, Beckenham, and Bellingham, the last named being decoded by the authorities into home of Belling.
We have noted the tradition at Brentford of Two Kings "united yet divided twain at once," yet there is also an extant ballad which commences--
The noble king of Brentford Was old and very sick.
The Cornish hill of Godolphin was also known as Godolcan, and in view of the connection between Nicolas and eleven it may be assumed that this site was sacred either to Elphin, the elven, the Holy King, or the Old King. At Highbury is an Old Cock Tavern, and in Upper Street an Old Parr Inn: not improbably Old Parr was once the deity of "Upper" Street or "Highbury," and it is also not unlikely that the St. Peter of Westminster was similarly Old Parr, for according to The History of Signboards--"'The OLD MAN,' Market Place, Westminster, was probably intended for Old Parr, who was celebrated in ballads as 'The Olde, Olde, Very Olde Manne'. The token represents a bearded bust in profile, with a bare head.[770] In the reign of James I. it was the name of a tavern in the Strand, otherwise called the Hercules Tavern, and in the eighteenth century there were two coffee-houses, the one called 'the OLD MAN'S,' the other 'the YOUNG MAN'S' Coffee-house."[771]
If the Old, Old, Very Old Man were Peter the white-haired warden of the walls of Heaven it is obvious that the Young Man would be Pierrot: it is not by accident that white-faced Pierrot, or Peterkin, or Pedrolino, is garbed in white and wears a conical white cap, the legend that accounts for this curious costume being to the effect that years and years ago St. Peter and St. Joseph were once watching (from a burkenning?) over a wintry plain from the walls of Paradise, when they beheld what seemed a pink rose peering out from beneath the snow; but instead of being a rose it proved to be the face of a child, who St. Peter picked up in his arms, whereupon the snow and rime were transformed into an exquisite white garment. It was intended that the little Peter should remain unsullied, but, as it happened, the Boy, having wandered from Paradise, started playing Ring-o-Roses on a village green where a little girl tempted him to talk: then the trouble began, for Pierrot speckled his robe, and St. Peter was unable to allow him in again; but he gave him big black buttons and a merry heart, and there the story ends.[772]
In Pantomime--which has admittedly an ancestry of august antiquity--the counterpart to Pierrot is Columbine, or the Little Dove; doubtless the same Maiden as the Virgin Martyr of St. Columb, Cornwall: this parish is situated in what was termed "The Hundred of Pydar"; in Welsh Bibles Peter is rendered Pedr, and one of the Welsh bards refers to Stonehenge as "the melodious quaternion of Pedyr": in Cornwall there is also a Padstow or Petroxstowe, and there is no doubt that Peter, like Patrick, was the Supreme Padre or Parent. According to the native ancient ecclesiastical records of Wales known as the Iolo MSS., the native name of St. Patrick was Maenwyn, which means stone sacred: hence one may assume that the island of Battersea or Patrixeye was the abode of the padres who ministered at the neighbouring shrine of St. Peter or petra, the Rock upon which the church of Christ is traditionally built.
At Patrixbourne in Kent was a seat known as Bifrons, once in the possession of a family named Cheyneys:[773] whether there be any connection between this estate named Bifrons and Bifrons, or Two fronted, a sobriquet applied to Janus, I am unaware: the connection Cheyneys--Bifrons--Patrixbourne is, however, the more curious inasmuch as they immediately neighbour a Bekesbourne, and on referring to Peckham we find that a so-termed Janus bifrons was unearthed there some centuries ago. The peculiarity of this Peckham Janus is that, unlike any other Janus-head I know, it obviously represents a Pater and Mater, and not two Paters, or a big and little Peter. The feminine of Janus is Jane or Iona, and at Iona in Scotland there existed prior to the Reformation when they were thrown into the sea, some remarkable petræ, to wit, three noble marble globes placed in three stone basins, which the inhabitants turned three times round according to the course of the sun:[774] these were known as clacha brath or Stones of Judgment.
Tradition connects St. Columba of Iona in the Hebrides with Loch Aber, or, as it was sometimes written, Loch Apor, and among the stories which the honest Adamnan received and recorded "nothing doubting from a certain religious, ancient priest," is one to the effect that Columba on a memorable occasion, turning aside to the nearest rock, prayed a little while on bended knees, and rising up after prayer blessed the brow of the same rock, from which thereupon water bubbled up and flowed forth abundantly. With the twelve-mouthed petra or rock of Moses which, according to Rabbinic tradition, followed the Israelites into the wilderness, may be connoted the rock-gushing fountain at Petrockstowe, Cornwall. That St. Patrick was Shony the Ocean-deity, to whom the Hebrideans used to pour out libations, is deducible from the legend that on the day of St. Patrick's festival the fish all rise from the sea, pass in procession before his altar, and then disappear. The personality of the great St. Patrick of the Paddys is so remarkably obscure that some hagiographers conclude there were seven persons known by that name; others distinguish three, and others recognise two, one of whom was known as "Sen Patrick," i.e., the senile or senior Patrick: there is little doubt that the archetypal Patrick was represented indifferently as young and old and as either seven, three, two, or one: whence perhaps the perplexity and confusion of the hagiographers.
It is not improbable that the Orchard Street at Westminster may mark the site of a burial ground or "Peter's Orchard," similar to that which was uncovered in Wiltshire in 1852: this was found on a farm at Seagry, one part of which had immemorially been known as "Peter's Orchard".[775] From generation to generation it had been handed down that in a certain field on this farm a church was built upon the site of an ancient heathen burial ground, and the persistence of the heathen tradition is seemingly presumptive evidence, not only of inestimable age, but of the memory of a pre-Christian Peter.
It may be assumed that "Peter's Orchard" was originally an apple orchard or an Avalon similar to the "Heaven's Walls," which were discovered some years ago near Royston: these "walls," immediately contiguous to the Icknield or Acnal Way, were merely some strips of unenclosed but cultivated land which in ancient deeds from time immemorial had been called "Heaven's Walls". Traditional awe attached to this spot, and village children were afraid to traverse it after dark, when it was said to be frequented by supernatural beings: in 1821 some labourers digging for gravel on this haunted spot inadvertently discovered a wall enclosing a rectangular space containing numerous deposits of sepulchral urns, and it then became clear that here was one of those plots of ground environed by walls to which the Romans gave the name of ustrinum.[776]
The old Welsh graveyards were frequently circular, and there is a notable example of this at Llanfairfechan: the Llanfair here means holy enclosure of Fair or Mairy, and it is probable that Fechan's round churchyard was a symbol of the Fire Ball or Fay King. At Fore in Ireland the Solar wheel figures notably at the church of "Saint" Fechan on an ancient doorway illustrated herewith. That the Latin ustrinum was associated with the Uster or Easter of resurrection is likely enough, for both Romans and Greeks had a practice of planting roses in their graveyards: as late as 1724 the inhabitants of Ockley or Aclea in Surrey had "a custom here, time immemorial, of planting rose trees in the graves, especially by the young men and maidens that have lost their lovers, and the churchyard is now full of them".[777] That "The Walls of Heaven" by Royston was associated with roses is implied by the name Royston, which was evidently a rose-town, for it figures in old records as Crux Roies, Croyrois, and Villa de cruce Rosia. The expression "God's Acre" still survives, seemingly from that remote time when St. Kit of Royston, the pre-Christian "God," was worshipped at innumerable Godshills, Godstones, Gaddesdens, and Goodacres.
Tradition asserts that the abbey church of St. Peter's at Westminster occupies the site of a pagan temple to Apollo--the Etrurian form of Apollo was Aplu, and there is no doubt that the sacred apple of the Druids was the symbol of the "rubicund, radiant Elphin" or Apollo. According to Malory, a certain Sir Patrise lies buried in Westminster, and this knight came to his untoward end by eating an apple, whereupon "suddenly he brast (burst)":[778] from this parallel to the story of St. Margaret erupting from a dragon it is probable that Sir Patrise was the original patron of Westminster, or ancient Thorney Eye. Patera was a generic title borne by the ministers at Apollo's shrines, and as glorious Apollo was certainly the Shine, it is more than likely that Petersham Park at Sheen, where still stands a supposedly Roman petra or altar-stone, was a park or enclosure sacred to Peter, or, perhaps, to Patrise of the apple-bursting story.
The Romans applied the title Magonius to the Gaulish and British Apollo; sometimes St. Patrick is mentioned as Magounus, and it is probable that both these epithets are Latinised forms of the British name Magon: the Druidic Magon who figures in the traditions of Cumberland is in all probability the St. Mawgan whose church neighbours that of the Maiden St. Columb in the Hundred of Pydar in Cornwall.
One of the principal towns in Westmorland is Appleby, which was known to the Romans as Abellaba: the Maiden Way of Westmorland traverses Appleby, starting from a place called Kirkby Thore, and here about 200 years ago was found the supposed "amulet or magical spell," illustrated in Fig. 422. The inscription upon the reverse is in Runic characters, which some authorities have read as THOR DEUS PATRIUS; and if this be correct the effigy would seem to be that of the solar Sir Patrise, for apparently the object in the right hand is an apple: there is little doubt that the great Pater figures at Patterdale, at Aspatria, and at the river Peterill, all of which are in this neighbourhood, and in all probability the Holy Patrise or Aspatria was represented by the culminating peak known as the "Old Man" of Coniston.
Some experts read the legend on Fig. 422 as THURGUT LUETIS, meaning "the face or effigies of the God Thor": according to others Thurgut was the name of the moneyer or mintmaster; according to yet others the coin was struck in honour of a Danish Admiral named Thurgut: where there is such acute diversity of opinion it is permissible to suggest that Thurgut--whose effigy is seemingly little suggestive of a sea-dog--was originally the Three Good or the Three God, for the figure's sceptre is tipped by the three circles of Good Thought, Good Deed, and Good Word. In Berkshire the country people, like the Germans with their drei, say dree instead of three, and thus it may be that the Apples Three, or the Apollos Three (for the ancients recognised Three Apollos--the celestial, the terrestrial, and the infernal) were worshipped at Apple_dre_, or Apple_dore_ opposite Barnstable, and at Apple_dur_ Comb or Apple_dur_well, a manor in the parish of Godshill, Isle of Wight.
English "Appletons" are numerous, and at Derby is an Appletree which was originally Appletrefelde: it is known that this Apple-Tree-Field contained an apple-tree which was once the meeting place of the Hundred or Shire division, and it is probable that the two Apuldre's of Devon served a similar public use. As late as 1826 it was the custom, at Appleton in Cheshire, "at the time of the wake to clip and adorn an old hawthorn which till very lately stood in the middle of the town. This ceremony is called the bawming (dressing) of Appleton Thorn".[779] Doubtless Appleton Thorn was originally held in the same estimation as the monument bushes of Ireland, which are found for the most part in the centre of road crossings. According to the anonymous author of Irish Folklore,[780] these ancient and solitary hawthorns are held in immense veneration, and it would be considered profanation to destroy them or even remove any of their branches: from these fairy and phooka-haunted sites, a lady dressed in a long flowing white robe was often supposed to issue, and "the former dapper elves are often seen hanging from or flitting amongst their branches". We have in an earlier chapter considered the connection between spikes and spooks, and it is obvious that the White Lady or Alpa of the white thorn or aubespine is the Banshee or Good Woman Shee:--
She told them of the fairy-haunted land Away the other side of Brittany, Beyond the heaths, edged by the lonely sea; Of the deep forest-glades of Broce-liande, Through whose green boughs the golden sunshine creeps, Where Merlin,[781] by the enchanted thorn-tree sleeps.
In the forest of Breceliande--doubtless part of the fairy Hy Breasil--was a famed Fountain of Baranton or Berendon into which children threw tribute to the invocation, "Laugh, then, fountain of Berendon, and I will give thee a pin".[782] The first pin was presumably a spine or thorn; the first flower is the black-thorn; on 1st January (the first day of the first month), people in the North of England used to construct a blackthorn globe and stand hand in hand in a circle round the fire chanting in a monotonous voice the words "Old Cider," prolonging each syllable to its utmost extent. I think that Old Cider must have been Thurgut, and that in all probability the initial Ci was sy, the ubiquitous endearing diminutive of pucksy, pixie, etc.
According to Maundeville, "white thorn hath many virtues; for he that beareth a branch thereof upon him, no thunder nor tempest may hurt him; and no evil spirit may enter in the house in which it is, or come to the place that it is in": Maundeville refers to this magic thorn as the aubespine, which is possibly a corruption of alba thorn, or it may be of Hob's thorn. In modern French aube means the dawn.
We have seen that there are some grounds for surmising that Brawn Street and Bryanstone Square (Marylebone) mark the site of a Branstone or fairy stone, in which connection it may be noted that until recently: "near this spot was a little cluster of cottages called 'Apple Village'":[783] in the same neighbourhood there are now standing to-day a Paradise Place, a Paradise Passage, and Great Barlow Street, which may quite possibly mark the site of an original Bar low or Bar lea. Apple Village was situated in what was once the Manor of Tyburn or Tyburnia: according to the "Confession" of St. Patrick the saint's grandfather came from "a village of Tabernia,"[784] and it is probable that the Tyburn brook, upon the delta of which stands St. Peter's (Westminster), was originally named after the Good Burn or Oberon of Bryanstone and the neighbouring Brawn Street. The word tabernacle is traceable to the same roots as tavern, French auberge, English inn.
Around the effigy of Thurgut will be noted either seven or eight M's: in mediæval symbolism the letter M stood usually for Mary; the parish church of Bryanstone Square is dedicated to St. Mary, and we find the Virgin very curiously associated with one or more apple-trees. According to the author of St. Brighid and Her Times: "Bardism offers nothing higher in zeal or deeper in doctrine than the Avallenan, or Song of the Apple-trees, by the Caledonian Bard, Merddin Wyllt. He describes his Avallenan as being one Apple-tree, the Avallen, but in another sense it was 147 apple-trees, that is, mystically (taking the sum of the digits, 1 4 7 equal 12), the sacred Druidic number. Thus in his usual repeated description of the Avallen as one apple-tree, he writes:--
Sweet apple-tree! tree of no rumour, That growest by the stream, without overgrowing the circle.
Again, as 147 apple trees--
Seven sweet apple-trees, and seven score Of equal age, equal height, equal length, equal bulk; Out of the bosom of mercy they sprung up.
Again--
They who guard them are one curly-headed virgin."
In fairy-tale the apple figures as the giver of rejuvenescence and new life, in Celtic mythology it figures as the magic Silver Branch which corresponds to Virgil's Golden Bough. According to Irvine the word bran meant not only the Druidical system, but was likewise applied to individual Druids who were termed brans: I have already suggested that this "purely mystical and magical name" is our modern brain; according to all accounts the Druids were eminently men of brain, whence it is possible that the fairy-tale "Voyage of Bran" and the Voyage of St. Brandon were originally brainy inventions descriptive of a mental voyage of which any average brain is still capable. The Voyage of Bran relates how once upon a time Bran the son of Fearbal[785] heard strange music behind him, and so entrancing were the sounds that they lulled him into slumber: when he awoke there lay by his side a branch of silver so resplendent with white blossom that it was difficult to distinguish the flowers from the branch. With this fairy talisman, which served not only as a passport but as food and drink, and as a maker of music so soothing that mortals who heard it forgot their woes and even ceased to grieve for their kinsmen whom the Banshee had taken, Bran voyaged to the Islands called Fortunate, wherein he perceived and heard many strange and beautiful things:--
A branch of the Apple Tree from Emain I bring like those one knows; Twigs of white silver are on it, Crystal brows with blossoms.
There is a distant isle Around which sea horses glisten: A fair course against the white swelling surge, Four feet uphold it.
In Wales on 1st January children used to carry from door to door a holly-decked apple into which were fixed three twigs--presumably an emblem of the Apple Island or Island of Apollo, supported on the three sweet notes of the Awen or creative Word. Into this tripod apple were stuck oats:[786] the effigy of St. Bride which used to be carried from door to door consisted of a sheaf of oats; in Anglo-Saxon oat was ate, plural aten, and it is evident that oats were peculiarly identified with the Maiden.
In Cormac's Adventure in the Land of Promise there again enters the magic Silver Branch, with three golden apples on it: "Delight and amusement to the full was it to listen to the music of that branch, for men sore wounded or women in childbed or folk in sickness would fall asleep, at the melody when that branch was shaken". The Silver Branch which seems to have been sometimes that of the Apple, sometimes of the Whitethorn, corresponds to the mistletoe or Three-berried and Three-leaved Golden Bough: until recent years a bunch of Mistletoe or "All Heal"--the essential emblem of Yule--used to be ceremoniously elevated to the proclamation of a general pardon at York or Ebor: it is still the symbol of an affectionate cumber or gathering together of kinsmen. King Camber is said to have been the son of Brutus; he was therefore, seemingly, the young St. Nicholas or the Little Crowned King, and in Cumberland the original signification of the "All Heal" would appear to have been traditionally preserved. In Tales and Legends of the English Lakes Mr. Wilson Armistead records that many strange tales are still associated with the Druidic stones, and in the course of one of these alleged authentic stories he prints the following Invocation:--
1st Bard. Being great who reigns alone, Veiled in clouds unseen unknown; Centre of the vast profound, Clouds of darkness close Thee round.
3rd Bard. Spirit who no birth has known, Springing from Thyself alone, We thy living emblem show In the mystic mistletoe, Springs and grows without a root, Yields without flowers its fruit; Seeks from earth no mother's care, Lives and blooms the child of air.
4th Bard. Thou dost Thy mystic circle trace Along the vaulted blue profound, And emblematic of Thy race We tread our mystic circle round.
Chorus. Shine upon us mighty God, Raise this drooping world of ours; Send from Thy divine abode Cheering sun and fruitful showers.
In view of the survival elsewhere of Druidic chants and creeds which are unquestionably ancient, it is quite possible that in the above we have a genuine relic of prehistoric belief: that the ideas expressed were actually held might without difficulty be proved from many scattered and independent sources; that Cumberland has clung with extraordinary tenacity to certain ancient forms is sufficiently evident from the fact that even to-day the shepherds of the _Borrow_dale district tell their sheep in the old British numerals, yan, tyan, tethera, methera,[787] etc.
The most famous of all English apple orchards was the Avalon of Somerset which as we have seen was encircled by the little river Brue: with Avalon is indissolubly associated the miraculous Glastonbury Thorn, and that Avalon[788] was essentially British and an abri of King Bru or Cynbro is implied by its alternative title of Bride Hay or Bride Eye: not only is St. Brighid said to have resided at Avalon or the Apple Island, but among the relics long faithfully preserved there were the blessed Virgin's scrip, necklace, distaff, and bell. The fact that the main streets of Avalon form a perfect cross may be connoted with Sir John Maundeville's statement that while on his travels in the East he was shown certain apples: "which they call apples of Paradise, and they are very sweet and of good savour. And though you cut them in ever so many slices or parts across or end-wise, you will always find in the middle the figure of the holy cross."[789] That Royston, near the site of "Heaven's Walls," was identified with the Rood, Rhoda, or Rose Cross is evident from the ancient forms of the name Crux Roies (1220), Croyrois (1263), and Villa de Cruce Rosia (1298): legend connects the place with a certain Lady Roese, "about whom nothing is known," and probability may thus associate this mysterious Lady with Fair Rosamond or the Rose of the World. In the Middle Ages, The Garden of the Rose was merely another term for Eden, Paradise, Peter's Orchard, or Heaven's Walls, and the Lady of the Rose Garden was unquestionably the same as the Ruler of the Isles called Fortunate--
--a Queen So beautiful that with one single beam Of her great beauty, all the country round Is rendered shining.
Some accounts state that the bride of Oberon was known as Esclairmond, a name which seemingly is one with eclair monde or "Light of the World".
We have seen that the surroundings of the Dane John at Canterbury are still known as Rodau's Town: the coins of the Rhodian Greeks were sometimes rotae or wheel crosses in the form of a rose, and there is little doubt that our British rota coins were intended to represent various conceptions of the Rose Garden, or Avalon, or the Apple Orchard: using another simile the British poets preached the same Ideal under the guise of the Round Table.[790] Fig. 179, (ante, p. 339) represented a rose combined with four sprigs or sprouts, and in Fig. 423 (British) the intention of the rhoda is clearly indicated: on the carved column illustrated on page 708 the rood is a rhoda, and my suggestion in an earlier chapter that "Radipole road," near London, may have marked the site of a rood pole is somewhat strengthened by the fact that Maypoles occasionally displayed St. George's red rood or the banner of England, and a white pennon or streamer emblazoned with a red cross terminating like the blade of a sword. Occasionally the poles were painted yellow and black in spiral lines, the original intention no doubt being representative of Night and Day.
Alas poore Maypoles what should be the cause That you were almost banished from the earth? Who never were rebellious to the lawes, Your greatest crime was harmless honest mirth, What fell malignant spirit was there found To cast your tall Pyramids to ground?
The same poet[791] deplores the gone-for-ever time when--
All the parish did in one combine To mount the rod of peace, and none withstood When no capritious constables disturb them, Nor Justice of the peace did seek to curb them, Nor peevish puritan in rayling sort, Nor over-wise churchwarden spoyled the sport.
Overwise scholars have assumed that the Maypole was primarily and merely a phallic emblem; it was, however, more generally the simple symbol of justice and "the rod of peace": rod, rood, and ruth are of course variants of one and the same root.
Among, if not the prime of the May Day dances was one known popularly as Sellingers Round: here probably the r is an interpolation, and the immortal Sellinga was in all likelihood sel inga or the innocent and happy Ange of Islington:--
To Islington and Hogsdon runnes the streame, Of giddie people to eate cakes and creame.
At the famous "Angel" of Islington manorial courts were held seemingly from a time immemorial: on a shop-front now facing it the curious surname Uglow may be seen to-day, and in view of the adjacent Agastone Road it is reasonable to assume that at Hogsdon, now spelt Hoxton, stood once an Hexe or Hag stone, perhaps also that the hill by the Angel was originally known as the ug low or Ug hill. We have noted that fairy rings were occasionally termed hag tracks, and that the Angel district was once associated with these evidences of the fairies is seemingly implied by a correspondent who wrote to The Gentleman's Magazine in 1792 as follows: "Having noticed a query relating to fairy rings having once been numerous in the meadow between Islington and Canonbury, and whether there were any at this time, and having never seen those extraordinary productions whether of Nature or of animals, curiosity led me on a late fine day to visit the above spot in search of them, but I was disappointed. There are none there now; the meadow above mentioned is intersected by paths on every side and trodden by man and beast." Man and beast have since converted these intersections into mean streets among which, however, still stand Fairbank and Bookham Streets.
The Maypole was generally a sprout and was no doubt in this respect a proper representative of the "blossoming tree" referred to in a Gaelic Hymn in honour of St. Brighid--
Be extinguished in us The flesh's evil, affections By this blossoming tree This Mother of Christ.
The May Queen was invariably selected as the fairest and best dispositioned of the village maidens, and before being "set in an Arbour on a Holy Day" she was apparently carried on the shoulders of four men or "deacons":[792] assuredly these parochial deacons were personages of local importance, and they may possibly account for the place-name Maydeacon House which occurs at Patrixbourne, Kent, in conjunction with Kingston, Heart's Delight, Broome Park, and Barham. The word deacon is Good King or Divine King: we have seen that four kings figured frequently in the wheel of Fortune, and the ceremonious carrying by four deacons was not merely an idle village sport for it formed part of the ecclesiastical functions at the Vatican. An English traveller of some centuries ago speaking of the Pope and his attendant ceremonial, states that the representative of Peter was carried on the back of four deacons "after the maner of carrying whytepot queenes in Western May games":[793] the "Whytepot Queen" was no doubt representative of Dame Jeanne, the demijohn or Virgin, and the counterpart to Janus or St. Peter.
One of what Camden would have dubbed the sour kind of critics inquired in 1577: "What adoe make our young men at the time of May? Do they not use night-watchings to rob and steal yong trees out of other men's grounde, and bring them home into their parish with minstrels playing before? And when they have set it up they will deck it with floures and garlands and dance around, men and women together most unseemly and intolerable as I have proved before." The scenes around the Maypole ("this stinckyng idoll rather") were unquestionably sparkled by a generous provision of "ambrosia":--
From the golden cup they drink Nectar that the bees produce, Or the grapes ecstatic juice, Flushed with mirth and hope they burn.[794]
On that ever-memorable occasion at Stonehenge, when the Saxons massacred their unsuspecting hosts, a Bard relates that--
The glad repository of the world was amply supplied. Well did Eideol prepare at the spacious circle of the world Harmony and gold and great horses and intoxicating mead.
The word mead implies that this celestial honey-brew was esteemed to be the drink of the Maid; ale as we know was ceremoniously brewed within churches, and was thus probably once a holy beverage drunk on holy-days: the words beer and brew will account for representations of the senior Selenus, as at times inebriate. The Fairy Queen, occasionally the "Sorceress of the ebon Throne," was esteemed to be the "Mother of wildly-working dreams"; Matthew Arnold happily describes the Celts as "drenched and intoxicated with fairy dew," and it seems to have a general tenet that the fairy people in their festal glee were sometimes inebriated by ambrosia:--
From golden flowers of each hue, Crystal white, or golden yellow, Purple, violet, red or blue, We drink the honey dew Until we all get mellow, Until we all get mellow.[795]
In the neighbourhood of Fair Head, Antrim, there is a whirlpool known as Brecan's Cauldron in connection with which one of St. Columba's miracles is recorded. That the Pure King or Paragon was also deemed to be "that brewer" or the Brew King of the mystic cauldron, is evident from the magic recipe of Taliesin, which includes among its alloy of ingredients "to be mixed when there is a calm dew falling," the liquor that bees have collected, and resin (amber?) and pleasant, precious silver, the ruddy gem and the grain from the ocean foam (the pearl or margaret?):--
And primroses and herbs And topmost sprigs of trees, Truly there shall be a puryfying tree, Fruitful in its increase. Some of it let that brewer boil Who is over the five-woods cauldron.
We have noted the five acres allotted to each Bard, five springs at Avebury, five fields at Biddenden, "five wells" at Doddington, five banners at the magic fountain of Berenton, and five fruits growing on a holy tree: the mystic meaning attached to five rivers was in all probability that which is thus stated in Cormac's Adventure in the Land of Promise: "The fountain which thou sawest with the five streams out of it is the fountain of Knowledge, and the streams are the five senses through which Knowledge is obtained. And no one will have Knowledge who drinketh not a draught out of the fountain itself and out of the streams." That Queen Wisdom was the Lady of the Isles called Fortunate, is explicitly stated by the poet who tells us that there not Fantasy but Reason ruled: he adds:--
All this is held a fable: but who first Made and recited it, hath in this fable Shadowed a truth.[796]
From the group of so-called Sun and Fire Symbols here reproduced, it will be seen that the svastika or "Fare ye well" cross assumed multifarious forms: in Thrace, the emblem was evidently known as the embria, for there are in existence coins of the town of Mesembria, whereon the legend MESEMBRIA, meaning the (city of the) midday sun, is figured by the syllable MES, followed by the svastika as the equivalent of EMBRIA.[797]
The whirling bird-headed wheel on page 709 is a peculiarly interesting example of the British rood, or rota of ruth; as also is No. 40 of Fig. 201 (ante, p. 364) where the peacock is transformed into a svastika: the pear-shaped visage on the obverse of this coin may be connoted with the Scotch word pearie, meaning a pear-shaped spinning-top, and the seven ains or balls may be connoted with the statement of Maundeville, that he was shown seven springs which gushed out from a spot where once upon a time Jesus Christ had played with children.
No. 43 of the contemned sceattae (p. 364) evidently represents the legendary Bird of Fire, which, together with the peacock and the eagle, I have discussed elsewhere: this splendid and mysterious bird--as those familiar with Russian ballet are aware--came nightly to an apple-tree, but there is no reason to assume that the apple was its only or peculiar nourishment. The Mystic Boughs illustrated on page 627 (Figs. 379 to 384) may well have been the mistletoe or any other berried or fruit-bearing branch: in Fig. 397 (p. 635) the Maiden is holding what is seemingly a three-leaved lily, doubtless corresponding to the old English Judge's bough or wand, now discontinued, and only faintly remembered by a trifling nosegay.[798]
Symbolists are aware that in Christian and Pagan art, birds pecking at either fruit or flowers denote the souls of the blessed feeding upon the joys of Paradise: all winged things typified the Angels or celestial Intelligences who were deemed to flash like birds through the air, and the reader will not fail to note the angelic birds sitting in Queen Mary's tree (Fig. 425, p. 686).
There is a delicious story of a Little Bird in Irish folk-tale, and among the literature of the Trouveres or Troubadours, there is A Lay of the Little Bird which it is painful to curtail: it runs as follows: "Once upon a time, more than a hundred years ago, there lived a rich villein whose name I cannot now tell, who owned meadows and woods and waters, and all things which go to the making of a rich man. His manor was so fair and so delightsome that all the world did not contain its peer. My true story would seem to you but idle fable if I set its beauty before you, for verily I believe that never yet was built so strong a keep and so gracious a tower. A river flowed around this fair domain, and enclosed an orchard planted with all manner of fruitful trees. This sweet fief was builded by a certain knight, whose heir sold it to a villein; for thus pass baronies from hand to hand, and town and manor change their master, always falling from bad to worse. The orchard was fair beyond content. Herbs grew there of every fashion, more than I am able to name. But at least I can tell you that so sweet was the savour of roses and other flowers and simples, that sick persons, borne within that garden in a litter, walked forth sound and well for having passed the night in so lovely a place. Indeed, so smooth and level was the sward, so tall the trees, so various the fruit, that the cunning gardener must surely have been a magician, as appears by certain infallible proofs.
"Now in the middle of this great orchard sprang a fountain of clear, pure water. It boiled forth out of the ground, but was always colder than any marble. Tall trees stood about the well, and their leafy branches made a cool shadow there, even during the longest day of summer heat. Not a ray of the sun fell within that spot, though it were the month of May, so thick and close was the leafage. Of all these trees the fairest and the most pleasant was a pine. To this pine came a singing bird twice every day for ease of heart. Early in the morning he came, when monks chant their matins, and again in the evening, a little after vespers. He was smaller than a sparrow, but larger than a wren, and he sang so sweetly that neither lark, nor nightingale, nor blackbird, nay, nor siren even, was so grateful to the ear. He sang lays and ballads, and the newest refrain of the minstrel and the spinner at her wheel. Sweeter was his tune than harp or viol, and gayer than the country dance. No man had heard so marvellous a thing; for such was the virtue in his song that the saddest and the most dolent forgot to grieve whilst he listened to the tune, love flowered sweetly in his heart, and for a space he was rich and happy as any emperor or king, though but a burgess of the city, or a villein of the field. Yea, if that ditty had lasted 100 years, yet would he have stayed the century through to listen to so lovely a song, for it gave to every man whilst he hearkened, love, and riches, and his heart's desire. But all the beauty of the pleasaunce drew its being from the song of the bird; for from his chant flowed love which gives its shadow to the tree, its healing to the simple, and its colour to the flower. Without that song the fountain would have ceased to spring, and the green garden become a little dry dust, for in its sweetness lay all their virtue. The villein, who was lord of this domain, walked every day within his garden to hearken to the bird. On a certain morning he came to the well to bathe his face in the cold spring, and the bird, hidden close within the pine branches, poured out his full heart in a delightful lay, from which rich profit might be drawn. 'Listen,' chanted the bird in his own tongue, 'listen to my voice, oh, knight, and clerk, and layman, ye who concern yourselves with love, and suffer with its dolours: listen, also, ye maidens, fair and coy and gracious, who seek first the gifts and beauty of the world. I speak truth and do not lie. Closer should you cleave to God than to any earthly lover, right willingly should you seek His altar, more firmly should you hold to His commandment than to any mortal's pleasure. So you serve God and Love in such fashion, no harm can come to any, for God and Love are one. God loves sense and chivalry; and Love holds them not in despite. God hates pride and false seeming; and Love loveth loyalty. God praiseth honour and courtesy; and fair Love disdaineth them not. God lendeth His ear to prayer; neither doth Love refuse it her heart. God granteth largesse to the generous, but the grudging man, and the envious, the felon and the wrathful, doth he abhor. But courtesy and honour, good sense and loyalty, are the leal vassals of Love, and so you hold truly to them, God and the beauty of the world shall be added to you besides. Thus told the bird in his song'."[799]
It is not necessary to relate here the ill-treatment suffered by the bird which happily was full of guile, nor to describe its escape from the untoward fate destined for it by the villein.
In Figs. 428 to 430 are three remarkable British coins all of which seemingly represent a bird in song: it is not improbable that the idea underlying these mystic forms is the same as what the Magi termed the Honover or Word, which is thus described: "The instrument employed by the Almighty, in giving an origin to these opposite principles, as well as in every subsequent creative act, was His Word. This sacred and mysterious agent, which in the Zendavesta is frequently mentioned under the appellations Honover and I am, is compared to those celestial birds which constantly keep watch over, the welfare of nature. Its attributes are ineffable light, perfect activity, unerring prescience. Its existence preceded the formation of all things--it proceeds from the first eternal principal--it is the gift of God."[800]
The symbol of Hanover[801] was the White Horse and we have considered the same connection at Hiniver in Sussex: it is also a widely accepted verity that the White Horse--East and West--was the emblem of pure Reason or Intelligence; the Persian word for good thought was humanah, which is seemingly our humane, and if we read Honover as ancient ver the term may be equated in idea with word or verbum. The Rev. Professor Skeat derives the words human and humane from humus the ground, whence the Latin homo, a man, literally, "a creature of earth," but this is a definition which the pagan would have contemptuously set aside, for notwithstanding his perversity in bowing down to wood and stone he believed himself to be a creature of the sun and claimed: "my high descent from Jove Himself I boast".
We have seen that Jove, Jupiter, or Jou was in all probability Father Joy, and have suggested that the Wandering Jew was a personification of the same idea: it has also been surmised that Elisha--one of the alternative names of the Wanderer--meant radically Holy Jou: it is not improbable that the Shah or Padishah of Persia was similarly the supposed incarnation of this phairy père. The various well-authenticated apparitions of the Jew are quite possibly due to impersonations of the traditional figure, and two at least of these apparitions are mentioned as occurring in England: in one case the old man claiming to be the character wandered about ejaculating "Poor Joe alone"; in another "Poor John alone alone".[802] Both "Joe" and "John" are supposed by Brand to be corruptions of "Jew": the greater probability is that they were genuine British titles of the traditional Wanderer.
The exclamation of "alone alone" may be connoted with the so-called Allan apples which used to figure so prominently in Cornish festivities: these Allan apples doubtless bore some relation to the Celtic St. Allan: haleine means breath,[803] elan means fire or energy, and it is in further keeping with St. Allan that his name is translated as having meant cheerful.
The festival of the Allan apple was essentially a cheery proceeding: two strips of wood were joined crosswise by a nail in the centre; at each of the four ends was stuck a lighted candle with large and rosy apples hung between. This construction was fastened to a beam or the ceiling of the kitchen, then made to revolve rapidly, and the players whose object was to catch the Allan apples in their mouths frequently instead had a taste of the candles.[804] Obviously this whirling firewheel was an emblem of Heol the Celtic Sun wheel, and as Newlyn is particularly mentioned as a site of the festival, we may equate St. Newlyna of Newlyn with the Noualen of Brittany, and further with the Goddess Nehellenia or New Helen of London. Nehellenia has seemingly also been traced at Tadcaster in Yorkshire where the local name Helen's Ford is supposed to be a corruption of the word Nehellenia:[805] Nelly, however, is no corruption but a variant of Ellen. The Goddess Nehallenia is usually sculptured with a hound by her side, and in her lap is a basket of fruits "symbolising the fecundating power of the earth".[806] In old English line meant to fecundate or fertilise, and in Britain Allan may be considered as almost a generic term for rivers--the all fertilisers--for it occurs in the varying forms Allen, Alan, Alne, Ellen, Elan, Ilen, etc.: sometimes emphasis on the second syllable wears off the preliminary vowel, whence the river-names Len, Lyn, Leen, Lone, Lune, etc., are apparently traceable to the same cause as leads us to use lone as an alternative form of the word alone. The Extons Road, Jews Lane, and Paradise now found at King's Lynn point to the probability that King's Lynn (Domesday Lena, 1100 Lun, 1314 Lenne[807]) was once a London and an Exton. The great red letter day in Lynn used to be the festival of Candlemas, and on that occasion the Mayor and Corporation attended by twelve decrepit old men, and a band of music, formerly opened a so-called court of Piepowder: on reference to the Cornish St. Allen it is agreeable to find that this saint "was the founder of St. Allen's Church in Powder". This Powder, sometimes written Pydar, is not shown on modern maps, but it was the title for a district or Hundred in Cornwall which contains the village of Par: it would appear to be almost a rule that the place-name Peter should be closely associated with Allen, e.g., Peterhead in Scotland, near Ellon, and Petrockstowe or Padstowe in Cornwall is near Helland on the river Allan.
In the emblem herewith the alan or cheery old Pater is associated like Nehelennia with the fruits of the earth, amongst which one may perhaps recognise coddlins and other varieties of Allan apple.
The Cornish Allantide was celebrated on the night of Hallow'een, and as Sir George Birdwood rightly remarks the English Arbor Day--if it be ever resuscitated--should be fixed on the first of November or old "Apple Fruit Day," now All Hallows[808] or All Saint's Day, the Christian substitute for the Roman festival of Pomona; also of the first day of the Celtic Feast of Shaman or Shony the Lord of Death. Shaman may in all probability be equated with Joe alone, and Shony with poor John alone alone: Shony, as has been seen, was an Hebridean ocean-deity, and the omniscient Oannes or John of Sancaniathon, the Phoenician historian, lived half his time in ocean: the Eros or Amoretto here illustrated from Kanauj may be connoted with Minnussinchen or the little Sinjohn of Tartary.
With the apple orchard Pomona or of the Pierre, Pere, or Pater Alone, the monocle and monarch of the universe, may be connoted the far-famed paradise of Prester or Presbyter John: this mythical priest-king is rendered sometimes as Preste Cuan, sometimes as Un Khan or John King-Priest, and sometimes as Ken Khan: he was clearly a personification of the King of Kings, and his marvellous Kingdom, which streamed with honey and was overflowing with milk, was evidently none other than Paradise or the Land of Heaven. "Mediæval credulity" believed that this so-called "Asiatic phanton," in whose country stood the Fountain of Youth and many other marvels, was attended by seven kings, twelve archbishops, and 365 counts: the seventy-two kings and their kingdoms said to be the tributaries of Prester John may be connoted with the seventy-two dodecans of the Egyptian and Assyrian Zodiac: these seventy-two dodecans I have already connoted with the seventy-two stones constituting the circle of Long Meg. Facing the throne of Prester John--all of whose subjects were virtuous and happy--stood a wondrous mirror in which he saw everything that passed in all his vast dominions. The mirror or monocle of Prester John is obviously the speculum of Thoth, Taut, or Doddy, and I suspect that the seventy-two dodecans of the Egyptian and Chaldean Zodiac were the seventy-two Daddy Kings of Un Khan's Empire: none may take, nor touch, nor harm it--
For the round of Morian Zeus has been its watcher from of old He beholds it and Athene thy own sea-grey eyes behold.[809]
The first written record of Preste Cuan figures in the chronicles of the Bishop of Freisingen (1145): the name Freisingen is radically singen: and it is quite probable that the Bungen Strasse at Hamelyn identified with the Pied Piper was actually the scene of a "Poor John, Alone, Alone," incident such as Brand thus describes: "I remember to have seen one of these impostors some years ago in the North of England, who made a very hermit-like appearance and went up and down the streets of Newcastle with a long train of boys at his heels muttering, 'Poor John alone, alone!' I thought he pronounced his name in a manner singularly plaintive,"[810] we have seen that the Wandering Jew was first recorded at St. Albans: the ancient name for Newcastle-on-Tyne--where he seems to have made his last recorded appearance--was _Pan_don. With the panshen or pope of Tartary may be connoted the probability that the rosy Allan apple of Newlyn was a pippen: the parish of "Lynn or St. Margaret," not only includes the wards of Paradise and Jews Lane, but we find there also an Albion Place, and the curious name Guanock; modern Kings Lynn draws its water supply from a neighbouring Gay wood.
In the year 1165 a mysterious letter circulated in Europe emanating, it was claimed, from the great Preste Cuan, and setting forth the wonders and magnificence of his Kingdom: this epistle was turned into verse, sung all over Europe by the trouveres, and its claims to universal dominion taken so seriously by Pope Alexander that this _Pon_tiff or _Pon_tifex[811] published in 1177 a counter-blast in which he maintained that the Christian professions of the mysterious Priest King were worse than worthless, unless he submitted to the spiritual claims of the See of Rome. There is little doubt that the popular Epistle of Prester John was the wily concoction of the Gnostic Trouveres or Merry Andrews, and that the unimaginative Pope who was so successfully stung into a reply, was no wise inferior in perception to the scholars of recent date who have located to their own satisfaction the mysterious Kingdom of Prester John in Tartary, in Asia Minor, or in Abyssinia: by the same peremptory and supercilious school of thought the Garden of Eden has been confidently placed in Mesopotamia, and the Irish paradise of Hy Breasil, "not unsuccessfully," identified with Labrador.
The probability is that every community attributed the Kingdom of Un Khan to its own immediate locality, and that like the land of the Pied Piper it was popularly supposed to be joining the town and close at hand. In the fifteenth century a hard-headed French traveller who had evidently fallen into the hands of some whimsical mystic, recorded: "There was also at Pera a Neapolitan, called Peter of Naples, with whom I was acquainted. He said he was married in the country of Prester John, and made many efforts to induce me to go thither with him. I questioned him much respecting this country, and he told me many things which I shall here insert, but I know not whether what he said be the truth, and shall not therefore warrant any part of it." Upon this honeymoon the archæologist, Thomas Wright, comments: "The manner in which our traveller here announces the relation of the Neapolitan shows how little he believed it; and in this his usual good sense does not forsake him. This recital is, in fact, but a tissue of absurd fables and revolting marvels, undeserving to be quoted, although they may generally be found in authors of those times. They are, therefore, here omitted; most of them, however, will be found in the narrative of John de Maundeville."[812]
We have seen that the Wandering Jew was alternatively termed Magus, a fact already connoted with the seventy-two stones of Long Meg, or Maggie: it was said that Un Khan was sprung from the ancient race of the Magi,[813] and I think that the solar circle at Shanagolden by Canons Island Abbey, on the Shannon in the country of the Ganganoi, was an abri of Ken Khan, Preste Cuan, or Un Khan.
The rath or dun of Shanid or Shenet, as illustrated ante, p. 55, has a pit in its centre which, says Mr. Westropp, "I can only suppose to have been the base of some timber structure": whether this central structure was originally a well, a tower, or a pole, it no doubt stood as a symbol of either the Tower of Salvation, the Well of Life, or the Tree of Knowledge. There is little doubt that this solar wheel or wheel of Good Fortune--which as will be remembered was occasionally depicted with four deacons or divine kings, a variant of the seventy-two dodecans--was akin to what British Bardism alluded to as "the melodious quaternion of Peter," or "the quadrangular delight of Peter, the great choir of the dominion";[814] it was also akin to the design on the Trojan whorl which Burnouf has described as "the four epochs (quarters) of the month or year, and the holy sacrifice".[815]
The English earthwork illustrated in Fig. 433 (A) is known by the name of Pixie's Garden, and its form is doubtless that of one among many varieties of "the quadrangular delight of Peter". A pixy is an elf or ouphe, and the Pixie's Garden of _Uff_culme Down (Devon) may be connoted in idea with "Johanna's Garden" at St. Levans: Johanna, as we have seen, was associated with St. Levan (the home of Maggie Figgie), and in the words of Miss Courtney: "Not far from the parish of St. Levan is a small piece of ground--Johanna's Garden--which is fuller of weeds than of flowers".[816] I suspect that Johanna, like Pope Joan of Engelheim and Janicula, was the fabulous consort of Prester John or Un Khan.
Fig. 433 (B) represents two diminutive earthworks which once existed on Bray Down in _Dor_setshire: these little Troytowns or variants of the quadrangular delight of Peter may be connoted with the obverse design of the Thorgut talisman found near Appleby and illustrated on page 675: the two crescent moons may be connoted with two sickles still remembered in Mona, and the twice-eight crescents surrounding Fig. 434 which is copied from a mosaic pavement found at Gubbio, Italy.
The Pixie's Garden illustrated in Fig. 433 (A) obviously consists of four T's centred to one base and the elaborate svastika, illustrated in Fig. 435, is similarly distinguished by four concentric T's. The Kymbri or Cynbro customarily introduced the figure of a T into the thatch of their huts, and it is supposed that ty, the Welsh for a house or home, originated from this custom. We have seen that the Druids trained their super sacred oak tree (Hebrew allon) into the form of the T or Tau, which they inscribed Thau (ante, p. 393), and as ty in Celtic also meant good, the four T's surrounding the svastika of Fig. 435 would seem to be an implication of all surrounding beneficence, good luck, or all bien.
The Cynbro are believed to have made use of the T--Ezekiel's mark of election--as a magic preservative against fire and all other misfortunes, whence it is remarkable to find that even within living memory at _Camber_well by Peckham near London, the chi-shaped or ogee-shaped[817] angle irons, occasionally seen in old cottages, were believed to have been inserted "in order to protect the house from fire as well as from falling down".[818]
Commenting upon Fig. 435, which is taken from a Celtic cross at Carew in Wales, Mrs. G. F. Watts observes: "This symbol was used by British Christians to signify the labyrinth or maze of life round which was sometimes written the words 'God leadeth'".[819] Among the Latin races the Intreccia or Solomon's Knot, which consists frequently of three strands, is regarded as an emblem of the divine Being existent without beginning and without end--an unbroken Unity: coiled often into the serpentine form of an S it decorates Celtic crosses and not infrequently into the centre of the maze is woven the svastika or Hammer of Thor. The word Svastika is described by oriental scholars as being composed of svasti and ka: according to the Dictionaries svasti means welfare, health, prosperity, blessing, joy, happiness, and bliss: in one sense ka (probably the chi [Greek: ch]) had the same meaning, but ka also meant "The Who," "The Inexplicable," "The Unknown," "The Chief God," "The Object of Worship," "The Lord of Creatures," "Water," "The Mind or Soul of the Universe".
In southern France--the Land of the Troubadours--the Solomon's Knot, as illustrated in Fig. 438, is alternatively known as lacs d'amour, or the knot of the Annunciation: this design consists, as will be noted, of a svastika extended into a rose or maze, and a precisely similar emblem is found in Albany. The title lacs d'amour or lakes of love, consociated with the synonymous knot of the Annunciation, is seemingly further confirmation of the equation amour = Mary: another form of knot is illustrated in Fig. 440, and this the reader will compare with Fig. 439, representing a terra-cotta tablet found by Schliemann at Troy.
It will be remembered that according to the Pierrot legend St. Peter looking out from the Walls of Heaven detected what he first took to be a rosebud in the snow: the name Piers, which like Pearce is a variant of Peter, is essentially pieros, either Father Rose or Father Eros. The rood or rhoda pierre here illustrated is a Rose cross, and is conspicuously decorated with intreccias, or Solomon's Knots: whether the inscription--which looks curiously Arabic--has ever been deciphered I am unable to say; it would, however, seem that the Andrew or Chi cross, which figures upon it, permits the connection of this Chooyvan rood with Choo or Jou.
Among the whorls from Troy, Burnouf has deciphered objects which he describes as a wheel in motion; others as the Rosa mystica; others as the three stations of the Sun, or the three mountains. The Temple of Solomon was situated on Mount Moriah, one of the three holy hills of Hierosolyma, and it is probable that Meru, the paradise peak of Buddhism, was like Mount Moriah, originally Amour. That the wheel coins of England were symbolic of the Apple Orchard, the Garden of the Rose, or of the Isles called Fortunate is further pointed by the variant here illustrated, which is unmistakeably a Rosa mystica.
As has been pointed out by Sir George Birdwood it was the Apple Tree of the prehistoric Celtic immigrants that gave to the whole peninsular of the West of England--Gloucestershire, Somersetshire, Dorsetshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall, the mystic name of "Ancient Avalon," or Apple Island:--
Deep meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns, And bowery hollows, crowned with summer seas.
FOOTNOTES:
[766] Primary chief bard am I to Elphin, And my original country is the region of the summer stars; Idno and Heinin called me Merddin, At length every king will call me Taliesin.
I was with my Lord in the highest sphere, On the fall of Lucifer into the depth of hell I have borne a banner before Alexander; I know the names of the stars from north to south; I have been on the galaxy at the throne of the Distributer; I was in Canaan when Absalom was slain; I conveyed the Divine Spirit to the level of the vale of Hebron; I was in the court of Don before the birth of Gwdion. I was instructor to Eli and Enoc; I have been winged by the genius of the splendid crosier; I have been loquacious prior to being gifted with speech; I was at the place of the crucifixion of the merciful Son of God; I have been three periods in the prison of Arianrod; I have been the chief director of the work of the tower on Nimrod; I am a wonder whose origin is not known. I have been in Asia with Noah in the ark, I have seen the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra; I have been in India when Roma was built, I am now come here to the remnant of Troia.
I have been with my Lord in the manger of the ass: I strengthened Moses through the water of Jordan; I have been in the firmament with Mary Magdalene; I have obtained the muse from the cauldron of Caridwen; I have been bard of the harp to Lleon or Lochlin, I have been on the White Hill, in the court of Cynvelyn, For a day and a year in stocks and fetters, I have suffered hunger for the Son of the Virgin, I have been fostered in the land of the Deity, I have been teacher to all intelligences, I am able to instruct the whole universe. I shall be until the day of doom on the face of the earth And it is not known whether my body is flesh or fish.
[767] A New Description of England (1724), p. 57.
[768] _Brax_field Road at modern Brockley may mark the site of this meadow.
[769] Wilson, J., Imperial Gazetteer, i., 946.
[770] Cf. CUN, coin, ante, p. 666.
[771] P. 494.
[772] Cf. Pierrot's Family Tree. T.P.'s Weekly, 1st August, 1914.
[773] Wilson, J., Imperial Gazetteer, ii., 584.
[774] Toland, History of Druids, p. 356.
[775] Cf. Gomme, Sir L., Folklore as an Historic Science, pp. 43, 44.
[776] Cf. Gomme, Sir L., Folklore as an Historic Science, p. 44.
[777] A New Description of England, p. 65.
[778] Morte D'Arthur, Bk. xviii, ch. viii.
[779] Hazlitt, W. Carew, Faiths and Folklore, i., 12.
[780] "Lageniensis," p. 86.
[781] Taliesin or Radiant Brow claims to have been Merlin.
[782] "All the old traditions which give an interest to the Forest continue to be current there. The Fairies, who are kind to children, are still reported to be seen in their white apparel upon the banks of the Fountain; and the Fountain itself (whose waters are now considered salubrious) is still said to be possessed of its marvellous rain-producing properties. In seasons of drought the inhabitants of the surrounding parishes go to it in procession, headed by their five great banners, and their priests, ringing bells and chanting Psalms. On arriving at the Fountain, the Rector of the Canton dips the foot of the Cross into its waters, and it is sure to rain before a week elapses."
"Brecilicn etait une de ces forets sacrees qu'habitaient les pretresses du druidisme dans le Gaule; son nom et celui de sa vallee l'attesteraient a defaut d'autre temoignage; les noms de lieux sont les plus surs garans des evenemens passés."--Cf. Notes on The Mabinogion (Everyman's Library), p. 383-90.
[783] Mitton, G. E., Hampstead and Marylebone.
[784] Probably the Glamorganshire "Tabernae Amnis," now Bont y Von.
[785] Fearbal or sometimes Fibal. The "Merry Devil" associated in popular tradition with Edmonton beyond Islington was known by the name of Peter Fabell: I think he was originally "the Angel," and that the names Fearbal or Fabell meant Fairy or Fay Beautiful.
[786] "Morien," Light of Britannia, p. 61.
[787] I am inclined to think that the eena deena dina dux of childrens' games may be a similarly ancient survival.
[788] There was also an Aballo, now Avalon, in France: there is also near Dodona in Albania an Avlona or Valona. A correspondent of The Westminster Gazette points out that: "Valona is but a derivative of the Greek (both ancient and modern) Balanos. This is clearer still if you realise that the Greek b is (and no doubt in ancient days also was) pronounced like an English v: thus, valanos."
[789] Travels in the East, p. 152.
[790] According to Malory: "Merlin made the Round Table in tokening of roundness of the world, for by the Round Table is the world signified by right, for all the world, Christian and heathen, repair unto the Round Table; and when they are chosen to be of the fellowship of the Round Table they think them more blessed and more in worship than if they had gotten half the world; and ye have seen that they have lost their fathers and their mothers, and all their kin, and their wives and their children, for to be of your fellowship."--Morte D'Arthur, Book xiv. 11.
[791] Fenner, W., Pasquils Palinodia, 1619.
[792] Faiths and Folklore, ii., 401.
[793] Ibid., 402.
[794] Aneurin's Gododin.
[795] Cf. "Laganiensis," Irish Folklore, p. 35.
[796] Cf. New Light on Renaissance, p. 169.
[797] Birdwood, Sir G., preface to Symbolism of East and West, p. xvi.
[798] Hazlitt, W. Carew, Faiths and Folklore, ii., 402.
[799] Cf. Aucassin and Nicoletté, Everyman's Library.
[800] Fraser, J. B., Persia, p. 129.
[801] At Looe in Cornwall the site of what was apparently the ancient forum or Fore street, is now known as "Hannafore". Opposite is St. George's Islet. The connection between George and Hanover suggests that St. George was probably the patron saint of Hanover.
[802] Hardwick, C., Traditions, Superstitions, and Folklore, p. 159.
[803] The lungs are the organs of haleine.
[804] Courtney, Miss M. E., Cornish Feasts, p. 3.
[805] Johnson, W., Folk Memory, p. 212.
[806] Cf. ibid., p. 211.
[807] The authorities are perplexed by this place-name. "O. E. Llynn means usually a torrent running over a rock which does not exist here. Its later meaning, a pool, is not recorded until 1577".
[808] The Elsdale Street at Hackney which is found in close contact with Paradise Passage, Well Street, and Paragon Road may mark an original Elves or Ellie's Dale. Leading to "The Grove" is Pigwell Passage.
[809] Ante, p. 323.
[810] Cf. Hardwick, C., Trad. Super. and Folklore, p. 159.
[811] This word means evidently much more than, as supposed, bridge builder.
[812] The Rev. Baring-Gould quotes portions of this epistle in his Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, but its contents are evidently distasteful to him as he breaks off: "I may be spared further extracts from this extraordinary letter which proceeds to describe the church in which Prester John worships, by enumerating the precious stones of which it is constructed, and their special virtues": as a matter of fact, the account is an agreeable fairy-tale or fable which is no more extravagant than the account of the four-square, cubical, golden-streeted New Jerusalem attributed to the Revelations of St. John.
[813] Chambers' Encyclopædia, viii., 398.
[814] Guest, Dr., Origines Celtica, ii., 182.
[815] Cf. Schliemann, Troy.
[816] Cornish Feasts, p. 76.
[817] Cf. ante, p. 345, Fig. 183, No. 10.
[818] Aynsley, Mrs. Murray, Symbolism of the East and West, p. 60.
[819] The Word in the Pattern.
XIII. ENGLISH EDENS
At bottom, a man is what his thinking is, thoughts being the artists who give colour to our days. Optimists and pessimists live in the same world, walk under the same sky, and observe the same facts. Sceptics and believers look up at the same great stars--the stars that shone in Eden, and will flash again in Paradise.--Dr. J. FORT NEWTON.
The name under which Jupiter was worshipped in Crete is not yet deciphered, but as we are told that the favourite abode of King Jou at Gnossus was on Mount Olympus where in its delightful recesses he held his court, and administered patriarchal justice; and as we are further told by Julius Firmicus that: "vainly the Cretans to this day adore the tumulus of Jou," it is fairly obvious that, however many historic King Jou's there may have been, the archetypal Jou was a lord of the tumulus or dun.
The ancient Irish were accustomed to call any hill or artificial mound under which lay vaults, a shee, which also is the generic term for fairy: similarly we have noted a connection between the term rath--or dun--and wraith. Although fairies were partial to banks, braes, purling brooks, brakes, and bracken, they particularly loved to congregate in duns or raths, and their rapid motions to and fro these headquarters were believed to create a noise "somewhat resembling the loud humming of bees when swarming from a hive". I have little doubt that all hills, bryns, or barrows were regarded not only as bruen, or breasts, but as ethereal beehives, and the superstitions still associated with bees are evidence that bees themselves were once deemed sacred. There are upwards of a thousand localities in Ireland alone where the word rath, raw, rah, ray, or ra marks the site of a fairy rath,[820] and without going so far as to assert that every British -dun or -ton was a fairy dun or doun further investigation will probably establish an unsuspected multitude of Dunhills or Edens.
We have seen that in Ireland fern meant anciently anything good, and also in all probability fer en the Fires or Fairies: at the romantic hill of Cnock-Firinn or the Hill of firinn was supposed to dwell a fairy chief named Donn Firineach, i.e., Donn the Truthful or the Truthteller;[821] evidently, therefore, this Don was a counterpart and consort of Queen Vera, and as he is reputed to have come from Spain his name may be connoted with the Spanish don which, like the Phoenician adon, is a generic term meaning the lord. With "Generous Donn the King of Faery" may be connoted the Jewish Adonai, a plural form of Adon "lord" combined with the pronoun of the first person: when reading the Scriptures aloud the Jews rather than utter the super-sacred word Jhuh, substitute Adonai, and in Jewry Adonai is thus a title of the Supreme Being. Among the Phoenicians Adon or the lord was specially applied to the King of Heaven or the Sun and that sacred Nineveh was essentially a dunhill is evidenced by Fig. 444
With Adon may be connoted Adonis, the lovely son of Myrrha and Kinyras, whose name has been absorbed into English as meaning any marvellously well-favoured youth: prior to the festivals of Adonis it was customary to grow forced gardens in earthen or silver pots, and there would thus seem to have been a close connection in ideas between our English "whytepot queen" or maiden with the pyramid of silver, and with the symbolic Gardens of Adonis or Eden as grown in Phrygia and Egypt.
Skeat connotes the word maiden--which is an earlier form than maid--with the Cornish maw, a boy: if, however, we read ma as mother the word maiden becomes Mother Iden, and I have little doubt that the Maiden of mythology and English harvest-homes was the feminine Adonis. Adonis was hymned as the Shepherd of the Twinkling Stars; I have surmised that Long Meg of the seventy-two Daughters was the Mighty Maiden of the Stars, whence it is interesting to find Skeat connoting maiden with Anglo-Saxon magu, a kinsman: that Long Meg was the All Mother whence mag or mac came to mean child of has already been suggested. Not only does Long Meg of Cumberland stand upon Maiden Way, but there is in the same district a Maidenmoor probably like Maidenhead or Maidenheath, a heath or mead dedicated to the Maid. Our dictionaries define the name May as a contraction of either Mary or Margaret, i.e., Meg: in the immediate neighbourhood of Long Meg is another circle called Mayborough, of which the vallum or enclosure is composed of stones taken from the beds of the Eamount or Eden rivers; in the centre of Mayborough used to stand four magnificent monoliths probably representative of the four deacons or Good Kings who supported the Whytepot Queen.
There is a seat called St. Edans in Ireland close to Ferns where, as will be remembered, is St. Mogue's Well: in Lincolnshire is a Maidenwell-cum-Farworth, and at Dorchester is a Haydon Hill in the close proximity of Forstone and _Goodman_stone. That this Haydon was the Good Man is implied by the stupendous monument near by known as Mew Dun, Mai Dun, or Maiden Castle: this chef d'oeuvre of prehistoric engineering, generally believed to be the greatest earthwork in Britain, is an oblong camp extending 1000 yards from east to west with a width of 500 yards, and it occupies an area of 120 acres:[822] entered by four gates the work itself is described as puzzling as a series of mazes, and to reach the interior one is compelled to pass through a labyrinth of defences. The name Dorchester suggests a Droia or Troy camp, and I have little doubt that the labyrinthine Maiden was a colossal Troy Town or Drayton. Among the many Draytons in England is a Drayton-Parslow, which suggests that it stood near or upon a Parr's low or a Parr's lea: out of great Barlow Street, Marylebone, leads Paradise Place and Paradise Passage: there is a Drayton Park at Highbury, and in the immediate proximity an Eden Grove and Paradise Road: there was a Troy Town where Kensington Palace now stands,[823] and in all likelihood there was another one at Drayton near Hanwell and Hounslow. That Hounslow once contained an onslow or ange hill seems to me more probable than that it was merely the "burial mound" of an imaginary Hund or Hunda: in Domesday Hounslow figures as Honeslow which may be connoted with Honeybourne at Evesham and Honeychurch in Devon. With regard to the latter it has been observed: "The connection between a church and honey is not very obvious, and this is probably Church of Huna": the official explanation of "Honeybourne" is--"brook with honey sweet water," but it is more probable that Queen Una was reputed to dwell there. That Una was not merely the creation of Spenser is evidenced from the fact that in Ireland "Una is often named by the peasantry as regent of the preternatural Sheog tribes":[824] at St. Mary's-in-the-Marsh, Thanet, is a Honeychild Manor and an Old Honeychild: with the Three White Balls at Iona it may be noted that on the summit of Hydon Heath (Surrey) is a place marked Hydon's Ball.
At a distance of "about 110 yards" from Mayborough is another circle known as Arthur's Round Table: a mile from Dunstable is a circular camp known as Maiden Bower, whence it is probable that Dunstable meant either Dun staple (market), or that the circular camp there was a "table" of "generous Donn". That the term "Maiden" used here and elsewhere means maiden as we now understand it may be implied from the famous Maiden Stone in Scotland: this sculptured Longstone, now measuring 10 feet in height, bears upon it the mirror and comb which were essentially the emblems of the Mairymaid.
There is an eminence called Maiden Bower near Durham which figures alternatively as _Dun_holme; Durham is supposed to mean--"wild beast's home or lair," but I see no more reason to assign this ferocious origin to Durham than, say, to Dorchester or Doracestria: Ma, the mistress of Mount Ida, was like Britomart[825] esteemed to be the Mother of all beasts or brutes, and particularly of deer; Diana is generally represented with a deer, and the woody glens of many-crested Ida were indubitably a lair of forest brutes--
Thus Juno spoke, and to her throne return'd, While they to spring-abounding Ida's heights, Wild nurse of forest beasts, pursued their way.[826]
Yorkshire, or Eboracum and the surrounding district, the habitat of the Brigantes, was known anciently as Deira: by the Romans Doracestria, or Dorchester was named Durnovaria upon which authority comments: "In the present name there is nothing which represents varia, so that it really seems to mean 'fist camp'"; doubtless, fisticuffs, boxing-matches, and many other kind of Trojan game were once held at Doracestria as at every other Troy or Drayton.
King Priam, the Mystic King of Troy, is said to have had fifty sons and daughters: the same family is assigned not only to St. Brychan of Cambria, but also to King Ebor, or Ebrauc of York, whence in all probability the Brigantes who inhabited Yorkshire and Cumberland were followers of one and the same Priam, Prime, Broom, Brahm, or Brahma: the name Abraham or Ibrahim is defined as meaning "father of a multitude". The Kentish Broom Park near Patrixbourne whereby is Hearts Delight, Maydeacon House, and Kingston is on Heden Downs, and immediately adjacent is a Dennehill and Denton: at Dunton Green, near Sevenoaks, the presence of a Mount Pleasant implies that this Dunton was an Eden Town.
There is an Edenkille, or Eden Church at Elgin, and at Dudley is a Haden Cross, supposed to have derived its title "from a family long resident here": it would be preferable and more legitimate to assign this family name to the site and describe them as the "De Haden's". There is a Haddenham at Ely, and at Ely Place, Holborn, opposite St. Andrews, is Hatton Garden: I suggest that Sir Christopher Hatton, like the Hadens of Haden Cross, derived his name from his home, and not vice versa.
In the Hibernian county of Clare is an Eden Vale: Clare Market in London before being pulled down was in the parish of St. Clement Dane, here also stood Dane's Inn, and within a stone's throw is the church of St. Dunstan. The numerous St. Dunstans were probably once Dane stones, or Dun stanes, and the sprightly story of St. Dunstan seizing the nose of a female temptress with the tongs must be relegated to the Apocrypha. In the opinion of Sir Laurence Gomme the predominant cult in Roman London was undoubtedly that of Diana, for the evidence in favour of this goddess includes not only an altar, but other finds connected with her worship: Sir Laurence goes even further than this, stating his conviction that "Diana practically absorbed the religious expression of London":[827] that London was a Lunadun has already been suggested.
It has always been strongly asserted by tradition that St. Paul's occupies the site of a church of Diana: if this were so the Diana stones on the summit of Ludgate Hill would have balanced the Dun stones on the opposing bank of the river Fleet, or Bagnigge. We have seen that mam in Gaelic meant a gently sloping hill; the two dunhills rising from the river Fleet, or Bagnigge, were thus probably regarded like the Paps of Anu at Killarney, as twin breasts of the Maiden: there are parallel "Maiden Paps" near Berriedale (Caithness), others near Sunderland, and others at Roxburgh. According to Stow the famous cross at Cheapside was decorated with a statue of Diana, the goddess, to which the adjoining Cathedral had been formerly dedicated: prior to the Reformation, two jets of water--like the jets in Fig. 44 (p. 167)--prilled from Diana's naked breast "but now decayed".
By Claremarket and the church of St. Clement Dane stood Holywell Street, somewhat north of which was yet another well called--according to Stow--Dame Annis the Clear, and not far from it, but somewhat West, was also one other clear water called Perilous Pond. This "perilous" was probably once peri lass, i.e., perry lass, or pure lass, and the neighbouring Clerkenwell (although the city clerks or clerken may in all likelihood have congregated there on summer evenings), was once seemingly sacred to the same type of phairy as the Irish call a cluricanne.[828] The original Clerken, or Cluricanne, was in all probability the resplendent clarus, clear, shining, Glare King, or Glory King: but it is equally likely that the -ken of Clerken was the endearing diminutive kin, as in Lambkin. That St. Clare was adored by her disciples is clear from The Golden Legend, where among other interesting data we are told: "She was crowned with a crown right clear shining that the obscurity of the night was changed into clearness of midday": we are further told that once upon a time as a certain friar was preaching in her presence: "a right fair child was to fore St. Clare, and abode there a great part of the sermon". It is thus permissible to assume that this marvellous holy woman, whose doctrine shall "enlumine all the world," was originally depicted in company of the customary Holy Child, or the Little Glory King.
The original Clerken Well stood in what is now named Ray Street, and quite close to it is Braynes Row; not far distant was Brown's Wood.[829] The name Sinclair implies an order or a tribe of Sinclair followers, and that the St. Dunstan by St. Clement's Dane and Claremarket was something more than a monk is obvious from the tradition that "Our Lord shewed miracles for him ere he was born": the marvel in point is that on a certain Candlemas Day the candle of his Mother Quendred[830] miraculously burned full bright so that others came and lighted their tapers at the taper of St. Dunstan's mother; the interpretation placed upon this marvel was that her unborn child should give light to all England by his holy living.[831]
As recorded in The Golden Legend the life of poor St. Clare was one long dolorous great moan and sorrow: it is mentioned, however, that she had a sister Agnes and that these two sisters loved marvellously together. We may thus assume that the celestial twins were Ignis, fire and Clare, light: Agnes is the Latin for lamb, and this symbol of Innocence is among the two or three out of lost multitudes which have been preserved by the Christian Church. In the illustration herewith the lambkin, in conjunction with a star, appears upon a coin of the Gaulish people whose chief town was Agatha: its real name, according to Akerman, was Agatha Tyke, and its foundation has been attributed both to the Rhodians and the Phoceans. Agatha is Greek for good, and tyke meant fortune or good luck: the effigy is described as being a bare head of Diana to the right and without doubt Diana, or the divine Una, was typified both by ignis the fire, and by agnes the lamb: in India Agni is represented riding on a male agnes, and in Christian art the Deity was figured as a ram.
At the Cornish town of St. Enns, St. Anns, or St. Agnes, the name of St. Agnes--a paragon of maiden virtue--is coupled with a Giant Bolster, a mighty man who is said to have held possession of a neighbouring hill, sometimes known as Bury-anack: at the base of this hill exists a very interesting and undoubtedly most ancient earthwork known as "The Bolster".[832] As Anak meant giant,[833] Bury Anack was seemingly the abri, brugh, bri, or fairy palace of this particular Anak, and if we spell Bolster with an e he emerges at once into Belstar, the Beautiful Star who is represented in association with Agnes on page 719: probably the maligned Bolster of Cornwall had another of his abris at Bellister Castle on the Tyne, now a crumbling mass of ruins.
Some accounts mention the Clerkenwell pool of Annis the Clear as being that of Agnes the Clear: opposite the famous Angel of this neighbourhood is Claremont Square, and about half a mile eastward is Shepherdess Walk; that the Shepherdess of this walk was Diane, i.e., Sinclair the counterpart of Adonis, the Shepherd of the twinkling stars, is somewhat implied by Peerless Street, which leads into Shepherdess Walk. Perilous Pool at Clerkenwell was sometimes known as Peerless Pool: it has been seen that the hags or fairies were associated with this Islington district which still contains a Paradise Passage, and of both "Perilous" and "Peerless" I think the correct reading should be peri lass; it will be remembered that the peris were quite familiar to England as evidenced by the feathery clouds or "perry dancers," and the numerous Pre Stones and Perry Vales.[834] In Red Cross Street, Clerkenwell, are or were Deane's Gardens; at Clarence Street, Islington, the name Danbury Street implies the existence either there or elsewhere of a Dan barrow.
Opposite Clare Market and the churches of St. Dunstan and St. Clement Dane is situated the Temple of which the circular church, situated in Tanfield Court,[835] is dedicated to St. Anne: St. Anne, the mother of St. Mary, is the patron saint of Brittany, where she has been identified with Ma or Cybele, the Magna Mater of Mount Ida; that Anna was the consort of Joachim or the Joy King I do not doubt, and in her aspect of a Fury or Black Virgin she was in all probability the oak-haunting Black Annis of Leicestershire: "there was one flabby eye in her head". In view of the famous round church of St. Mary the Virgin it is permissible to speculate whether the "small circular hut of stone," in which Black Mary of Black Mary's Hole was reputed to have dwelt on the banks of the Fleet, Bagnigge or Holeburn (now Holborn) was or was not the original Eye dun of the Pixy, or Big Nikke.
The emblems associated with the Temple and its circular church are three; the Flying Horse or Pegasus; two men or twain riding on a single horse (probably the Two Kings) and the Agnus Dei: in the emblem herewith this last is standing on a dun whence are flowing the four rivers of Eden. The lamb was essentially an emblem of St. John who, in Art, is generally represented with it; whence it is significant that in Celtic the word for lamb is identical with the name Ion, the Welsh being oen, the Cornish oin, the Breton oan, the Gaelic uan, and the Manx eayn. That Sinjohn was always sunshine and the sheen, never apparently darkness, is implied by the Basque words egun meaning day, and Agandia or Astartea meaning Sunday. The Basque for God is jainco, the Ugrian was jen, and the Basque jain, meaning lord or master, is evidently synonymous with the Spanish don or donna.
In addition to St. Annes opposite St. Dunstans, and St. Clement Dane there is a church of St. Anne in Dean Street, Soho: Ann of Ireland was alternatively Danu, and it is clear from many evidences that the initial d or t was generally adjectival. The Cornish for down or dune is oon, and Duke was largely correct when he surmised in connection with St. Anne's Hill, Avebury: "I cannot help thinking that from Diana and Dian were struck off the appellations Anna and Ann, and that the feriæ, or festival of the goddess, was superseded by the fair, as now held, of the saint. I shall now be told that the fane of the hunting goddess would never have been seated on this high and bare hill, that the Romans would have given her a habitation amidst the woods and groves, but here Callimachus comes to my aid. In his beautiful Hymn on Diana he feigns her to entreat her father Jupiter, 'also give me all hills and mountains'."
Not only is Diana (Artemis) made to say "give me all hills and mountains," but Callimachus continues, "for rarely will Artemis go down into the cities": hence it is probable that all denes, duns, and downs were dedicated to Diana. In Armenia, Maundeville mentions having visited a city on a mountain seven miles high named Dayne which was founded by Noah; near by is the city of Any or Anni, in which he says were one thousand churches. Among the rock inscriptions here illustrated, which are attributed to the Jews when migrating across Sinai from Egypt, will be noticed the name Aine prefixed by a thau cross: the mountain rocks of the Sinai Peninsular bear thousands of illegible inscriptions which from time to time fall down--as illustrated--in the ravines; by some they are attributed to the race who built Petra.[836] I am unable to offer any suggestion as to how this Roman lettering AINE finds itself in so curious a milieu.
Speaking of the bleak moorlands of Penrith (the pen ruth?), where are found the monuments of Long Meg and of Mayborough, Fergusson testily observes: "No one will now probably be found seriously to maintain that the long stone row at Shap was a temple either of the Druids or of anyone else. At least if these ancient people thought a single or even a double row of widely-spaced stones stretching to a mile and a half across a bleak moor was a proper form for a place to worship in, they must have been differently constituted from ourselves[837]." Indubitably they were; and so too must have been the ancient Greeks: the far-famed Mount Cynthus, whence Apollo was called Cynthus, is described by travellers as "an ugly hill" which crosses the island of Delos obliquely; it is not even a mountain, but "properly speaking is nothing but a ridge of granite". I am told that Glastonbury--the Avalon, the Apple Orchard, the Sacred Eden of an immeasurable antiquity--is disappointing, and that nowadays little of any interest is to be seen there. "Donn's House," the gorgeous bri or palace of generous Donn the King of Faery, is in reality no better than a line of sandhills in the Dingle Peninsula, Kerry; of the inspiring Tipperary I know nothing, but can sympathise with the prosaic Governor of the Isle of Man, who a century or so ago reported that practically every dun in Manxland was crowned with a cairn which seemed "nothing but the rubbish of Nature thrown into barren and unfruitful heaps".
"Miserable churl" sang the wily, enigmatic Bird, whose advice to the rich villein has been previously quoted,[838] "when you held me fast in your rude hand easy was it to know that I was no larger than a sparrow or a finch, and weighed less than half an ounce. How then could a precious stone three ounces in weight be hid in my body? When he had spoken thus he took his flight, and from that hour the orchard knew him no more. With the ceasing of his song the leaves withered from the pine, the garden became a little dry dust and the fountain forgot to flow."
Among the legends of the Middle Ages is one to the effect that Alexander, after conquering the whole world determined to find and compass Paradise. After strenuous navigation the envoys of the great King eventually arrived before a vast city circled by an impenetrable wall: for three days the emissaries sailed along this wall without discovering any entrance, but on the third day a small window was discerned whence one of the inhabitants put out his head, and blandly inquired the purpose of the expedition; on being informed the inhabitant, nowise perturbed, replied: "Cease to worry me with your threats but patiently await my return". After a wait of two hours the denizen of Heaven reappeared at the window and handed the envoys a gem of wonderful brilliance and colour which in size and shape exactly reproduced the human eye[839]. Alexander, not being able to make head or tail of these remarkable occurrences, consulted in secret all the wisest of the Jews and Greeks but received no suitable explanation; eventually, however, he found an aged Jew who elucidated the mystery of the hidden Land by this explanation: "O King, the city you saw is the abode of souls freed from their bodies, placed by the Creator in an inaccessible position on the confines of the world. Here they await in peace and quiet the day of their judgment and resurrection, after which they shall reign forever with their Creator. These spirits, anxious for the salvation of humanity, and wishing to preserve your happiness, have destined this stone as a warning to you to curb the unseemly desires of your ambition. Remember that such insatiable desires merely end by enslaving a man, consuming him with cares and depriving him of all peace. Had you remained contented with the inheritance of your own kingdom you would have reigned in peace and tranquillity, but now, not even yet satisfied with the conquest of enormous foreign possessions and wealth, you are weighed down with cares and danger."
The name of the aged Jew who furnished Alexander with this information is said to have been Papas, or Papias: Papas was an alternative name for the Phrygian Adonis, whence we may no doubt equate the old Adonis (i.e., Aidoneus, or Pluto?) with the Aged Jew, or the Wandering Jew. It has been seen that the legend of the Wandering Jew apparently originated at St. Albans: in France montjoy was a generic term for herald, and I have little doubt that these Mountjoys were originally so termed as being the denizens of some sacred Mount. There is a Mount Joy near Jerusalem, and there was certainly at least one in France: among the legends recorded in Layamon's Brut is one relating to a Mont Giu and a wondrous Star: "From it came gleams terribly shining; the star is named in Latin, comet. Came from the star a gleam most fierce; at this gleam's end was a dragon fair; from this dragon's mouth came gleams enow! But twain there were mickle, unlike to the others; the one drew toward France, the other toward Ireland. The gleam that toward France drew, it was itself bright enow; to Munt-Giu was seen the marvellous token! The gleam that stretched right west, it was disposed in seven beams."[840] It is probable that Chee Tor in the neighbourhood of Buxton, Bakewell,[841] and Haddon Hall, was once just as bogie a Mount as Munt-Giu: at Church_down_ in Gloucester is a Chosen Hill, which apparently was sacred to Sen Cho, and this hill was presumably the original church of Down; all sorts of "silly traditions" are said to hang around this spot, and the natives ludicrously claim themselves to be "the Chosen" People.
Chee Tor at Buxton overlooks the river Wye, a name probably connected with eye, and with numerous _Ea_mounts, _Ey_tons, _Ea_tons, _How_dens, etc.: that Eton in Bucks was an Eye Dun is inferable from the ad montem ceremonies which used until recently to prevail at Salt Hill.[842] In British, hy or ea, as in Hy Breasil, Batters_ea_, Chels_ea_, etc., meant an island, and the ideal Eden was usually conceived and constructed in island form: if a natural "Eye Town" were not available it was customary to construct an artificial one by running a trench around some natural or artificial barrow. The word eye also means a shoot, whence we speak of the eye of a potato, and the standard Eyedun seems always to have possessed an eye of eyes in the form either of a tree, a well, or a tower: it was not unusual to surmount the Beltan fire or Tan-Tad with a tree; the favourite phare tree was a fir tree, in Provence the Yule log was preferably a pear tree. It was anciently supposed that the earth was an island established upon the floods, and Homer preserves the belief of his time by referring to Oceanus as a river-stream:--
And now, borne seaward from the river stream Of the Oceanus, we plow'd again The spacious Deep, and reach'd th' Ææan Isle, Where, daughter of the dawn, Aurora takes Her choral sports, and whence the sun ascends.[843]
According to Josephus, the Garden of Eden "was watered by one river which ran round about the whole earth,[844] and was parted into four parts," and this immemorial tradition was expressed upon the circular and sacred cakes of ancient nations which were the forerunners of our Good Friday's Hot Cross Buns. Associated with the pagan Eucharists here illustrated[845] will be noted Eros--whose name is at the base of eucharist--also what seemingly is the Old Pater. In Egypt the cross cake was a hieroglyph for "civilised land," and was composed of the richest materials including milk and honey, the familiar attributes of Canaan or the Promised Land. The remarkable earthwork cross at Banwell has no doubt some relation to the Alban cross on our Easter bun, Greek boun, and the so-termed Pixies' Garden illustrated in Fig. 433(A), probably was once permeated by the same phairy imagination as perceived Paradise in the dusty "Walls of Heaven," "Peter's Orchard," and "Johanna's Garden".
The name Piccadilly is assumed to have arisen because certain buns called piccadillies were there sold: the greater likelihood is that the bun took its title from Piccadilly. This curious place-name, which commemorates the memory of a Piccadilly Hall, is found elsewhere, and is probably cognate with Pixey lea, Poukelay, and the legend PIXTIL, etc. Opposite Down Street, Piccadilly, or Mayfair, there are still standing in the Green Park the evidences of what may once have been tumuli or duns, and the Buckden Hill by St. Agnes' Well in Hyde Park may, as is supposed, have been a den for bucks, or, as is not more improbable, a dun sacred to Big Adon:[846] leading to Buck Hill and St. Agnes' Well there is still a pathway marked on the Ordnance map Budge Walk, an implication seemingly that Bougie, or Bogie, was not unknown in the district. We have connoted Rotten Row of Hyde Park with Rotten Row Tower near Alnwick: this latter is situated on Aidon Moor. By Down Street, Mayfair, is Hay Hill, at the foot of which flowed the Eye Brook, and this beck no doubt meandered past the modern Brick Street, and through the Brookfield in the Green Park where the fifteen joyful heydays of the Mayfair were once celebrated: whether the Eye Brook wandered through Eaton Square--the site of St. Peter's Church--I do not know, nor can I trace whether or not the "Eatons" hereabout are merely entitled from Eaton Hall in the Dukeries. Each Eaton or island ton, certainly every sacred island, seems to have been deemed a "central boss of Ocean: that retreat a goddess holds,"[847] and this central boss appears to have been conceived indifferently or comprehensively as either a Cone, a Pyramid, a Beehive, or a Teat. Wyclif, in his translation of the Bible, refers to Jerusalem as "the totehill Zyon," and there is little doubt that all teathills were originally cities or sites of peace: according to Cyprien Roberts: "The first basilicas, placed generally upon eminences, were called Domus Columbæ, dwellings of the dove, that is, of the Holy Ghost. They caught the first rays of the dawn, and the last beams of the setting sun."[848] Everywhere in Britain the fays were popularly "gentle people," "good neighbours," and "men of peace": a Scotch name for Fairy dun or High Altar of the Lord of the Mound used to be--sioth-dhunan, from sioth "peace," and dun "a mound": this name was derived from the practice of the Druids "who were wont occasionally to retire to green eminences to administer justice, establish peace, and compose differences between contending parties. As that venerable order taught a saogle hal, or World-beyond-the-present, their followers, when they were no more, fondly imagined that seats where they exercised a virtue so beneficial to mankind were still inhabited by them in their disembodied state".[849]
In Cornwall there is a famous well at Truce which is legendarily connected with Druidism:[850] Irish tradition speaks of a famous Druid named Trosdan; St. Columba is associated with a St. Trosdan;[851] at St. Vigeans in Scotland there is a stone bearing an inscription which the authorities transcribe "Drosten,"[852] probably all the dwellers on the Truce duns were entitled Trosdan,[853] and it is not unlikely that the romantic Sir Patrise of Westminster was originally Father Truce. It has already been noted that treus was Cornish for cross, that children cross their fingers as a sign of fainits or truce, and there is very little doubt that cruciform earthworks, such as Shanid, and cruciform duns such as Hallicondane in Thanet were truce duns. The Tuatha de Danaan, or Children of Donn, who are supposed to have been the introducers of Druidism into Ireland, were said to have transformed into fairies, and the duns or raths of the Danaan are still denominated "gentle places".[854] That the ancient belief in the existence of "gentle people" is still vivid, is demonstrated beyond question by the author of The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, who writes (1911): "The description of the Tuatha de Danaan in the 'Dialogue of the Elders' as 'sprites or fairies with corporeal or material forms, but endued with immortality,' would stand as an account of prevailing ideas as to the 'good people' of to-day".[855] The generous Donn, the King of Faery, is obviously Danu, or Anu, or Aine, the Irish goddess of prosperity and abundance, for we are told that well she used to cherish the circle of the gods.[856] At Knockainy, or the Hill of Ainy, Aine, whose name also occurs constantly on Gaulish inscriptions,[857] was until recent years worshipped by the peasants who rushed about carrying burning torches of hay: that Aine was Aincy, or dear little aine, is inferred by the alternative name of her dun Knockain_cy_: "Here," says Mr. Westropp, "a cairn commemorates the cult of the goddess Aine, of the god-race of the Tuatha De Danaan. She was a water-spirit, and has been seen, half raised out of the water, combing her hair. She was a beautiful and gracious spirit, 'the best-natured of women,' and is crowned with meadow-sweet (spiræa), to which she gave its sweet smell. She is a powerful tutelary spirit, protector of the sick, and connected with the moon, her hill being sickle-shaped, and men, before performing the ceremonies, used to look for the moon--whether visible or not--lest they should be unable to return."[858] By St. Anne's in Dean Street, Soho, is Dansey Yard, where probably dancing took place, and dins of every sort arose.
The original sanctuary at Westminster was evidently associated with a dunhill which seems to have long persisted for Loftie, in his History of Westminster, observes: "The hillock on which we stand is called Thorn Ey".[859] Tothill Street, Westminster, marks the site of what was probably the teat hill of Sir Patrise: the tothills being centres of neighbourly intercourse a good deal of tittle-tattle doubtless occurred there, and from the toothills watchmen touted, the word tout[860] really meaning peer about or look out: "How beautiful on the Mounds are the feet of Him that bringeth tidings--that publisheth Peace".[861] It has been supposed that certain of the Psalms of David were addressed not to the Jewish Jehovah, but to the Phoenician Adon or Adonis, and it is not an unreasonable assumption that these hymns of immemorial antiquity were first sung in some simple Eyedun similar to the wattled pyreum at Kildare, or that at Avalon or Bride Eye.
The oldest sanctuary in Palestine is a stone circle on the so-called Mount of God, and in Britain there is hardly a commanding eminence which is not crowned with a Carn or the evidences of a circle. The Cities of Refuge and the Horns of the Altar, so constantly mentioned in the Old Testament, may be connoted with the fact that in an island fort at Lough Gur, Limerick, were discovered "two ponderous horns of bronze," which are now in the British Museum: it will be remembered that at Lough Gur is the finest example of Irish stone circles. But stone circles are probably much more modern than the reputed founding of St. Bride's first monastery at Kildare. We are told that Bride the Gentle, the Mary of the Gael, who occasionally hanged her cloak upon a lingering sunbeam, had a great love of flowers, and that once upon a time when wending her way through a field of clover[862] she exclaimed, "Were this lovely plain my own how gladly would I offer it to the Lord of Heaven and Earth". She then begged some sticks from a passing carter, staked and wattled them into a circle, and behold the Monastery was accomplished. The character of this simple edifice reminds one of "that structure neat," to which Homer thus alludes:--
Unaided by Laertes or the Queen, With tangled thorns he fenced it safe around, And with contiguous stakes riv'n from the trunks Of solid oak black-grain'd hemm'd it without.[863]
The circle of Mayborough originally contained two cairns which are suggestive of Andromache's "turf-built cenotaph with altars twain": the great bicycle within a monocycle at Avebury is trenched around, and the summit of the circumference is still growing thickly with "tangled thorns". On the Wrekin there is a St. Hawthorn's Well; of "Saint" Hawthorn nothing seems to be known, and I strongly suspect that he was originally a sacred thorn or monument bush. The first haies or hedges were probably the hawthorn or haw hedges around the sacred Eyes, and the original ha-has or sunk ditches were presumably the water trenches which surrounded the same jealously-guarded Eyes: and as ha-ha is also defined as "an old woman of surprising ugliness, a caution," it may be suggested that the caretakers or beldames[864] of the awful Eyes were, like some of the vergers and charwomen of the present day, not usually comely.
The iris-form of the Eye was shown in the ground plan ante, page 534, and that this design was maintained even for ages after the first primitive Rock or Tower had given place to statelier edifices might be shown by many more evidences than the design here illustrated: the maton of this Trematon Castle was in all probability the same Maiden as the Shee of Maiden Castle, Maiden Paps, and the Maiden Stane. Trematon, in Cornwall, was the site of a Stannary Court, whence arose the proverbial localism "Trematon Law," and there are peculiarities about the Castle which merit more than passing attention. Rising majestically amid the surrounding foliage the keep is described as standing on the summit of a conical mound: Baring-Gould characterises the aspect as being that of a pork pie, whence its windowless walls would seem to bear a resemblance to the massive masonry at Richborough. The Richborough walls now measure 10 feet 8 inches in thickness and nearly 30 feet in height; those at Trematon are stated as being 10 feet thick and 30 feet high. Like Maiden Castle at Dorchester, Trematon is of an oval form and it was formerly divided into apartments, but as there are no marks of windows they would appear to have been lighted from the top.[865] The gateway consisted of three strong arches, and the general arrangements would seem to have resembled those at Chun where, as will be noted, there were three outer chambers encircling about a dozen inner stalls. Chun is cyclopean unmortared stonework; Maiden Castle is earthwork; Richborough is supposedly Roman masonry: of Trematon little is known that may be deemed authentic, but it is generally believed to have been originally erected prior to the Conquest: as, however, the Anglo-Saxons were incapable of masonry it would seem that Trematon might be assigned to an antiquity not less than that of Richborough Castle which it so curiously parallels. With the various Maiden Lanes of King's Cross, Covent Garden, and elsewhere may be connoted the Mutton Lane of Hackney, which was famous for a bun house which once rivalled that at Cheynes Walk, Chelsea: Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, is a continuation of Chandos Street, and it will probably prove that the surname Chandos is ultimately traceable to Jeanne douce. In Caledonia douce is not necessarily feminine, and the King John tradition, which unaccountably lingered around Canonbury,[866] may be connoted with the John Street and Mutton Hill of Clerkenwell. The sheep or mutton is the proper emblem of St. John, and perhaps the same King John may be further identified with the Goodman of the adjacent Goodman's Fields. We have seen that in Caledonia the gudeman was the devil, whence it becomes interesting to find near Brown's Wood, Islington, stood once a "Duval's (vulgarly called Devil's) Lane".[867]
St. Columba alludes affectionately to--
My derry, my little oak grove, My dwelling and my little cell.
The Eye dun illustrated ante, page 584, which is described as the strangest, most solitary, most prehistoric-looking of all our motes, is known as _Trow_dale Mote; St. Columba is associated with Tiree; he is also said to have been imprisoned at Tara, and to have written the book Durrow with his own hand: there is thus some ground for tracing the Mote, Maton, Maid or Maiden, alias St. Columba, to Droia or Troy. That the dove was pre-eminently a Cretan emblem is well known, and that all derrys or trees were sacred Troys or sanctuaries is further implied by the ancient meaning of the adjective terribilis, i.e., sacred: thus we find Westminster or Thorn Ey alluded to by old writers as a locus terribilis,[868] and it would seem that any awe-inspiring or awful spot was deemed terrible or sacred.
In the Celtic Calendar there figures a St. Maidoc or Aidan: Maidoc is maid high, and I am afraid St. Aidan was occasionally "a romping girl" or hoiden. One does not generally associate Pallas Athene with revelry, and it is difficult to connect with gaiety the grim example of Athene which the present proprietors of The Athenæum have adopted as their ideal; yet, says Plato, "Our virgin Lady, delighting in the sports of the dance, thought it not meet to dance with empty hands; she must be clothed in full armour, and in this attire go through the dance. And youths and maidens should in every respect imitate her example, honouring the goddess, both with a view to the actual necessities of war and to the festivals." Hoiden or hoyden meant likewise a gypsy--a native of Egypt "the Land of the Eye"--and also a heathen: Athene, who was certainly a heathen maid, may be connoted with Idunn of Scandinavia, who keeps the apples which symbolise the ever-renewing and rejuvenating force of Nature.[869] Tradition persistently associates Eden with an apple, although Holy Writ contains nothing to warrant the connection: similarly tradition says that Eve had a daughter named Ada: as Idunn was said to be the daughter of Ivalde we may equate Idunn, the young and lovely apple-maid, with Ada or Ida, and Ivalde, her mother with the Old Wife, or Ive Old.[870] In an earlier chapter we connected Eve with happy, Hob, etc., and there is little doubt that Eve, "the Ivy Girl," was the Greek Hebe who had the power of making old men young again, and filled the goblets of the gods with nectar.
Idunn, "the care-healing maid who understands the renewal of youth," was, we are told, the youthful leader of the Idunns or fairies: in present-day Welsh edyn means a winged one, and ednyw a spirit or essence. It is said that from the manes of the horses of the Idunns dropped a celestial dew which filled the goblets and horns of the heroes in Odin's hall; it is also said that the Idunns offer full goblets and horns to mortals, but that these, thankless, usually run away with the beaker after spilling its contents on the ground. There must be an intimate connection between the legend of the fair Idunns, and the fact that at the Caledonian Edenhall, on the river Eden, is preserved an ancient goblet known as The Luck of Edenhall:--
If this glass do break or fall Farewell the luck of Edenhall.
The river Eden flows into the Solway Firth, possibly so named because the Westering Sun must daily have been seen to create a golden track or sun-way over the Solway waters. Ptolemy refers to Solway Firth as Ituna Estuarium, so that seemingly Eden or Ituna may be equated not only with the British rivers Ytene and Aeithon, but also with the Egyptian Aten. According to Prof. Petrie, the cult of Aten "does not, so far, show a single flaw in a purely scientific conception of the source of all life and power upon earth. The Sun is represented as radiating its beams on all things, and every beam ends in a hand which imparts life and power to the king and to all else. In the hymn to the Aten, the universal scope of this power is proclaimed as the source of all life and action, and every land and people are subject to it, and owe to it their existence and allegiance. No such grand theology had ever appeared in the world before, so far as we know, and it is the forerunner of the later monotheist religions while it is even more abstract and impersonal and may well rank as a scientific theism."
Egyptian literature tells of a King Pepi questing for the tree of life in company with the Morning Star carrying a spear of Sunbeams.
Thy rising is beautiful, O living Aton, Lord of Eternity, Thou art shining, beautiful, strong, Thy love is great and mighty. Thy rays are cast into every face Thy glowing hue brings life to hearts When thou hast filled the two Lands with thy love O God, who himself fashioned himself, Maker of every land. Creator of that which is upon it, Men, all cattle, large and small. All trees that grow in the soil, They live when thou dawnest for them. Thou art the mother and the father of all that thou has made.
Yet this resplendent Pair or Parent was also addressed by the Egyptians as the Sea on High and invoked--
Bow thy head, decline thy arms, O Sea!
The Maiden Morning Star or Stella Maris was imagined as refreshing the heart of King Pepi to life: "She purifies him, she cleanses him, he receives his provision from that which is in the Granary of the Great God, he is clothed by the Imperishable Stars." The intimate connection between Candia and Egypt, the "Land of the Eye" is generally admitted, and as it is an etymological fact that the letters m and n are almost invariably interchangeable (indeed if language begins with voice and ends with voice it is impossible to suppose that two such similar sounds could have maintained their integrity), it is probable that Candia is radically related to Khem, which seemingly was the most ancient name for Egypt. The celebrated "Maiden Bower," by Mount Pleasant, Dunstable, is believed to be the modern equivalent of magh din barr, pronounced mach dim barr, and it is decoded as magh, a level expanse, din, a hill or hill fortress, and barr, a summit: I note this derivation--which certainly cannot be applied to the Maiden Stane--as it equates din with dim, in which connection it is noteworthy that in France and Belgium Edinburgh becomes Edimbourg. In all probability therefore Adam, Master of Eden, was originally Adon or "the Lord," and Notre Dame of France was equivalent to the Madonna of Italy.
In Caledonia the moothills were known alternatively as _Dom_hills, and in the "Chanonry of Aberdeen" was a dun known as Donidon or Dunadon: doom still means fate or judgment; in Scots Law giving sentence was formerly called "passing the doeme"; the judge was denominated the Doomster, and the jury the Doomsmen. In the Isle of Man the judges are termed Deemsters, and in Scandinavia stone circles are known as Doom rings: the Hebrew Dan meant judgment, and the English Dinah[871] is interpreted as one who judges; in the Isle of Man the Laws are not legal until they have been proclaimed from the _Tyn_wald Hill. That the Domhills of Britain have largely preserved their physical condition is no doubt due to the doom frequently inflicted on malefactors that they should carry thither a certain quantity of earth and deposit it.[872]
In Europe there are numerous megalithic monuments known popularly as "Adam's Graves," and near Draycott at Avebury the maps mark an Adam's Grave. On the brow of a hill near Heddon (Northumberland) is a trough-like excavation in the solid rock known as the Giant's Grave; there is a similar Giant's Grave near Edenhall by Penrith, and a neighbouring chasm entitled The Maiden's Step is popularly connected with Giant Torquin: this Torquin suggests Tarquin of Etruria, between which and Egypt there was as close if not a closer connection than that between Candia and Khem.
At Maidstone, originally Maidenstone, there is a Moat Park: in Egypt Mut was one of the names given to the Queen of Heaven, or Lady of the Sky: Mut was no doubt a variant of Maat, or Maht, the Egyptian Goddess of Truth, for in the worship of the Egyptian Aton "Truth" occupied a pre-eminent position, and the capital of Ikhnaton, the most conspicuous of the Aton-worshipping kings, was called the "Seat of Truth".
Surmounting the Maat here illustrated is a conspicuous feather which we have already connoted with feeder and fodder. Maat, the giver of provision from that which is in the granary of the Great God, is thus presumably allied with meat, also to mud,[873] or liquid earth. The word mud is not found in Anglo-Saxon, but is evidently the Phoenician mot, and it would be difficult for modern science to add very much to the prehistoric conception of the Phoenicians. According to their great historian Sancaniathon: "The beginning of all things was a condensed, windy air, or a breeze of thick air, and a chaos turbid and black as Erebus. Out of this chaos was generated Môt, which some call Ilus" (mud), "but others the putrefaction of a watery mixture. And from this sprang all the seed of the creation, and the generation of the universe.... And, when the air began to send forth light, winds were produced, and clouds, and very great defluxions and torrents of the heavenly waters."[874] It is probable that Sancaniathon, the Phoenician sage to whom the above passage is attributed, was radically Iathon or Athene.
We have connoted the Egyptian sun-god Phra with Pharoah, or Peraa, who was undoubtedly the earthly representative of the same Fire or Phare as was worshipped by the Parsees, or Farsees of Persia: the Persian historians dilate with enthusiasm on the justice, wisdom, and glory of a fabulous Feridoon whose virtues acquired him the appellation of the Fortunate, and it is probable that this Feridoon was the Fair Idoon whose palace, like the Fairy Donn's, was located on some humble fire dun, or peri down. The name Feridoon, or Ferdun (the Fortunate),[875] is translated as meaning paradisiacal: Ferdusi is etymologically equivalent to perdusi, which is no doubt the same word as paradise, and we can almost visualise the term feridoon transforming itself into fairy don. Nevertheless by one Parthian poet it was maintained--
The blest Feridoon an angel was not, Of musk or of amber, he formed was not; By justice and mercy good ends gained he, Be just and merciful thou'lt a Feridoon be.[876]
In Germany, Frei or Frey meant a privileged place or sanctuary: in London such a sanctuary until recently existed around the church of St. Mary Offery, or Overy (now St. Saviours, Southwark), and in a subsequent chapter we shall consider certain local traditions which permit the equation of St. Mary Overy, and of the Brixton-Camberwell river Effra, with the Fairy Ovary of the Universe. The Gaelic and Welsh for an opening or mouth is aber, whence Aberdeen is held to mean the mouth of the Don: but at Loch_aber_ or Loch Apor this interpretation cannot apply, and it is not improbable that Aberdeen on the river Don was primarily a Pictish Abri town--a Britain or Prydain. As the capital of Caledonia is Edinburgh or Dunedin, it may be suggested that the whole of Caledonia stern and wild was originally a Kille, or church of Don.
At Braavalla, in Osturgothland, there are remains of a marvellous "stone town," whence we may assume that this site was originally a Braavalla, or abri valley: the chief of the Irish Barony of Barrymore who was entitled "The Barry" is said to have inhabited an enchanted brugh in one of the Nagles Hills. Near New Grange in Ireland there is a remarkable dolmen known locally as the house or tomb of Lady "Vera, or Birra":[877] five miles distant is Bellingham, and I have little doubt that every fairy dun or fairy town, the supposed local home of Bellinga, the Lord Angel or the Beautiful Angel, was synonymously a "Britain"; that Briton and Barton are mere variants of the same word is evident from such place-names as Dumbarton, originally Dunbrettan.
[Illustration: FIG. 460--Kit's Coty, near Maidstone. [To face page 751. ]
It has been seen that Prydain--of whom it was claimed that before his coming there was little ordinance in these Islands save only a superiority of oppression--was the reputed child of King Aedd: Aedd was one of the titles of Hu, the first of our national Three Pillars, and he was probably identical with Aeddon, a name which, says Davies, "I think was a title of the god himself": the priests of Hu were apparently termed Aeddons, whence like the Mountjoys of France we may assume they were the denizens of the Aeddon duns: inquiry will probably establish one of these sanctuaries at Haddington; at Addington (Domesday _Edin_tone) in Kent there are the remains of one still standing. With the pagan Aeddons may be connoted the Celtic Saint Aidan, Æden, or Aiden, whose name is associated with Lindis_farne_, also the St. Aidan, or Maidoc of Ferns, who among other prodigies is recorded as having driven to and from Rome in twenty-four hours. At Farn MacBride in Glencolumkille, there are some cromlechs which exactly resemble in plan the house of Lady Vera, or Birra, at New Grange:[878] at Evora, in _Por_tugal, situated on bleak heathland, is a similar monument which Borrow described as the most perfect and beautiful of its kind he had ever seen: "It was circular, and consisted of stones immensely large and heavy at the bottom, which towards the top became thinner, having been fashioned by the hand of art to something like the shape of scallop shells.... Three or four individuals might have taken shelter within the interior in which was growing a small thorn tree."[879] The scallop shell, like the cockle and all coquilles, was obviously an emblem of Evora, the Ovary, the Aber, the opening.
The Bona dea of Candia was represented with a headdress in the form of a cat; we shall connote this animal (German kater) with St. Caterina or Kate, the immaculate pure one, and it is not unnoteworthy that the Kentish Kit's coty, near Maidstone, vide the photograph here reproduced, contains what might be a rude much-weathered image of the sacred cat, lioness, or _kit_ten:[880] In Caledonia is a famous Cat[881] Stane, and the Duchess of Sutherland still bears the honorary title "Lady of the Cat".[882] The word _kitt_en resolves into Great Itten: the New Forest used to be known as the Forest of Ytene,[883] and I do not think that the great British Forest of Dean has any real connection with the supposition that the Danes may have taken up their residence there: Dean was almost a generic name for forest, and we meet with it from Arden to the Ardennes.[884]
For an explication of the word dawn Skeat observes: "see day"; it is, however, probable that dawn was the little or young Don or Adon. By the Welsh the constellation Cassiopeaia is known under the title of Don's chair. That the Irish Don was Truth is probable from the statement "His blue dome (the sky) was an infallible weather-glass, whence its name the Hill of Truth".[885]
According to the Edda,[886] a collection of traditions which have been assigned variously by scholars to Norway, Greenland, and the British Isles, the world was created by the sons of Bor, and in the beginning the gods built a citadel in Ida-plain and an age of universal innocence prevailed. Situated on Cockburn Law in Berwickshire--a wick or fortress of Ber upon which stands the largest of all the brochs--is a prehistoric circle known as Edina or Wodens Hall. The English name Edana or Edna, defined as meaning perfect happiness or rich gift, is stated to be a variant of Ida or Ada: in Hebrew the name Adah means beauty, and Ada, the lovely daughter of Adam, is probably Eda, the "passionately beloved"[887] Breaton princess of Hibernia, or Ma Ida of Tyburnia or Marylebone.
The Garden of Eden has somewhat unsuccessfully, I believe, been located in Mesopotamia: the Jews doubtless had their Edens even though Palestine is arid, and the authorities translate the name Adam as having meant red earth: according to early Rabbinical writers Adam was a giant; he touched the Arctic pole with one hand and the Antarctic with the other.[888] I have here noted but a handful of the innumerable Edens in Britain which includes five rivers of that name:[889] that the Lady of Britain was Prydain, Brython, or pure Athene, i.e., Wisdom, is a well-recognised tradition, for she is conventionally represented as Athene. In Greece the girl-name Theana meant Divine Intelligence,[890] and Ida was interpreted far seeing: in Troy the goddess of the city, which originally stood upon a dun hill, was Athene, and the innumerable owl-headed emblems found there by Schliemann were her sign: "Before the human form was adopted her (Athene's) proper symbol was the Owl; a bird which seems to surpass all other creatures in acuteness and refinement, of organic perception; its eyes being calculated to discern objects which to all others are enveloped in darkness; its ear to hear sounds distinctly when no other can perceive them at all, and its nostrils to discriminate effluvia with such nicety that it has been deemed prophetic from discovering the putridity of death even in the first stages of disease."[891]
We have noted the existence of some exclusively British fairies known as Portunes: among the Latins Portunas was a name of Tri_ton_ or Nep_tune_: the Mother of the British Portunes might be termed Phortuna, or, as we should now write the word, Fortuna, and the stone circle at Goodaver in Cornwall might be described as a Wheel of Good Phortune: the Hebrew for fortune is gad, and it is probable that the famous Gadshill, near Rochester, was at one time a God's Hill; from Kit's Coty on the heights above Rochester it is stated that according to tradition a continuous series of stone monuments once extended to Addington where are still the remains of another coty or cromlech.
There are in England numerous Addingtons or Edintones, and at at least two of these are Druidic remains: the Kentish Addington, near Snodland and Kit's Coty, is dedicated to St. Margaret, and the church itself is situated on a rise or dun. Half a mile from Bacton in Hereford is a small wood known as St. Margaret's Park, and in the centre of this is a cruciform mound, its western arm on the highest ground, its eastern on the lowest: this cruciform mound was described in 1853 as being 15 feet at base,[892] a familiar figure which may be connoted with the statement in The Golden Legend that St. Margaret was fifteen years of age. In addition to the cruciform mount at St. Margaret's Park, Bacton, there are further remains of archæologic interest: about 100 years ago nine large yew trees which were surrounding it--one of gigantic size--were felled to the ground, and my authority states that its venerable antiquity was evident from the decayed stumps of oaks still visible felled ages ago together with more recent ones.[893] In addition to the cross in this prehistoric Oak grove of the Lady Margaret there are three curious cavities, two of them circular, the third oval or egg-shaped: the ancient veneration for the oeuf, or egg, has degenerated to the Easter egg, and in Ireland the Dummy's Hill,[894] associated with egg-trundling may, I think, be equated with Donna or the Dame.
The Cretan Britomart in Greek was understood to mean sweet maiden; in Welsh pryd meant precious, dear, fair, beautiful; Eda of Ireland was "passionately beloved," and to the Britons the sweet maiden was inferentially Britan_nia_, the new pure Athene, Ma Ida the Maid or Maiden whose character is summed up in the words prude, proud, pride, and pretty. In Ireland we may trace her as Meave, alias Queen Mab, and the headquarters of this Maiden were either at Tara or at Moytura: the latter written sometimes Magh Tuireadh, probably meant the plain of Troy, for there are still all the evidences here of a megalithic Troy town. The probabilities are that Stanton Drew in Somerset, like Drewsteignton in Devon, with which tradition connects St. Keyna, was another Dru stonetown for here are a cromlech, a logan stone, two circles, some traces of the Via Sacra or Druid Way and an ancient British camp: in Aberdeen there are circles at _Tyre_bagger, Dun_adeer_, and at Deer.
Among other so-called monuments of the Brugh at Moytura recorded in the old annalists are "the Two Paps of the Morrigan," "The Mound of the Morrigan," i.e., the Mound of the Great Queen, also a "Bed of the Daughter of Forann":[895] Forann herself was doubtless the Hag whose weirdly-sculptured chair exists at Lough Crew in Meath: Meath was esteemed the mid, middle, or midst, of Ireland, and here as we have seen existed the central stone at Birr. There is a celebrated Hag's Bed at Fermoy, doubtless the same Hag as the "Old Woman of Beare," whose seven periods of youth necessitated all who lived with her to die of old age: this Old Woman's grandsons and great grandsons were, we are told, tribes and races, and in several stories she appears to the hero as a repulsive hag who suddenly transforms herself into a beautiful Maid. At Moytura--with which tradition intimately associates the Children of Don--is a cairn called to this day the "cairn of the One Man": with this One Man we may connote Un Khan or Prester John, of whose mystic Kingdom so many marvellous legends circulated during the Middle Ages.
Among the miracles attributed to St. Patrick is one to the effect that by the commandment of God he "made in the earth a great circle with his staff": this might be described as a byre, i.e., an enclosure or bower, and we may connote the word with the stone circle in Westmoreland, at Brackenbyr, i.e., the byre of Brecon, Brechin, or the Paragon? The husband of Idunn was entitled Brage, whose name inter alia meant King: Brage was the god of poetry and eloquence; a superfluity of prating, pride, and eloquence is nowadays termed brag.
The burial place of St. Patrick, St. Bride, and Columba the Mild, is alleged to be at Duno in Ulster: "In Duno," says The Golden Legend, "these three be buried all in one sepulchre": the word Duno is d'uno, the divine Uno, and the spot was no doubt an Eden of "the One Man": Honeyman[896] is a fairly common English surname, and although this family may have been dealers in honey, it is more probable that they are descendants of the One Man's ministers: in Friesland are megalithic Hunnebeds, or Giant's Beds, and I have little doubt that the marvellously scooped stone at Hoy in the Hebrides[897]--the parallel of which existed in Egypt, the Land of the Eye--was originally a Hunne Bed or grotte des fees.
"Of Paradise," says Maundeville, "I cannot speak for I have not been there": nevertheless this traveller--who was not necessarily the arch liar of popular assumption--has recorded many artificial paradises which he was permitted to explore: the word paradise is the Persian pairidaeza, which means an enclosure, or place walled in: it is thus cognate with our park, and the first parks were probably sanctuaries of the divine Pair. Nowhere that I know of is the place-name Paradise[898] more persistent than in Thanet or Tanet, a name supposed by the authorities to be Celtic for fire: at the nose of the North Foreland old maps mark Faire Ness, and I have little doubt that Thanet, "by some called Athanaton and Thanaton,"[899] was originally sacred to Athene. In Suffolk is a Thingoe, which is understood to mean "how, or mound of the thing, or provincial assembly": the chief Cantian thing or folkmoot was probably held at the Dane John at Cantuarbig or Durovernon; the word think implies that Athene was a personification of Reason or Holy Rhea, and the equivalence of the words remercie and thank, suggest that all dons, donatives, and donations were deemed to have come from the Madonna or Queen Mercy, to whom thanks or remerciements were rendered by the utterance of her name. In the North of England there are numerous places named Unthank, which seemingly is ancient Thank: the Deity is still thanked for meat, i.e., fare, or forage; free, according to Pearsall, "comes from an Aryan root meaning dear (whence also our word friend), and meant in old Teutonic times those who are dear to the head of the household--that is connected with him by ties of friendship, and not slaves, or in bondage".[900] The word dear, French adore, connects tre or abode with Droia or Troy: yet the Sweet Maiden of Crete could at times show dour displeasure, and one of her best known representations is thus described: "The pose of the little figure is dignified and firm, the side face is even winning, but the eyes are fierce, and the outstretched hands holding the heads of the snakes are so tense and show such strength that we instinctively feel this was no person to be played with".[901] The connection at Edanhall of The Maiden's Step with Giant Torquin establishes a probability that the Maid or the Maiden was either the Troy Queen or the Eternal Queen, or dur queen, the hard Queen, at times a little dragon, oftener a dear Queen, i.e., Britomart, the Sweet Maiden, or Eda, the passionately beloved, the Adorée. "Bride, the gentle" is an epithet traditionally applied to St. Bride, St. Brigit, or St. Brig; in Welsh, brig and brigant mean tip top or summit, and these terms may be connoted with the Irish brig meaning pre-eminent power, influence, authority, and high esteem. At Chester, or Deva, there has been found an inscription to the "Nymph-Goddess Brig," and at Berrens in Scotland has been found an altar to the Goddess of Brigantia, which exhibits a winged deity holding a spear in one hand, and a globe in the other.
In the British Museum is a coin lettered CYNETHRYTH REGINA: this lady, who is described as the widow of Offa, is portrayed "in long curls, behind head long cross": assuredly there were numerous Queen Cynethryths, but the original Cynethryth was equally probably Queen Truth, and in view of the fact that the motto of Bardic Druidism was "the Truth against the world," we may perhaps assume that the Druid was a follower of Truth or Troth.
In the opinion of the learned Borlase the sculpture illustrated on page 485 represents the six progressive orders of Druidism contemplating Truth, the younger men on the right viewing the Maiden draped in the garb of convention, the older ones on the left beholding her nude in her symbolic aspect as the feeder of two serpents: it is not improbable that Quendred, the miraculous light-bearing Mother of St. Dunstan, was a variant of the name Cynethryth, at times Queen Dread, at times Queen Truth.
The frequent discovery of coins--Roman and otherwise--within cromlechs such as Kit's Coty and other sacred sites appears to me to prove nothing in respect of age, but rather a survival of the ancient superstition that the fairies possessed from time immemorial certain fields which could not be taken away or appropriated without gratifying the pixy proprietors by a piece of money:[902] the land-grabber is no novelty, nor seemingly is conscience money. That important battles occurred at such sites as Moytura and Braavalla is no argument that those fantastic Troy Towns or Drewsteigntons were, as Fergusson laboriously maintained, monuments to commemorate slaughter. According to Homer--
Before the city stands a lofty mound, In the mid plain, by open space enclos'd; Men call it Batiaea; but the Gods The tomb of swift Myrinna; muster'd _there The Trojans and Allies their troops array'd_.[903]
Nothing is more certain than that with the exception of a negligible number of conscientious objectors, a chivalrous people would defend its Eyedun to the death, and that the last array against invaders would almost invariably occur in or around the local Sanctuarie or Perry dun.
It is a wholly unheard of thing for the British to think or speak of Britain as "the Fatherland": the Cretans, according to Plutarch, spoke of Crete as their Motherland, and not as the Fatherland: "At first," says Mackenzie, "the Cretan Earth Mother was the culture deity who instructed mankind ... in Crete she was well developed before the earliest island settlers began to carve her images on gems and seals or depict them in frescoes. She symbolised the island and its social life and organisation."[904]
FOOTNOTES:
[820] Irish Folklore, p. 32.
[821] Irish Folklore, p.78
[822] Heath, F. R. and S., Dorchester, p. 40.
[823] Dorchester stands on the "Econ Way"
[824] Irish Folklore, p. 79.
[825] In Crete the Forerunner of Greece, Mr. and Mrs. Hawes remark that Browning's great monologue corresponds perfectly with all we know of the Minoan goddess--
I shed in Hell o'er my pale people peace On earth, I caring for the creatures guard Each pregnant yellow wolf and fox-bitch sleek, And every feathered mother's callow brood, And all that love green haunts and loneliness.
[826] Iliad, xv., 175.
[827] London, p. 59.
[828] Irish Folklore, p. 34.
[829] Gomme, Sir L., The Topography of London, ii., 215.
[830] See Cynethryth post, p. 761.
[831] Golden Legend, iii., 188.
[832] Hunt, R., Popular Romances of the West of England, p. 73.
[833] Cf. Numbers xiii. 33.
[834] Adjacent to Perry Mount, Perrivale, Sydenham, are Adamsrill road, Inglemere road, _Allen_by road, and _Ex_bury road.
[835] This Tanfield Court supposedly takes its name from an individual named Tanfield. Wherever the original Tanfield was it was doubtless the scene of many a bonfire or Beltan similar to the joyous "Tan Tads," or "Fire Fathers" of Brittany.
[836] Cf. Forster, Rev. C., The One Primeval Language, 1851.
[837] Rude Stone Monuments, p. 131.
[838] "His feathers were all ruffled for he had been grossly handled by a glove not of silk, but of wool, so he preened and plumed himself carefully with his beak."
[839] Folklore, xxix., No. 3, p. 195.
[840] P. 165.
[841] At Bickley in Kent there is a _Shaw_field Park, which may be connoted with the Bagshaw's Cavern at Buxton.
[842] By Chee Tor is Mon_sal_ Dale, and we may reasonably connote sal and "salt" with Silbury and Sol: into the waters of the Solway Firth flows the river Eden or Ituna, and doubtless the Edinburgh by Salisbury Crags is older than any Saxon Edwin or Scandinavian Odin. (Since writing I find it was originally named Dunedin, cf. Morris Jones, Sir G., Taliesin.)
[843] Odyssey, Book I., 67.
[844] Chapter I.
[845] From an article by Dr. Paul Carus in The Open Court.
[846] The fine megalith now standing half a mile distant at "The Den" was transported from Devonshire about a century ago--no doubt with the idea of tripping some unwary archæologist.
[847] Odyssey, Book I., 67.
[848] Cours d'Hieroglyphique Chretienne, in L'Universite Catholique, vol. vi., p. 266.
[849] Cf. Hazlitt, W. C., Faiths and Folklore, i., 222.
[850] Hunt, p. 328.
[851] Deer, near Aberdeen, is said to have derived its name from deur, the Gaelic for tear, because St. Drostan shed tears there. The monkish authority in the Book of Deer says: "Drostan's tears came on parting with Columcille". Said Columcille, "Let Dear be its name henceforward".
[852] Fergusson, p. 273.
[853] The Tuttle family may similarly be assigned to one or other of the innumerable Toothills.
[854] Irish Folklore, p. 31.
[855] Wentz, W. Y. Evans, p. 404.
[856] In Irish aine means circle.
[857] Westropp, T. J., Proc. of Royal Irish Academy.
[858] Cf. Folklore, xxix., No. 2, p. 159.
[859] Quoted from Besant's Westminster.
[860] Besant supposes that Tothill Street took its name from watermen touting there for fares.
[861] Ps. lii. 7.
[862] In Persia the Shamrakh was held sacred as being emblematical of the Persian triads.
[863] Odyssey, xiv., 12.
[864] Skeat comments upon the word hag as "perhaps connected with Anglo-Saxon haga, a hedge enclosure, but this is uncertain": this authority's definition of a ha-ha is as follows: "Ha-ha, Haw-haw, a sunk fence (F.). From F. haha an interjection of laughter, hence a surprise in the form of an unexpected obstacle (that laughs at one). The French word also means an old woman of surprising ugliness, a 'caution'."
The Celts were conspicuously chivalrous towards women, and I question whether they burst into haw-haws whensoever they met an ill-favoured old dame. As to the ha-has, or "unexpected obstacles," Cæsar has recorded that "the bank also was defended by sharp stakes fixed in front, and stakes of the same kind fixed under the water were covered by the river": if, then, the amiable victim who unexpectedly stumbled upon this obstacle chuckled ha-ha! or haw-haw! as he nursed his wounded limbs, the ancient Britons must have possessed a far finer sense of humour than has usually been assigned to them.
[865] Stockdale, F. W. L., Excursions Through Cornwall, 1824, p. 116.
[866] Gomme, Sir L., The Topography of London, ii., 222.
[867] Ibid., ii., 216.
[868] Besant, W., Westminster, p. 20.
[869] Rydberg, Teutonic Mythology, p. 118.
[870] In the Kentish neighbourhood of Preston, Perry-court, Perry-wood, Holly Hill, Brenley House, and Oversland is an Old Wives Lees, and Britton Court Farm.
[871] A London cockney refers to his sweetheart as his donah.
[872] See "Archæologia" (from The Gentleman's Magazine), i., 286.
[873] The English moot hills are sometimes referred to as mudes or muds, Johnson, W., Byways, p. 67.
[874] Quoted from Donnelly, I., Ragnarok.
[875] Moody, S., What is Your Name? p. 266.
[876] Anon, Secret Societies of the Middle Ages: History of the Assassins.
[877] Fergusson, J., Rude Stone Monuments, p. 231.
[878] Fergusson, p. 523.
[879] Ibid., p. 390.
[880] Almost immediately above the cromlech is Dan's Hill, and in close neighbourhood are Burham, Borough Court, Preston Hall, Pratling Street, and Bredhurst, i.e., Bred's Wood. That Bred was San Od is possibly implied by the adjacent _Snod_hurst and _Snod_land. At Sinodun Hill in Berkshire, Skeat thinks Synods may have once been held. The Snodland neighbourhood in Kent abounds in prehistoric remains.
[881] The authorities assume that the cat is here cath, the Gaelic for war. It might equally well be cad, the Gaelic for holy: in the East a jehad is a Holy War.
[882] Lang, A., Myth, Ritual, and Religion, i., 72.
[883] A New Description of England, 1724.
[884] Sharon Turner informs us, on the authority of Cæsar, Strabo, and Diodorus Siculus, that the Britons "cleared a space in the wood, on which they built their huts and folded their cattle; and they fenced the avenues by ditches and barriers of trees. Such a collection of houses formed one of their towns." Din is the root of dinas, the Welsh word in actual use for a town.
[885] Westropp, T. J., Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy, p. 165.
[886] With Edda, a general term for the rules and materials for verse-making, may be connoted our ode.
[887] According to the original Irish of the story-teller, translated and published for the first time in 1855, Conn, the Consort of Eda, "was a puissant warrior, and no individual was found able to compete with him either on land or sea, or question his right to his conquest. The great King of the West held uncontrolled sway from the island of Rathlin to the mouth of the Shannon by sea, and as far as the glittering length by land. The ancient King of the West, whose name was Conn, was good as well as great, and passionately loved by his people. His Queen (Eda) was a Breaton (British) princess, and was equally beloved and esteemed, because she was the great counterpart of the King in every respect; for whatever good qualification was wanting in the one, the other was certain to indemnify the omission. It was plainly manifest that heaven approved of the career in life of the virtuous couple; for during their reign the earth produced exuberant crops, the trees fruit ninefold commensurate with their usual bearing, the rivers, lakes and surrounding sea teemed with abundance of choice fish, while herds and flocks were unusually prolific, and kine and sheep yielded such abundance of rich milk that they shed it in torrents upon the pastures; and furrows and cavities were filled with the pure lacteal produce of the dairy. All these were blessings heaped by heaven upon the western districts of Innes Fodhla, over which the benignant and just Conn swayed his sceptre, in approbation of the course of government he had marked out for his own guidance. It is needless to state that the people who owned the authority of this great and good sovereign were the happiest on the face of the wide expanse of earth. It was during his reign, and that of his son and successor, that Ireland acquired the title of the 'happy Isle of the West' among foreign nations. Con Mor and his good Queen Eda reigned in great glory during many years."
[888] Wood, E. J., Giants and Dwarfs, p. 11. According to Maundeville in Egypt "they find there also the apple-tree of Adam which has a bite on one side".
[889] There is a conspicuously interesting group of names around the river Eden in Sussex. At Edenbridge is Dencross, and in close neighbourhood Ide Hill, Dane Hill, Paxhill Park, Brown Knoll, St. Piers Farm, Hammerwood, Pippenford Park, Allen Court, Lindfield, Londonderry, and Cinder Hill. With Broadstone Warren and Pippinford Park it is noteworthy that opposite St. Bride's Church, Ludgate Hill, is Poppins Court and Shoe Lane: immediately adjacent is a Punch Tavern, whence I think that Poppins was Punch and Shoe was Judy. The gaudy popinjay, at which our ancestors used to shoot, may well have stood in Poppins Court: a representation of this brilliant parrot or parrakeet is carved into one of the modern buildings now occupying the site.
[890] Moody, S., What is Your Name? p. 257.
[891] Knight, R. Payne, The Symbolic Language of Ancient Art and Mythology, p. 128.
[892] "Archæologia" (from The Gentleman's Magazine), p. 270.
[893] "Archæologia" (from The Gentleman's Magazine), p. 270.
[894] "When I was a child I would no more have thought of going out on Easter morning without a real Easter egg than I would have thought of leaving my stocking unsuspended from the foot of my bed on Christmas Eve. A few days before Easter I used to go out to the park, where there were a great many whin bushes, and gather whinblossoms, which I carried home to my mother, who put two eggs in a tin, one for me and one for my sister, and added the whinblossoms and water to them, and set them to boil together until the eggs were hard and the shells were stained a pretty brown hue.
"On Easter Monday my sister and I would carry our eggs to a mound in the park called 'The Dummy's Hill,' and would trundle them down the slope. All the boys and girls we knew used to trundle their eggs on Easter Monday. We called it 'trundling'. The egg-shell generally cracked during the operation of 'trundling,' and then the owner of it solemnly sat down and ate the hard-boiled egg, which, of course, tasted very much better than an egg eaten in the ordinary way. 'The Dummy's Hill' was sadly soiled with egg-shells at the end of Easter Monday morning.
"My uncle, who was a learned man, said that this custom of 'trundling' eggs was a survival of an old Druidical rite. It seems to me to be queer that we in the North of Ireland should still be practising that ancient ceremony when English children should have completely forgotten it, and should think of an Easter egg, not as a real thing laid by hens and related to the ancient religion of these islands, but as a piece of confectionery turned out by machinery and having no ancient significance whatever."--Ervine, St. John, The Daily Chronicle, 4th April, 1919.
[895] Fergusson, J., Rude Stone Monuments, p. 191.
[896] The surname Honeywell found at Kingston implies either there or somewhere a Honeywell. There are several St. Euny Wells in Cornwall.
[897] It measures 36 feet x 18 feet 9 inches, see ante, p. 9.
[898] At Margate are Paradise Hill, Dane Park, Addington Street leading to Dane Hill, and Fort Paragon: at Ramsgate is also a Fort Paragon, and a four-crossed dun called Hallicondane. There used to be a Paradise near Beachy (Bougie, or Biga Head (?)): by Broadstairs or Bridestowe which contains a shrine to St. Mary to which all passing vessels used to doff their sails, is Bromstone, and a Dane Court by Fairfield, all of which are in St. Peter's Parish. By the Sister Towers of Reculver are Eddington, Love Street, Hawthorn Corner, and Honey Hill: in Thanet, Paramour is a common surname. By Minster is Mount Pleasant and Eden Farm: by Richborough is Hoaden House and Paramore Street. To Reculver as to Broadstairs passing mariners used customarily to doff their sails:--
Great gods, whom Earth and Sea and Storms obey, Breathe fair, and waft us smoothly o'er the main. Fresh blows the breeze, and broader grows the bay, And on the cliffs is seen Minerva's fane. We furl the sails, and shoreward row amain Eastward the harbour arches, scarce descried, Two jutting rocks, by billows lashed in vain, Stretch out their arms the narrow mouth to hide. Far back the temple stands and seems to shun the tide.
--Æneid, Bk. III., lxviii.
[899] A New Description of England and Wales, 1724, p. 84.
[900] The English Language, p. 141.
[901] Mr. and Mrs. Hawes, Crete the Forerunner of Greece, p. 123.
[902] Hazlitt, W. Carew, Faiths and Folklore, i., 222.
[903] Iliad, ii., 940.
[904] Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe, pp. 70, 190. The italics are mine.