Chapter III, where the prophet writes: "And I said, Hear I pray you, O

Transcriber's Note

Most spelling variants are retained. Punctuation is occasionally

corrected, especially in the index and in footnotes, to maintain

consistency.

The titles and page references for the five appendices have been added

to the table of contents.

The 'oe' ligature is represented as 'oe'. Italicized letters are

delimited with _underscore_ characters.

A Transcriber's Endnote at the end of this text contains more detailed

information about corrections made.

ARCHAIC ENGLAND

AN ESSAY IN DECIPHERING PREHISTORY

FROM MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS, EARTHWORKS,

CUSTOMS, COINS, PLACE-NAMES, AND

FAERIE SUPERSTITIONS

BY

HAROLD BAYLEY

AUTHOR OF "THE SHAKESPEARE SYMPHONY," "A NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE,"

"THE LOST LANGUAGE OF SYMBOLISM," ETC.

[Illustration]

"One by one tiny fragments of testimony accumulate attesting such a

survival and continuance of folk memory as few men of to-day have

suspected."--JOHNSON

LONDON

CHAPMAN & HALL LTD.

11 HENRIETTA STREET

1919

TO

W. L. GROVES

WHO HAS GREATLY AIDED ME

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. INTRODUCTORY 1

II. THE MAGIC OF WORDS 34

III. A TALE OF TROY 78

IV. ALBION 124

V. GOG AND MAGOG 186

VI. PUCK 230

VII. OBERON 309

VIII. SCOURING THE WHITE HORSE 389

IX. BRIDE'S BAIRNS 455

X. HAPPY ENGLAND 522

XI. THE FAIR MAID 593

XII. PETER'S ORCHARDS 663

XIII. ENGLISH EDENS 710

XIV. DOWN UNDER 764

XV. CONCLUSIONS 832

APPENDIX 871

Appendix A: Ireland and Phoenicia 871

Appendix B: Perry-Dancers and Perry Stones. 873

Appendix C: British Symbols. 874

Appendix D: Glastonbury. 875

Appendix E: The Druids and Crete. 875

INDEX 877

"Of all the many thousands of earthworks of various kinds to be

found in England, those about which anything is known are very few,

those of which there remains nothing more to be known scarcely

exist. Each individual example is in itself a new problem in

history, chronology, ethnology, and anthropology; within every one

lie the hidden possibilities of a revolution in knowledge. We are

proud of a history of nearly twenty centuries: we have the

materials for a history which goes back beyond that time to

centuries as yet undated. The testimony of records carries the tale

back to a certain point: beyond that point is only the testimony of

archæology, and of all the manifold branches of archæology none is

so practicable, so promising, yet so little explored, as that which

is concerned with earthworks. Within them lie hidden all the

secrets of time before history begins, and by their means only can

that history be put into writing: they are the back numbers of the

island's story, as yet unread, much less indexed."--A. HADRIAN

ALLCROFT.

"It is a gain to science that it has at last been recognised that

we cannot penetrate far back into man's history without appealing

to more than one element in that history. Some day it will be

recognised that we must appeal to _all_ elements in that

history."--GOMME.

"History bears and requires Authors of all sorts."--CAMDEN.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is

because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music

which he hears, however measured or far away."--H. D. THOREAU.

This book is an application of the jigsaw system to certain

archæological problems which under the ordinary detached methods of the

Specialist have proved insoluble. My fragments of evidence are drawn as

occasion warrants from History, Fairy-tale, Philosophy, Legend,

Folklore--in fact from any quarter whence the required piece

unmistakably fulfils the missing space. It is thus a mental medley with

all the defects, and some, I trust, of the attractions, of a mosaic.

Ten years ago I published a study on Mediæval Symbolism, and subsequent

investigation of cognate subjects has since put me in possession of some

curious and uncommon information, which lies off the mainroads of

conventional Thought.

The consensus of opinion upon _A New Light on the Renaissance_,[1] was

to the effect that my theories were decidedly ingenious and up to a

point tenable, yet nevertheless at present they could only be regarded

as non-proven. In 1912[2] I therefore endeavoured to substantiate my

earlier propositions, pushing them much further to the point of

suggesting an innate connection between Symbolism and certain

words--such, for example, as _psyche_, which means a butterfly, and

_psyche_ the _anima_ or _soul_ which was symbolised or represented by a

butterfly. Of course I knew only too well the tricky character of the

ground I was exploring and how open many of my propositions would be to

attack, yet it seemed preferable rather to risk the Finger of Scorn than

by a superfluity of caution ignore clues, which under more competent

hands might yield some very interesting and perhaps valuable

discoveries.

In the present volume I piece together a mosaic of visible and tangible

evidence which is supplementary to that already brought forward, and the

results--at any rate in many instances--cannot by any possibility be

written off as due merely to coincidence or chance. That they will be

adequate to satisfy the exacting requirements of modern criticism is,

however, not to be supposed. Referring to _The Lost Language_, one of my

reviewers cheerfully but disconcertingly observed: "He must deal as

others of his school have done with all the possible readings of the

history of the races of men".[3] To sweeping and magnanimous advice of

this character one can only counter the untoward experiences of the

hapless "Charles Templeton," as recounted by Mr. Stephen McKenna: "At

the age of three-and-twenty Charles Templeton, my old tutor at Oxford,

set himself to write a history of the Third French Republic. When I made

his acquaintance, some thirty years later, he had satisfactorily

concluded his introductory chapter on the origin of Kingship. At his

death, three months ago, I understand that his notes on the precursors

of Charlemagne were almost as complete as he desired. 'It is so

difficult to know where to start, Mr. Oakleigh,' he used to say, as I

picked my steps through the litter of notebooks that cumbered his

tables, chairs, and floor."[4]

But Mr. Templeton's embarrassments were trifling in comparison with

mine. Templeton was obviously a man of some leisure, whereas my literary

hobbies have necessarily to be indulged more or less furtively in

restaurants, railway trains, and during such hours and half-hours of

opportunity as I can snatch from more pressing obligations. Moreover,

Mr. Templeton could concentrate on one subject--History--whereas the

scope of my studies compels me to keep on as good terms as may be with

the exacting Muses of History, Mythology, Archæology, Philosophy,

Religion, Romance, Symbolism, Numismatics, Folklore, and Etymology. I

mention this not to extenuate any muzziness of thought, or sloppiness of

diction, but to disarm by confession the charge that my work has been

done hurriedly and here and there superficially.

With the facilities at my disposal I have endeavoured to the best of my

abilities to concentrate a dozen rays on to one subject, and to mould

into an harmonious and coherent whole the pith of a thousand and one

items culled during the past seven years from day to day and noted from

hour to hour. Differing as I do in some respects from the accepted

conclusions of the best authorities, it is a further handicap to find

myself in the position of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah, who was

constrained by force of circumstance to build with a sword in one hand

and a trowel in the other.

To the heretic and the wayfarer it is, however, a comfortable reflection

that what Authority maintains to-day it generally contradicts

to-morrow.[5] Less than a century ago contemporary scholarship knew the

age of the earth with such exquisite precision that it pronounced it to

a year, declaring an exact total of 6000 years, and a few odd days.

When the discoveries in Kent's Cavern were laid before the scientific

world, the authorities flatly denied their possibility, and the proofs

that Man in Britain was contemporary with the mammoth, the lion, the

bear, and the rhinoceros[6] were received with rudeness and inattention.

Similarly the discovery of prehistoric implements in the gravel-beds at

Abbeville was treated with inconsequence and insult, and it was upwards

of twenty years before it was reluctantly conceded that: "While we have

been straining our eyes to the East, and eagerly watching excavations in

Egypt and Assyria, suddenly a new light has arisen in the midst of us;

and the oldest relics of man yet discovered have occurred, not among the

ruins of Nineveh or Heliopolis, not on the sandy plains of the Nile or

the Euphrates, but _in the pleasant valleys of England and France_,

along the banks of the Seine and the Somme, the Thames and the

Waveney."[7]

The fact is now generally accepted as proven by both anthropologists and

archæologists, that the most ancient records of the human race exist not

in Asia, but in Europe. The oldest documents are not the hieroglyphics

of Egypt, but the hunting-scenes scratched on bone and ivory by the

European cave-dwelling contemporaries of the mammoth and the woolly

rhinoceros. Human implements found on the chalk plateaus of Kent have

been assigned to a period prior to the glacial epoch, which is surmised

to have endured for 160,000 years, from, roughly speaking, 240,000 to

80,000 years ago.

It is now also an axiom that the races of Europe are not colonists from

somewhere in Asia, but that, speaking generally, they have inhabited

their present districts more or less continuously from the time when

they crept back gradually in the wake of the retreating ice.

"Written history and popular tradition," says Sir E. Ray Lankester,

"tell us something in regard to the derivation and history of existing

'peoples,' but we soon come to a period--a few thousand years

back--concerning which both written statement and tradition are dumb.

And yet we know that this part of the world--Europe--was inhabited by an

abundant population in those remote times. We know that for at least

500,000 years human populations occupied portions of this territory, and

that various races with distinguishing peculiarities of feature and

frame, and each possessed of arts and crafts distinct from those

characteristic of others, came and went in succession in those

incredibly remote days in Europe. We know this from the implements,

carvings, and paintings left by these successive populations, and we

know it also by the discovery of their bones."

Anthropology, however, while admitting this unmeasurable antiquity for

mankind, takes no count of the possibility of an amiable or cultured

race in these islands prior to the coming of the Roman legions. It

traces with equanimity the modern Briton evolving in unbroken sequence

from the primitive cave-dweller, and it points with self-complacency to

the fact that even as late as the Battle of Hastings some of Harold's

followers were armed with _stone_ axes. There has, however, recently

been unearthed near Maidstone the skull of a late palæolithic or early

neolithic man, whose brain capacity was rather above the average of the

modern Londoner. The forehead of this 15,000 year-old skull is well

formed, there are no traces of a simian or overhanging brow, and the

individual himself might well, in view of all physical evidence, have

been a primeval sage rather than a primeval savage.

The high estimation in which the philosophy of prehistoric Briton was

regarded abroad may be estimated from the testimony of Cæsar who states:

"It is believed that this institution (Druidism) was founded in

Britannia, and thence transplanted into Gaul. Even nowadays those who

wish to become more intimately acquainted with the institution generally

go to Britannia for instruction's sake."

It has been claimed for the Welsh that they possess the oldest

literature in the oldest language in Europe. Giraldus Cambrensis,

speaking of the Welsh Bards, mentions their possession of certain

ancient and authentic books, but whether or not the traditionary poems

which were first committed to writing in the twelfth century retain any

traces of the prehistoric Faith is a matter of divided opinion. To those

who are not experts in archaisms and are not enamoured of ink-spilling,

the sanest position would appear to be that of Matthew Arnold, who

observes in _Celtic Literature_: "There is evidently mixed here, with

the newer legend, a _detritus_, as the geologists would say, of

something far older; and the secret of Wales and its genius is not truly

reached until this _detritus_, instead of being called recent because it

is found in contact with what is recent, is disengaged, and is made to

tell its own story."[8]

The word "founded," as used by Cæsar, implies an antiquity for British

institutions which is materially confirmed by the existence of such

monuments as Stonehenge, and the more ancient Avebury. Whether these

supposed "appendages to Bronze age burials" were merely sepulchral

monuments, or whether they ever possessed any intellectual significance,

does not affect the fact that Great Britain, and notably England, is

richer in this class of monument than any other part of the world.[9]

Circles being essentially and pre-eminently English it is disappointing

to find the most modern handbook on Stonehenge stating: "In all matters

of archæology it is constantly found that certain questions are better

left in abeyance or bequeathed to a coming generation for solution".[10]

Every one sympathises with that weary feeling, but nevertheless the

present generation now possesses quite sufficient data to enable it to

shoulder its own responsibilities and to pass beyond the stereotyped and

hackneyed formula "sepulchral monument". I hold no brief on behalf of

the Druids--indeed one must agree that the Celtic Druids were much more

modern than the monuments associated with their name--nevertheless the

theory that these far-famed philosophers were mere wise men or witch

doctors, with perhaps a spice of the conjuror, is a modern

misapprehension with which I am nowise in sympathy. Valerius Maximus

(_c._ A.D. 20) was much better informed and therefore more cautious in

his testimony: "I should be tempted to call these breeches-wearing

gentry fools, were not their doctrine the same as that of the

mantle-clad Pythagoras".

Druids or no Druids there must at some period in our past have been

interesting and enterprising people in these islands. At Avebury, near

Marlborough, is Silbury Hill, an earth mound, which is admittedly the

vastest artificial hill in Europe. Avebury itself is said to constitute

the greatest megalithic monument in Europe, and nowhere in the world are

tumuli more plentiful than in Great Britain. On the banks of the Boyne

is a pyramid of stones which, had it been situated on the banks of the

Nile, would probably have been pronounced the oldest and most venerable

of the pyramids. In the Orkneys at Hoy is almost the counterpart to an

Egyptian marvel which, according to Herodotus, was an edifice 21 cubits

in length, 14 in breadth, and 8 in height, the whole consisting only of

one single stone, brought thither by sea from a place about 20 days'

sailing from Sais. The Hoy relic is an obelisk 36 feet long by 18 feet

broad, by 9 feet deep. "No other stones are near it. 'Tis all hollowed

within or scooped by human art and industry, having a door at the east

end 2 feet square with a stone of the same dimension lying about 2 feet

from it, which was intended no doubt to close the entrance. Within,

there is at the south end of it, cut out, the form of a bed and pillow

capable to hold two persons."[11]

Sir John Morris-Jones has noted remarkable identities between the syntax

of Welsh and that of early Egyptian: Gerald Massey, in his _Book of the

Beginnings_, gives a list of 3000 close similarities between English and

Egyptian words; and the astronomical inquiries of Sir Norman Lockyer

have driven him to conclude: "The people who honoured us with their

presence here in Britain some 4000 years ago, had evidently, some way or

other, had communicated to them a very complete Egyptian culture, and

they determined their time of night just in the same way that the

Egyptians did".

It used to be customary to attribute all the mysterious edifices of

these islands, including stones inscribed with lettering in an unknown

script, to hypothetical wanderers from the East. Nothing could have been

more peremptory than the manner in which this theory was enunciated by

its supporters, among whom were included all or nearly all the great

names of the period. To-day there is a complete _volte face_ upon this

subject, and the latest opinion is that "not a particle of evidence has

been adduced in favour of any migration from the East".[12] When one

remembers that only a year or two ago practically the whole of the

academic world gave an exuberant and unqualified adherence to the theory

of Asiatic immigration it is difficult to conceive a more chastening

commentary upon the value of _ex cathedra_ teaching.

Happily it was an Englishman[13] who, seeing through the futility of the

Asiatic theory, first pointed out the now generally accepted fact that

the cradle of Aryan civilisation, if anywhere at all, was inferentially

_in Europe_. The assumption of an Asiatic origin was, however, so firmly

established and upheld by the dignity of such imposing names that the

arguments of Dr. Latham were not thought worthy of reply, and for

sixteen years his work lay unheeded before the world. Even twenty years

after publication, when the new view was winning many adherents, it was

alluded to by one of the most learned Germans as follows: "And so it

came to pass that in England, the native land of fads, there chanced to

enter into the head of an eccentric individual the notion of placing the

cradle of the Aryan race in Europe".

The whirligig of Time has now once again shifted the focus of

archæological interest at the moment from Scandinavia to Crete, where

recent excavations have revealed an Eldorado of prehistoric art. It is

now considered that the civilisation of Hellas was a mere offshoot from

that of Crete, and that Crete was veritably the fabulous Island of

Atlantis, a culture-centre which leavened all the shores of the

Mediterranean.

According to Sir Arthur Evans: "The high early culture, the equal rival

of that of Egypt and Babylon, which began to take its rise in Crete in

the fourth millennium before our era, flourished for some 2000 years,

eventually dominating the Ægean and a large part of the Mediterranean

basin. The many-storeyed palaces of the Minoan Priest-Kings in their

great days, by their ingenious planning, their successful combination of

the useful with the beautiful and stately, and last but not least, by

their scientific sanitary arrangements, far outdid the similar works, on

however vast a scale, of Egyptian or Babylonian builders."

The sensational discoveries at Crete provide a wholly new standpoint

whence to survey prehistoric civilisation, and they place the evolution

of human art and appliances in the last Quaternary Period on a higher

level than had ever previously been suspected.

Not only have the findings in Crete revolutionised all previously

current ideas upon Art, but they have also condemned to the melting-pot

the cardinal article of belief that the alphabet reached us from

Phoenicia. Prof. Flinders Petrie has now clearly demonstrated that

even in this respect, "Beside the great historic perspective of the long

use of signs in Egypt, other discoveries in Europe have opened entirely

new ground. These signs are largely found used for writing in Crete, as

a geometrical signary; and the discovery of the Karian alphabet, and its

striking relation to the Spanish alphabet, has likewise compelled an

entire reconsideration of the subject. Thus on all sides--Egyptian,

Greek, and Barbarian--material appears which is far older and far more

widespread than the Græco-Phoenician world; a fresh study of the whole

material is imperatively needed, now that the old conclusions are seen

to be quite inadequate."

The striking connection between the Karian and the Spanish alphabet may

be connoted with the fact that Strabo, mentioning the Turdetani whom he

describes as the most learned tribe of all Spain, says they had reduced

their language to grammatical rules, and that for 6000 years they had

possessed metrical poems and even laws. Commenting upon this piece of

precious information, Lardner ironically observed that although the

Spaniards eagerly seized it as a proof of their ancient civilisation,

they are sadly puzzled how to reconcile these 6000 years with the Mosaic

chronology. He adds that discarding fable, we find nothing in their

habits and manners to distinguish them from other branches of that great

race, except, perhaps, a superior number of Druidical remains.[14]

This "_except_" is noteworthy in view of the fact that the Celtiberian

alphabet of Spain is extremely similar to the Bardic or Druidic

alphabet of Britain, and also to the hitherto illegible alphabet of

Ancient Crete.

Cæsar has recorded that the Druids thought it an unhallowed thing to

commit their lore to writing, though in the other public and private

affairs of life they frequently made use of the Greek alphabet. That the

Celts of Gaul possessed the art of writing cannot be questioned, and

that Britain also practised some method of communication seems a

probability. There are still extant in Scotland inscriptions on stones

which are in characters now totally unknown. In Ireland, letters were

cut on the bark of trees prepared for that purpose and called poet's

tables. The letters of the most ancient Irish alphabet are named after

individual trees, and there are numerous references in Welsh poetry to a

certain secret of the twigs which lead to the strong inference that

"written" communication was first accomplished by the transmission of

tree-sprigs.

The alphabets illustrated on pages 14 and 15 have every appearance of

being representations of sprigs, and it is a curious fact that not only

in Ireland, but also in Arabia, alphabets of which every letter was

named after trees[15] were once current.

[Illustration: BRITISH ALPHABET.

FIG. 1.--From _Celtic Researches_ (Davies, E.).]

In _The Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe_, Dr. Mackenzie inquires:

"By whom were Egyptian beads carried to Britain, between 1500 B.C. and

1400 B.C.? Certainly not the Phoenicians. The sea traders of the

Mediterranean were at the time the Cretans. Whether or not their

merchants visited England we have no means of knowing."[16]

[Illustration: CELTIBERIAN ALPHABET, SHEWING THE DESCRIPTION OF

CHARACTERS FOUND ON THE COINS OF TARRACONENSIS AND

BÆTICA.

FIG. 2.--From _Ancient Coins_ (Akerman, J. Y.).]

The material which I shall produce establishes a probability that the

Cretans systematically visited Britain, and further that the tradition

of the peopling of this island by men of Trojan race are well founded.

According to the immemorial records of the Welsh Bards: "There were

three names imposed on the Isle of Britain from the beginning. Before it

was inhabited its denomination was Sea-Girt Green-space; after being

inhabited it was called the Honey Island, and after it was formed into a

Commonwealth by Prydain, the Son of Aedd Mawr, it was called the Isle of

Prydain. And none have any title therein but the nation of the Kymry.

For they first settled upon it, and before that time no men lived

therein, but it was full of bears, wolves, beavers, and bisons."[17]

In the course of these essays I shall discuss the Kymry, and venture a

few suggestions as to their cradle and community of memories and hopes.

But behind the Kymry, as likewise admittedly behind the Cretans, are the

traces of an even more primitive and archaic race. The earliest folk

which reached Crete are described as having come with a form of culture

which had been developed elsewhere, and among these neolithic settlers

have been found traces of a race 6 feet in height and with skulls

massive and shapely. Moreover Cretan beliefs and the myths which are

based upon them are admittedly older than even the civilisation of the

Tigro-Euphrates valley: and they belong, it would appear, to a stock of

common inheritance from an uncertain culture centre of immense

antiquity.[18]

The problem of Crete is indissolubly connected with that of Etruria,

which was flourishing in Art and civilisation at a period when Rome was

but a coterie of shepherds' huts. Here again are found Cyclopean walls

and the traces of some most ancient people who had sway in Italy at a

period even more remote than the national existence of Etruria.[19]

We are told that the first-comers in Crete ground their meal in stone

mortars, and that one of the peculiarities of the island was the

herring-bone design of their wall buildings. In West Cornwall the stone

walls or Giants' Hedges are Cyclopean; farther north, in the Boscastle

district, herring-bone walls are common, and in the neighbourhood of St.

Just there are numerous British villages wherein the stone mortars are

still standing.

The formula of independent evolution, which has recently been much

over-worked, is now waning into disfavour, and it is difficult to

believe otherwise than that identity of names, customs, and

characteristics imply either borrowing or descent from some common,

unknown source.

That the builders of our European tumuli and cromlechs were maritime

arrivals is a reasonable inference from the fact that dolmens and

cromlechs were built almost invariably near the sea.[20] These peculiar

and distinctive monuments are found chiefly along the _Western_ coasts

of Britain, the _Northern_ coast of Africa, in the isles of the

Mediterranean, in the isolated, storm-beaten Hebrides, and in the remote

islands of Asia and Polynesia.

By whom was the Titanic art of cromlech-building brought alike to the

British Isles and to the distant islands of the Pacific? By what

guidance did frail barques compass such terrifying sea space? How were

these adequately victualled for such voyages, and why were the mainlands

ever quitted? How and why were the colossal stones of Stonehenge brought

by ship from afar, floated down the broad waters of the prehistoric

Avon, and dragged laboriously over the heights of Oare Hill? Who were

the engineers who constructed artificial rocking stones and skilfully

poised them where they stand to-day? "To suspend a stupendous mass of

abnormous shape in such an equilibrium that it shall oscillate with the

most trivial force and not fall without the greatest, is a problem

unsolved so far as I know by modern engineers."[21]

Who were the indefatigable people who, prior to all record, reclaimed

the marshes of the Thames-mouth by an embankment which is intact to-day

all round the river coast of Kent and Essex? Who were the

horticulturists who evolved wheat and other cereals from unknown grasses

and certain lilies from their unknown wild? And who were the

philosophers who spun a delicate gossamer of fairy-tales over the world,

and formulated the cosmic ideas which are in many extraordinary respects

common alike to primitive and more advanced peoples? And why is the

symbol generally entitled the Swastika cross found not only under the

ruins of the most ancient Troy but also in the Thames at Battersea, and

elsewhere from China to Zimbabwe? How is it that Ireland, that remote

little outpost of Europe, possesses more Celtic MSS. than all the rest

of Celtic Europe put together?

The most rational explanation of these and similar queries is seemingly

a consideration of the almost world-wide tradition of a lost island, the

home of a scientific world-wandering race. The legend of submerged

Atlantis was related to Solon by an Egyptian priest as being historic

fact, and the date of the final catastrophe was definitely set down by

Plato from information given to Solon as having been about 9000 B.C.

Solon was neither a fool himself nor the man to suffer fools gladly. It

is admitted by geology that there actually existed a large island in the

Atlantic during tertiary times, but this we are told is a pure

coincidence and it is impossible to suppose any tradition existing of

such an island or land.

Science has very generally denied the credibility of tradition, yet

tradition has almost invariably proved truer than contemporary

scholarship. Scholarship denied the possibility of finding Troy,

notwithstanding the steady evidence of tradition to the mound at

Hissarlik where it was eventually disclosed. Even when Schliemann had

uncovered the lost city the scientists of every European capital

ridiculed his pretensions, and it was only gradually that they

ungraciously yielded to the irresistible evidence of their physical

senses. Science similarly denied the possibility of buried cities at the

foot of Vesuvius, yet popular tradition always asserted the existence of

Pompeii and Herculaneum; indeed, contemporary science has so

consistently scouted the possibility of every advance in discovery that

mere airy dismissal is not now sufficient to discredit either the

Atlantean, or any other theory. From China to Peru one finds the

persistent tradition of a drowned land, a story which is in itself so

preposterous as unlikely to arise without some solid grounds of reality.

Thierry has observed that legend is living tradition, and three times

out of four it is truer than what we call history. Sir John Morris Jones

would seemingly endorse this proposition, for he has recently contended

that tradition is _itself a fact_ not always to be disposed of by the

hasty assumption that all men are liars.[22]

The Irish have their own account of the Flood, according to which three

ships sailed for Ireland, but two of them foundered on the way. The

Welsh version runs that the first of the perilous mishaps which occurred

in Britain was "The outburst of the ocean 'Torriad lin lion,' when a

deluge spread over the face of all lands, so that all mankind were

drowned with the exception of Duw-van and Duw-ach, the divine man and

divine woman, who escaped in a decked ship without sails; and from this

pair the island of Prydain was completely re-peopled".

Correlated with this native version is a peculiar and, so far as my

information goes, a unique tradition that previous disasters had taken

place, causing the destruction of animals and vegetables then existing,

of which whole races were irrevocably lost. This tradition, which is in

complete harmony with the discoveries of modern geology, is thus

embodied in the thirteenth Triad: "The second perilous mishap was the

terror of the torrent-fire, when the earth was cloven down to the abyss,

and the majority of living things were destroyed".

It is a singular coincidence that evidence of a prehistoric

torrent-fire exists certainly in Ireland, where bog-buried forests have

been unearthed exhibiting all the signs of a flowing torrent of molten

fire or lava. According to the author of _Bogs and Ancient Forests_,

when the Bog of Allen in Kildare was cut through, oak, fir, yew, and

other trees were found buried 20 or 30 feet below the surface, and these

trees generally lie prostrated in a horizontal position, and _have the

appearance of being burned at the bottom of their trunks and roots_,

fire having been found far more powerful in prostrating those forests

than cutting them down with an axe; and the great depth at which these

trees are found in bogs, shows that they must have lain there for many

ages.[23]

No ordinary or casual forest fire is capable of prostrating an oak or

fir tree, and the implement which accomplished such terrific devastation

must have been something volcanic and torrential in its character.

I am, however, not enamoured of the Atlantean or any other theory. My

purpose is rather to collate facts, and as all theorising ends in an

appeal to self-evidence, it is better to allow my material, for much of

which I have physically descended into the deeps of the earth, to speak

for itself:--we must believe the evidence of our senses rather than

arguments, and believe arguments if they agree with the phenomena.[24]

Although my concordance of facts is based upon evidence largely visible

to the naked eye, in a study of this character there must of necessity

be a disquieting percentage of "probablys" and "possiblys". This is

deplorable, but if license be conceded in one direction it cannot be

withheld in another. The extent to which guess-work is still rampant in

etymology will be apparent in due course; the extent to which it is

allowed license in anthropology may be judged from such reveries as the

following: "Did any early members of the human family commit suicide?

Probably they did; the feeble, the dying, the maimed, the weak-headed,

the starving, the jealous, would be tired of life; these would throw

themselves from heights or into rivers, or stab themselves or cut their

throats with large and keen-edged knives of flint."[25]

Although my own inquiries deal intimately with graves and names and

epitaphs, it still seems to me a possibility that the brains which

fashioned exquisitely barbed fish-hooks out of flint, and etched vivid

works of art upon pebble, may also have been capable of poetic and even

magnanimous ideas. It is quite certain that the artistic sense is

superlatively ancient, and it is quite unproven that the lives of these

early craftsmen were protracted nightmares.

Although not primarily written with that end, the present work will

_inter alia_ raise not a few doubts as to the accuracy of Green's

dictum: "What strikes us at once in the new England is that it was the

one purely German nation that rose upon the wreck of Rome". In the

opinion of this popular historian the holiest spot in all these islands

ought in the eyes of Englishmen to be Ebbsfleet, the site where in Kent

the English visitors first landed, yet inconsequently he adds: "A

century after their landing the English are still known to their British

foes only as 'barbarians,' 'wolves,' 'dogs,' 'whelps from the kennel of

barbarism,' 'hateful to God and man'. Their victories seemed victories

for the powers of evil, chastisement of a divine justice for natural

sin."[26]

It is an axiom among anthropologists that race characteristics do not

change and that tides of immigration are more or less rapidly absorbed

by the aboriginal and resident stock. Assuredly the characteristics of

the German tribes have little changed, and it is extraordinary how from

the time of Tacitus they have continued to display from age to age their

time-honoured peculiarities. Invited and welcomed into this country as

friends and allies, "in a short time swarms of the aforesaid nations

came over into the island, and they began to increase so much that they

became terrible to the natives themselves who had invited them".[27]

According to Bede the first symptoms of the frightfulness which was to

come were demands for larger rations, accompanied by the threat that

unless more plentiful supplies were brought them they would break the

confederacy and ravage all the island. Nor were they backward in putting

their threats in execution. Just as the Germans ruined Louvain so the

Angles razed Cambridge,[28] and in the words of Layamon "they passed to

and fro the country carrying off all they found". Already in the times

of Tacitus famous for their frantic Hymns of Hate, so again we find

Layamon recording "they breathed out threatenings and slaughter against

the folk of the country". Indeed Layamon uses far stronger expressions

than any of those quoted by Green, and the British chronicler almost

habitually refers to the alien intruders as "swine," and "the loathest

of all things".

Instead, therefore, of being thrilled into ecstasy by the landing of the

Germans at Ebbsfleet, one may more reasonably regard the episode as

untoward and discreditable. It is more satisfactory to contemplate the

return in the train of Duke William of Normandy of those numerous

Britons who "with sorrowful hearts had fled beyond the seas," and to

appreciate that by the Battle of Hastings the temporary ascendancy of

Germanic kultur was finally and irrevocably destroyed.

It is observed by Green that the coins which we dig up in our fields are

no relics of our English fathers but of a Roman world which our fathers'

sword swept utterly away. This is sufficiently true as regards the Saxon

sword, but as some of the native coins in question are now universally

assigned to a period 200 to 100 years earlier than the first coming of

the Romans, it is obvious that there must have been sufficient

civilisation then in the country to require a coinage, and that the

native Britons cannot have been the poor and backward barbarians of

popular estimation.

A coin is an excessively hard fact, and should be of just as high

interest to the historian as a well-formed skull or any other document.

To Englishmen our prehistoric coinage--a national coinage "scarcely if

at all inferior to that of contemporary Rome"--[29] ought to possess

peculiar and special interest, for it is practically in England alone

that early coins have been discovered, and neither Scotland, Wales, nor

Ireland can boast of more than very few. It is, however, an Englishman's

peculiarity that possessing perhaps the most interesting history, and

some of the most fascinating relics in the world, he is either too

modest or too dull to take account of them. The plate of coins

illustrated on page 364, represents certain _sceattae_ which, according

to Hawkins, may have been struck during the interval between the

departure of the Romans and the arrival of the Saxons. One would at

least have thought that such undated minor-monuments would have

possessed _per se_ sufficient interest to ensure their careful

preservation. Yet, according to Hawkins, these rude and uncouth pieces

are scarce, "because they are rejected from all cabinets and thrown away

as soon as discovered".[30]

It is the considered opinion of certain British numismatists that not

only all English but also Gaulish coins are barbarous and degraded

imitations of a famous Macedonian original which at one time circulated

largely in Marseilles. This supposititious model is illustrated on page

394, and the reader can form his own opinion as to whether or not the

immense range of subjects which figure on our native money could by any

possibility have unconsciously evolved from carelessness. Sir John

Evans, by whom this theory was, I believe, first put forward, is himself

at times hard-driven to defend it; nevertheless he does not hesitate to

maintain: "The degeneration of the head of Apollo into two boars and a

wheel, impossible as it may at first appear, is in fact but a

comparatively easy transition when once the head has been reduced into

a form of regular pattern".[31]

My irregularity carries me to the extent of contending that our native

coins, crude and uncouth as some of them may be, are in no case

imitations but are native work reflecting erstwhile national ideas. The

weird designs and what-nots which figure on these tokens almost

certainly were once animated by meanings of some sort: they thus

constitute a prehistoric literature expressed in hieroglyphics for the

correct reading of which one must, in the words of Carlyle, consider

History with the beginnings of it stretching dimly into the remote time,

emerging darkly out of the mysterious eternity, the true epic poem and

universal divine scripture.

According to Tacitus the British, under Boudicca, brought into the field

an incredible multitude; that Cæsar was impressed by the density of the

inhabitants may be gathered from his words: "The population is immense;

homesteads closely resembling those of the Gauls are met with at every

turn, and cattle are very numerous".[32] That the handful of Roman

invaders eliminated the customs and traditions of a vast population is

no more likely than the supposition that British occupation has

eradicated or even greatly interfered with the native faiths of India.

It is generally admitted that the Romans were most tolerant of local

sensibilities, and there is no reason to assume that existing British

characteristics were either attacked or suppressed. To assume that some

hundreds of years later the advent of a few boat-loads of Anglo-Saxon

adventurers wiped out the Romano-British inhabitants and eradicated all

customs, manners, and traditions is an obvious fallacy under which the

evidence of folklore does not permit us to labour. The greater

probability is that the established culture imposed itself more or less

upon the new-comers, more particularly in those remote districts which

it was only after hundreds of years that the Saxons, by their

conventional policy of peaceful penetration, punctuated by flashes of

frightfulness, succeeded in dominating.

Even after the Norman Conquest there are circumstances which point to

the probability that the Celtic population was much larger and more

powerful than is usually supposed. Of these the most important is the

fact that the signatures to very early charters supply us with names of

persons of Celtic race occupying positions of dignity at the courts of

Anglo-Saxon kings.[33]

The force of custom and the apparently undying continuance of

folk-memory are among the best attested phenomena of folklore. It was

remarked by the elder Disraeli that tradition can neither be made _nor

destroyed_, and if this be true in general it is peculiarly true of the

stubborn and pig-headed British. Our churches stand to-day not only on

the primeval inconvenient hill-sites, but frequently within the

time-honoured earthwork, or beside the fairy-well. On Palm Sunday the

villagers of Avebury still toil to the summit of Silbury Hill, there to

consume fig cakes and drink sugared water; and on the same festival the

people even to-day march in procession to the prehistoric earthwork on

the top of Martinshell Hill. Our country fairs are generally held near

or within a pagan earthwork, and instance after instance might be

adduced all pointing to the immortality of custom and the persistent

sanctity of pagan sites.

In the sixth century of our era the monk Gildas referred complacently

but erroneously to the ancient British faith as being dead. "I shall

not," he says, "enumerate those diabolical idols of my country, which

almost surpassed in number those of Egypt, and of which we still see

some mouldering away within or without the deserted temples, with stiff

and deformed features as was customary. Nor will I cry out upon the

mountains, fountains, or hills, or upon the rivers, which now are

subservient to the use of men, but once were an abomination and

destruction to them, and to which the blind people paid divine honour."

Notwithstanding the jeremiads of poor Gildas[34] the folk-faith

survived; indeed, as Mr. Johnson says, the heathen belief has been

present all the time, and need not greatly astonish us since the most

advanced materialist is frequently a victim of trivial superstitions

which are scouted by scientific men as baseless and absurd.

The Augustine of Canterbury, who is recorded to have baptised on one day

10,000 persons in the river Swale, recommended with pious ingenuity that

the heathen temples should not be destroyed, but converted to the honour

of Christ by washing their walls with holy water and substituting holy

relics and symbols for the images of the heathen gods. This is an

illuminating sidelight on the methods by which the images of the heathen

idols were gradually transformed into the images of Christian saints,

and there is little doubt that as the immemorial shrines fell into ruin

and were rebuilt and again rebuilt, the sacred images were scrupulously

relimned.

Even to-day, after 2000 years of Christian discipline, the clergy dare

not in some districts interfere with the time-honoured tenets of their

parishioners. In Normandy and Brittany the priests, against their

inclination, are compelled to take part in pagan ceremonials,[35] and in

Spain quite recently an archbishop has been nearly killed by his

congregation for interdicting old customs.[36]

The earliest British shrines were merely stones, or caves, or holy

wells, or sacred trees, or tumuli, preferably on a hill-top or in a

wood. The next type is found in the monastery of St. Bride, which was

simply a circular palisade encircling a sacred fire. This was in all

probability similar to the earliest known form of the Egyptian temple, a

wicker hut with tall poles forming the sides of the door; in front of

this extended an enclosure which had two poles with flags on either side

of the entrance. In the middle of the enclosure or court was a staff

bearing the emblem of the God.

Later came stone circles and megalithic monuments in various forms,

whence the connection is direct to cathedrals such as Chartres, which is

said to be built largely from the remains of the prehistoric megaliths

which originally stood there. There are chapels in Brittany and

elsewhere built over pagan monoliths; indeed no new faith can ever do

more than superimpose itself upon an older one, and statements about the

wise and tender treatment of the old nature worship by the Church are

euphemisms for the bald fact that Christianity, finding it impracticable

to wean the heathen from their obdurate beliefs, made the best of the

situation by decreeing its feasts to coincide with pre-existing

festivals.

[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Section of the Dolmen Chapel of the Seven

Sleepers near Plouaret.]

It has long been generally appreciated that the lives of saints are not

only for the most part mythical, but that even documentary evidence on

that subject is equally suspect.[37] There is, indeed, no room to doubt

that the majority of the ancient saint-stories are Christianised

versions of such scraps and traditions of prehistoric mythology as had

continued to linger among the folk. To the best of my belief I am the

first folklorist who has endeavoured to treat _The Golden Legend_ in a

sympathetic spirit as almost pure mythology.

It is usually assumed that at any rate the Christian Church tactfully

decanted the old wine of paganism into new bottles; but Christianity, as

will be seen, more often did not trouble to provide even new bottles,

and merely altered a stroke here and there on the labels, transforming

_San tan_, the _Holy Fire_, into St. Anne, _Sin clair_, the _Holy

Light_, into St. Clare, and so forth.

The first written record of Christianity in Britain is approximately

A.D. 200, whence it is claimed that the Christian religion must have

been introduced very near to, if not in, apostolic times. In 314 three

British bishops, each accompanied by a priest and a deacon, were present

at the Council at Arles, and it is commonly maintained by the Anglican

Church that only a relatively small part of England owes its conversion

to the Roman mission of the monk Augustine in 597.

We have it on the notable authority of St. Augustine that: "That very

thing which is now designated the Christian religion _was in existence

among the ancients_, nor was it absent even from the commencement of the

human race up to the time when Christ entered into the flesh, after

which true religion, _which already existed_, began to be called

Christian".

We should undoubtedly possess more specific evidences of the ancient

faith but for the edicts of the Church that all writings adverse to the

claims of the Christian religion, in the possession of whomsoever they

should be found, should be committed to the fire. It is claimed for St.

Patrick that he caused to be destroyed 180--some say 300--volumes

relating to the Druidic system. These, said a complacent commentator,

were stuffed with the fables and superstitions of heathen idolatry and

unfit to be transmitted to posterity.

Mr. Westropp considers that much of value escaped destruction, for

Christianity in Ireland was a tactful, warm-hearted mother, and learned

the stories to tell to her children. This is true to some extent, but in

Britain there are extant many bardic laments at the intolerance with

which old ideas were eradicated, _e.g._, "Monks congregate like wolves

wrangling with their instructors. They know not when the darkness and

the dawn divide, nor what is the course of the wind, or the cause of its

agitation; in what place it dies away or on what region it expands." And

implying that although one may be right it does not follow that all

others must be wrong the same bard exclaims, "For one hour persecute me

not!" and he pathetically asks: "Is there but _one_ course to the wind,

but _one_ to the waters of the sea? Is there but _one_ spark in the fire

of boundless energy?"

In the same strain another bard, in terms not altogether inapplicable

to-day, alludes to his opponents as "like little children disagreeing on

the beach of the sea".

Although bigotry and materialism have suppressed facts, stifled

testimony, misrepresented witnesses, and destroyed or perverted

documents, the prehistoric fairy faith was happily too deeply graven

thus to be obliterated, and it is only a matter of time and study to

reconstruct it. Most of the suggestions I venture to put forward are

sufficiently documented by hard facts, but some are necessarily based

upon "hints and equivocal survivals".[38] At the threshold of an essay

of the present character one can hardly do better than appropriate the

words of Edmund Spenser:--I do gather a likelihood of truth not

certainly affirming anything, but by conferring of times, language,

monuments, and such like, I do hunt out a probability of things which I

leave to your judgment to believe or refuse.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Dent, 1909.

[2] _The Lost Language of Symbolism_: An inquiry into the origin

of certain letters, words, names, fairy-tales, folklore, and

mythologies. 2 vols. London, 1912 (Williams & Norgate).

[3] _Manchester Guardian_, 23rd December, 1912.

[4] _Sonia._

[5] "Topographical comment--I will not say criticism--has been

equally inefficient. A theory is not refuted by saying 'all

the great antiquarians are against you,' 'the Psalter of Tara

refutes that,' or 'O'Donovan has set the question past all

doubt'. These remarks only prove that we have hardly

commenced scientific archæology in this country."--Westropp,

Thos. J., _Proc. of Royal Irish Acad._, vol. xxxiv., C., No.

8, p. 129.

[6] We found precisely the same things as were found by our

predecessors, remains of extinct animals in the cave earth,

and with them flint implements in considerable numbers. You

want, of course, to know how the scientific world received

these latter discoveries. They simply scouted them. They told

us that our statements were impossible, and we simply

responded with the remark that we had not said that they were

possible, only that they were true.--Pengally, W., _Kent's

Cavern. Its Testimony to the Antiquity of Man_, p. 12.

[7] Lubbock, J., _Prehistoric Times_.

[8] In the course of his criticism the same writer pertinently

observes:--

"Why, what a wonderful thing is this! We have, in the first

place, the most weighty and explicit testimony--Strabo's,

Cæsar's, Lucan's--that this race once possessed a special,

profound, spiritual discipline, that they were, to use Mr.

Nash's words, 'Wiser than their neighbours'. Lucan's words

are singularly clear and strong, and serve well to stand as a

landmark in this controversy, in which one is sometimes

embarrassed by hearing authorities quoted on this side or

that, when one does not feel sure precisely what they say,

how much or how little. Lucan, addressing those hitherto

under the pressure of Rome, but now left by the Roman Civil

War to their own devices, says:--

"'Ye too, ye bards, who by your praises perpetuate the memory of

the fallen brave, without hindrance poured forth your

strains. And ye, ye Druids, now that the sword was removed,

began once more your barbaric rites and weird solemnities. To

you only is given the knowledge or ignorance (whichever it

be) of the gods and the powers of heaven; your dwelling is in

the lone heart of the forest. From you we learn that the

bourne of man's ghost is not the senseless grave, not the

pale realm of the monarch below; in another world his spirit

survives still.'"

[9] "Circles form another group of the monuments we are about to

treat of.... In France they are hardly known, though in

Algeria they are frequent. In Denmark and Sweden they are

both numerous and important, but it is in the British Islands

that circles attained their greatest

development."--Fergusson, J., _Rude Stone Monuments_, p. 47.

Referring to Stanton Drew the same authority observes:

"Meanwhile it may be well to point out that this class of

circles is peculiar to England. They do not exist in France

or Algeria. The Scandinavian circles are all very different,

so too are the Irish."--_Ibid._, p. 153.

[10] Stevens, F., _Stonehenge To-day and Yesterday_, 1916, p. 14.

[11] Toland, _History of the Druids_, p. 163.

[12] Schrader, O., _cf._ Taylor, Isaac, _The Origin of the

Aryans_, p. 48.

[13] Latham, Dr. R. G.

[14] _Spain and Portugal_, vol. i., p. 16.

[15] Mr. Hammer, a German who has travelled lately in Egypt and

Syria, has brought, it seems, to England a manuscript written

in Arabic. It contains a number of alphabets. Two of these

consist entirely of trees. The book is of authority.--Davies,

E., _Celtic Researches_, 1804, p. 305.

[16] The Cretans were rulers of the sea, and according to

Thucydides King Minos of Crete was "the first person known to

us in history as having established a navy. He made himself

master of what is now called the Hellenic Sea, and ruled over

the Cyclades, into most of which he sent his first colonists,

expelling the Carians and appointing his own sons governors;

and thus did his best to put down piracy in those waters."

[17] Jones, J. J., _Britannia Antiquissima_, 1866.

[18] Mackenzie, D. A., _Myths of Crete_, p. xxix.

[19] Gray, Mrs. Hamilton, _The Sepulchres of Etruria_, p. 223.

[20] This might be due to the coasts being less liable to the

plough. See, however, the map of distribution, published by

Fergusson, in _Rude Stone Monuments_.

[21] Herbert, A., _Cyclops Britannica_, p. 68.

[22] _Taliesin_, p. 23.

[23] Connellan, A. F. M., p. 337.

[24] Aristotle.

[25] Smith, Worthington, G., _Man the Primeval Savage_, p. 53.

[26] _Short History_, p. 15.

[27] Bede.

[28] The cities which had been erected in considerable numbers by

the Romans were sacked, burnt, and then left as ruins by the

Anglo-Saxons, who appear to have been afraid or at least

unwilling to use them as places of habitation. An instance of

this may be found in the case of Camboritum, the important

Roman city which corresponded to our modern Cambridge, which

was sacked by the invaders and left a ruin at least until the

time of the Venerable Bede, 673-735.--Windle, B. C. A., _Life

in Early Britain_, p. 14.

[29] Hearnshaw, F. J. C., _England in the Making_, p. 14.

[30] Hawkins, E., _The Silver Coins of England_, p. 17.

[31] _Coins of the Ancient Britons_, p. 121.

[32] _Bello Gallico_, Bk. v., 12, § 3.

[33] Smith, Dr. Wm., _Lectures on the English Language_, p. 29.

[34] The Americans would describe Gildas as a "Calamity-howler".

[35] Le Braz, A., _The Night of Fires_.

[36] A Cantanzaro, dans la Calabre, la cathédrale fut le théâtre

de scènes de désordre extraordinaires. Le nouvel archevêque

avait dernièrement manifesté l'intention de mettre un terme à

certaines coutumes qu'il considérait comme entachées de

paganisme. Ses instructions ayant été méprisées, il frappa

d'interdit pour trois jours un édifice religieux. La

population jura de se venger et, lorsque le nouvel archevêque

fit son entrée dans la cathédrale, le jour de Pâques pour

célébrer la grand' messe, la foule, furieuse, manifesta

bruyamment contre lui. Comme on craignait que sa personne fût

l'objet de violences, le clergé le fit sortir en hâte par une

porte de derrière. Les troupes durent être réquisitionnées

pour faire évacuer le cathédrale.--_La Dernière Heure_,

April, 1914.

[37] There is a story told of a certain Gilbert de Stone, a

fourteenth century legend-monger, who was appealed to by the

monks of Holywell in Flintshire for a life of their patron

saint. On being told that no materials for such a work

existed the _litterateur_ was quite unconcerned, and

undertook without hesitation to compose a most excellent

legend after the manner of Thomas à Becket.

[38] "Ireland being 'the last resort of lost causes,' preserved

record of a European 'culture' as primitive as that of the

South Seas, and therefore invaluable for the history of human

advance; elsewhere its existence is only to be established

from hints and equivocal survivals. Our early tales are no

artificial fiction, but fragmentary beliefs of the pagan

period equally valuable for topography and for

mythology."--Westropp, Thos. J., _Proceedings of the Royal

Irish Academy_, vol. xxxiv. sec. C, No. 8, p. 128.

CHAPTER II

THE MAGIC OF WORDS

"As the palimpsest of language is held up to the light and looked

at more closely, it is found to be full of older forms beneath the

later writing. Again and again has the most ancient speech

conformed to the new grammar, until this becomes the merest surface

test; it supplies only the latest likeness. Our mountains and

rivers talk in the primeval mother tongue whilst the language of

men is remoulded by every passing wave of change. The language of

mythology and typology is almost as permanent as the names of the

hills and streams."--GERALD MASSEY.

It is generally admitted that place-names are more or less impervious to

time and conquests. Instances seemingly without limit might be adduced

of towns which have been sacked, destroyed, rebuilt, and rechristened,

yet the original names--_and these only_--have survived. Dr. Taylor has

observed that the names of five of the oldest cities of the

world--Damascus, Hebron, Gaza, Sidon, and Hamath--are still pronounced

in exactly the same manner as was the case thirty, or perhaps forty

centuries ago, defying oftentimes the persistent attempts of rulers to

substitute some other name.[39]

As another instance of the permanency of place-names, the city of

Palmyra is curiously notable. Though the Greek Palmyra is a title of

2000 years' standing, yet to the native Arab it is new-fangled, and he

knows the place not as Palmyra but as Tadmor, its original and

infinitely older name. Five hundred years B.C. the very ancient city of

Mykenæ was destroyed and never rose again to any importance: Mykenæ was

fabulously assigned to Perseus, and even to-day the stream which runs at

the site is known as the Perseia.[40]

If it be possible for local names thus to live handed down humbly from

mouth to mouth for thousands of years, for aught one knows they may have

endured for double or treble these periods; there is no seeming limit to

their vitality, and they may be said to be as imperishable and as

dateless as the stones of Avebury or Stonehenge.

History knows nothing of violent and spasmodic jumps; the ideas of one

era are impalpably transmitted to the next, and the continuity of custom

makes it difficult to believe that the builders of Cyclopean works such

as Avebury and Stonehenge, have left no imprint on our place-names, and

no memories in our language. Even to-day the superstitious veneration

for cromlechs and holy stones is not defunct, and it is largely due to

that ingrained sentiment that more of these prehistoric monuments have

not been converted into horse-troughs and pigsties.

If, as now generally admitted, there has been an unbroken and continuous

village-occupation, and if, as is also now granted, our sacred places

mostly occupy aboriginal and time-honoured sites, it is difficult to

conceive that place-names do not preserve some traces of their

prehistoric meanings. In the case of villages dedicated to some saintly

man or sweetest of sweet ladies, the connection is almost certainly

intact; indeed, in instances the pagan barrows in the churchyard are

often actually dedicated to some saint.[41]

That memories of the ancient mythology sometimes hang around our British

cromlechs is proved by an instance in North Wales where there still

stands a table stone known locally as _Llety-y-filiast_, or _the stone

of the greyhound bitch_. "This name," says Dr. Griffith, "was given in

allusion to the British Ceres or Keridwen who was symbolised by the

greyhound bitch".[42] I shall have much to say about Keridwen--"the most

generous and beauteous of ladies"--meanwhile it is sufficient here to

note that her symbol, the greyhound bitch, is found unmistakably upon

our earliest coinage.

[Illustration: BRITISH. FIG. 4.--From Evans. FIG. 5.--From

Akerman.]

All place-names of any real antiquity are generally composed of various

languages, and like compound rocks contain fragments in juxtaposition

which belong properly to different ages. The analysis of these is not

difficult, as the final -_hill_, -_ton_, -_ville_, -_ham_, and so forth

is usually the comparatively modern work of newcomers. Frequently the

later generations forgot the original meanings of the ancient terms; and

thus, for instance, at Brandon Hill in Suffolk there is the curious

phenomenon of _Hill Hill Hill_--in three languages, _i.e._, _bran_,

_don_, and _hill_. On this site the flint knappers are still at work,

using practically the same rude tool as their primitive woad-painted

ancestors. At Brandon not only has the art of flint-making survived,

but anthropologists have noted the persistence of a swarthy and most

ancient type--a persistence the more remarkable as Suffolk was supposed

to be a district out of which the Britons had been wholly and

irretrievably eradicated. Whether there is anything in the world to

parallel the phenomenon of the Brandon flint knappers I do not know, and

it may well be questioned. In the words of Dr. Rice Holmes:--The

industry has been carried on since neolithic times, and even then it was

ancient: for Brandon was an abode of flint makers in the Old Stone Age.

Not only the pits but even the tools show little change: the picks which

the modern workers use are made of iron, but here alone in Britain the

old one-sided form is still retained, only the skill of the workers has

degenerated: the exquisite evenness of chipping which distinguished the

neolithic arrow heads is beyond the power of the most experienced

knapper to reproduce.[43]

At Brandon is Broomhill; the words _bran_ and _broom_ will be

subsequently shown to be radically the same, and I shall suggest reasons

why this term, even possibly in Old Stone times, meant _hill_.

During recent years the study of place-names has been passing through a

period of spade-work, and every available document from Doomsday Book to

a Rent Roll has been scrupulously raked. The inquirer now therefore has

available a remarkably interesting record of the various forms which our

place-names have passed through, and he can eliminate the essential

features from the non-essential. Although the subject has thus

considerably been elucidated, the additional information obtained has,

however, done nothing to solve the original riddle and in some cases

has rendered it more complex.

The new system which is popularly supposed to have eliminated all

guesswork has in reality done nothing of the kind. In place of the older

method, which, in the words of Prof. Skeat, "exalted impudent assertions

far above positive evidence," it has boldly substituted a new form of

guesswork which is just as reckless and in many respects is no less

impudent than the old. The present fashion is to suppose that the river

_x_ or the town of _y_ _may_ have been the property of, or founded by,

some purely hypothetical Anglo-Saxon. For example: the river Hagbourne

of Berkshire is guessed to have been _Hacca's burn or brook_, which

possibly it was, but there is not a scintilla of real evidence one way

or the other.

If one is going to postulate "Hacca's" here and there, there is

obviously a space waiting for a member of the family on the great main

road entitled Akeman Street. As this ancient thoroughfare traverses Bath

we are, however, told that it "received in Saxon times the significant

name of Akeman Street from the condition of the gouty sufferers who

travelled along it".[44] One would prefer even a phantom Hacca to this

_aching man_, nor does the alternatively suggested _aqua_, water, bring

us any nearer a solution.

There sometimes appears to be no bottom to the vacuity of modern

guesswork. It is seriously and not _pour rire_ suggested that

Horselydown was where horses could lie down; that Honeybrook was so

designated because of its honey-sweet water, and that the name Isle of

Dogs was "possibly because so many dogs were drowned in the Thames

here".[45] In what respect do these and kindred definitions, which I

shall cite from standard authors of to-day, differ from the "egregious"

speculations, the "wild guesses," and the "impudent assertions" of

earlier scholars?

There is in Bucks a small town now known as Kimball, anciently as

Cunebal. Tradition associates this site with the British King Cymbeline

or Cunobelin, and as the place further contains an eminence known as

Belinsbury or Belinus Castle, the authorities can hardly avoid accepting

the connection and the etymology. But for Kimbolton, which stands on a

river named the Kym, the authorities--notwithstanding the river

Kym--provide the purely supposititious etymology "Town of Cynebald".

There were, doubtless, thousands of Saxons whose name was Cynebald, but

why Kimbolton should be assigned to any one of these hypothetical

persons instead of to Cymbeline is not in any way apparent. The river

name Kym is sufficient to discredit Cynebald, and the greater

probability is that not only the Kym but also all our river and mountain

names are pre-Saxon.

It will be seen hereafter that the name Cunobelin or Cymbeline, which

the dictionaries define as meaning _splendid sun_, was probably adopted

as a dynastic title of British chiefs, and that the effigies of

Cymbeline on British coins have no more relation to any particular king

than the mounted figure on our modern sovereign has to his Majesty King

George V. The prefix _Cym_ or _Cuno_ will subsequently be seen to be the

forerunner of the modern _Konig_ or _King_. Hence like Kimball or

Cunebal, Kimbolton on the Kym was probably a seat of a Cymbeline, and

the imaginary Saxon Cynebald may be dismissed as a usurper.

Kim_bolton_ used at one time to be known as Kinne_bantum_, whence it is

evident that the essential part of the word is Kinne or Kim, and as

another instance of the perplexing variations which are sometimes found

in place-names the spot now known as Iffley may be cited. This name

occurs at various periods as follows: Gifetelea, Sifetelea, Zyfteleye,

Yestley, Iveclay and Iftel. This is a typical instance of the

extraordinary variations which have perplexed the authorities, and is

still causing them to cast vainly around for some formula or law of

sound-change, which shall account satisfactorily for the problem. "We

are at present," says Prof. Wyld, "quite unable to formulate the laws of

the interchange of stress in place-names, or of the effects of these in

retaining, modifying, or eliminating syllables.... Until these laws are

properly formulated, it cannot be said that we have a scientific account

of the development of place-names. The whole thing is often little

better than a conjuring trick."[46]

No amount of brainwork has conjured any sense from Iffley, and the

etymology has been placed on the shelf as "unknown". I shall venture to

suggest that the initial G, S, Z, or Y, of this name, and of many others

being adjectival, the radical Ive or Iff, as being the essential, has

alone survived. It will be seen that Iffley was in all probability a lea

or meadow dedicated to "The Ivy Girl" or May Queen, and that quite

likely it was one of the many sites where, in the language of an old

poet--

Holly and his Merry men they dawnsin and they sing,

_Ivy and her maydons_ they wepen and they wryng.

I shall connote with Ivy and her maidens, not only Mother

Eve, but also the clearly fabulous St. Ive. We shall see that the Lady

Godiva of Coventry fame was known as God_gifu_, just as Iffley was once

_Gife_telea, and we shall see that St. Ives in Cornwall appears in the

registers alternatively as St. Yesses, just as Iffley was alternatively

Yestley. Finally we shall trace the connection between Eve, the Mother

of all living, and _Ave_bury, the greatest of all megalithic monuments.

If it be objected that my method is too meticulous, and that it is

impossible for mere farm- and field-names to possess any prehistoric

significance, I may refer for support to the Sixth Report of the Royal

Commission appointed to inventory the ancient monuments of Wales and

Monmouthshire.[47] In the course of this document the Commissioners

write as follows:--

"The Tithe Schedules, unsatisfactory and disappointing though many of

them are, contain such a collection of place-names, principally those of

fields, that the Commissioners at the outset of their inquiry determined

upon a careful investigation of them. The undertaking involved in the

first place the examination of hundreds of documents, many of them

containing several thousands of place-names; secondly, in the case of

those names which were noted for further inquiry, the necessity of

discovering the position of the field or site upon the tithe map; and,

thirdly, the location of the field or site on the modern six-inch

ordnance sheet. This prolonged task called for much patience and care,

as well as ingenuity in comparing the boundaries of eighty years ago

with those of the present time.

"Of the value of this work there can be no doubt. We do not venture to

express any opinion on the question whether, or to what extent, farm and

field names are of service to the English archæologist; but with regard

to their importance to the Welsh archæologist there can be no two

opinions. The fact that the Welsh place-names are being rapidly replaced

by English names, so that the local lore which is often enshrined in the

former is in danger of being lost, was in itself a sufficient reason for

the undertaking. The results have more than justified our decision.

There is hardly a parish, certainly not one of the ancient parishes, of

the principality, where the schedule of field names has not yielded some

valuable results. Scores of small but in some cases important

antiquities would have passed unrecorded, had it not been for the clue

to their presence given by the place-name which was to be found only in

the schedule to the Tithe Survey."

In Cornwall almost every parish is named after some saintly apostle, and

many of these saints are alleged to have travelled far and wide in the

world founding towns and villages. It is almost a physical impossibility

that this was literally true, and it becomes manifestly incredible on

consideration of the miracles recorded in the lives of the travellers.

As already suggested the greater probability is that the lives of the

saints enshrine almost intact the traditions of pre-Christian

divinities. Of the popular and most familiar St. Patrick, Borlase (W.

C.), writes: "Of the reality of the existence of this Patrick, son of

Calporn, we feel not the shadow of a doubt. But he was not _the only_

Patrick, and as time went on traditions of one other Patrick at least

came to be commingled with his own. We have before us the names of ten

other contemporary Patricks, all ecclesiastics, and spread over Wales,

Ireland, France, Spain, and Italy. The name appears to be that of a

grade or order in the Church rather than a proper name in the usual

sense. Thus Palladius is called also Patrick in the 'Book of Armagh' and

_the_ Patrick (whichever he may have been) is represented as styling

Declan 'the Patrick of the Desii,' and Ailbhe 'the Patrick of Munster'.

When Patrick sojourned in a cave in an island in the Tyrrhene Sea he

found three other Patricks there." Precisely: and there is little doubt

that our London Battersea or Patrixeye was originally an _ea_ or island

where the patricks or padres of St. Peter's at Westminster once

congregated.

The arguments applied to St. Patrick apply equally to, say, St. Columba,

or the Holy Dove, and similarly to St. Colman, a name also meaning

_Dove_. In Ireland alone there are 200 dedications to St. Colman, and

evidence will be brought forward that the archetype of all the St.

Colmans and all the St. Columbas and all the Patricks was Peter the

_Pater_, who was symbolised by _petra_, the stone or rock.

The so-called Ossianic poems of Gaeldom, although of "a remarkably

heathenish character," preserve the manners of and opinions of what the

authorities describe as "a semi-barbarous people who were endowed with

strong imagination, high courage, childlike tenderness, and gentle

chivalry for women,"[48] and that the ancients were tinctured through

and through with mysticism and imagination, finding tongues in trees,

books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything,

is a fact which can be denied. When our words were framed and our

ancient places, hills, and rivers named, I am persuaded that the world

was in its imaginative childhood, and hence that traces of that state of

mind may reasonably be anticipated. It is remarkable that the skulls

found in the first or oldest Troy exhibit the most intellectual

characteristics,[49] and in many quarters seemingly the remoter the

times the purer was the theology whether in Phrygia, Egypt, India,

Persia, or Great Britain. Among the Cretans "religion entered at every

turn" of their social system; in Egypt even the very games and dances

had a religious significance, and the evidence of folklore testifies to

the same effect in Britain. It was one among the many grievances of the

pessimistic Gildas that the British were "slaves to the shadows of

things to come," and this usually overlooked aspect of their character

must, I think, be recognised in relation to their place-names. To a

large degree the mystical element still persists in Brittany, where even

to-day, in the words of Baring-Gould:--At a Pardon one sees and marvels

at the wondrous faces of this remarkable people: the pure, sweet, and

modest countenances of the girls, and those not less striking of the old

folk. "It is," says Durtal, "the soul which is everything in these

people, and their physiognomy is modelled by it. There are holy

brightnesses in their eyes, on their lips, those doors to the borders of

which the soul alone can come, from which it looks forth and all but

shows itself. Goodness, kindness, as well as a cloistral spirituality,

stream from their faces."[50]

What is still true of Brittany was once equally true of Britain, and

although the individuality of the Gael has now largely been submerged by

prosaic Anglo-Saxondom, the poetic temperament of the chivalrous and

dreamy Celt was essentially a frame of mind that cared only for the

heroic, the romantic, and the beautiful.

The science of etymology as practised to-day is unfortunately blind to

this poetic element which was, and to some extent still is, an innate

characteristic of "uncivilised" and unsophisticated peoples. Archbishop

Trench, one of the original planners and promoters of _The New English

Dictionary_, was not overstating when he wrote: "Let us then acknowledge

man a born poet.... Despite his utmost efforts, were he mad enough to

employ them, he could not succeed in exhausting his language of the

poetical element which is inherent in it, in stripping it of blossom,

flower, and fruit, and leaving it nothing but a bare and naked stem. He

may fancy for a moment that he has succeeded in doing this, but it will

only need for him to become a little better philologer to go a little

deeper into the study of the words which he is using, and he will

discover that he is as remote from this consummation as ever."

Nevertheless, current etymology _has_ achieved this inanity, and has so

completely dismissed the animate or poetic element from its

considerations that one may seek vainly the columns of Skeat and Murray

for any hint or suggestion that language and imagination ever had

anything in common. According to modern teaching language is a mere

cluster of barbaric yawps: "No mystic bond linked word and thought

together; utility and convenience alone joined them".[51]

Words, nevertheless, were originally born not from grammarians but amid

the common people, and _pace_ Mr. Clodd they enshrine in many instances

the mysticism and the superstitions of the peasantry. How can one

account, for instance, for the Greek word _psyche_, meaning _butterfly_,

and also _soul_, except by the knowledge that butterflies were regarded

by the ancients as creatures into which the soul was metamorphosised?

According to Grimm, the German name for stork means literally _child-_,

or _soul-bringer_; hence the belief that the advent of infants was

presided over by this bird. But why "_hence_"? and why put the cart

before the horse? If one may judge from innumerable parallels of

word-equivocation the legends arose not from the accident of similar

words, nor from "misprision of terms," or from any other "disease of

language," but the creatures were named _because of_ the attendant

legend. It is common knowledge that in Egypt the animal sacred to a

divinity was often designated by the name of that deity; similarly in

Europe the bee, a symbol of the goddess _Mylitta_, was called a

_mylitta_, and a bull, the symbol of the god _Thor_, was named a _thor_.

We speak to-day of an _Adonis_, because Adonis was a fabulously lovely

youth, and parallel examples may be found on almost every hand. Irish

mythology tells of a certain golden-haired hero named Bress, which means

_beautiful_, whence we are further told that every beautiful thing in

Ireland whether plain, fortress, or ale, or torch, or woman, or man, was

compared with him, so that men said of them "That is a Bress". Elsewhere

and herein I have endeavoured to prove that this principle was of

worldwide application, and that it is an etymological key which will

open the meaning of many words still in common use. It is a correlative

fact that the names of specific deities such as Horus, Hathor, Nina,

Bel, etc., developed in course of time into generic terms for any _Lord_

or _God_.

Very much the same principles are at work with us to-day, whence _a_

dreadnought from the prime "Dreadnought," and the etymologer of the

future, who tries by strictly scientific methods to unravel the meaning

of such words as _mackintosh_, _brougham_, _Sam Browne_, _gladstone_,

_boycott_, etc., will find it necessary to investigate the legends

attendant on those names rather than practice a formal permutation of

vowels and consonants.

By common consent the quintessence of the last fifty years' philological

progress is being distilled into Sir James Murray's _New English

Dictionary_, and in a conciser form the same data may be found in Prof.

Skeat's _Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language_. Both

these indispensable works are high watermarks of English scholarship,

and whatever absurdities they contain are shortcomings not of their

compilers but of the Teutonic school of philology which they exemplify.

If these two standard dictionaries were able to answer even the

elementary questions that are put to them it would be both idle and

presumptuous to cavil, but one has only to refer to their pages to

realise the ignorance which prevails as to the origin and the meaning of

the most simple and everyday words.

It is unfortunately true that "in philology as in all branches of

knowledge it is the specialist who most strongly opposes any attempt to

widen the field of his knowledge".[52] Hence, as was only to be

expected, one of the reviewers of my _Lost Language of Symbolism_ deemed

it quite insufferable that I should throw to the winds the laborious

work on the science of phonetics built up by generations of careful

research.

But in point of fact I discarded none of the sound work of my

predecessors; I only tried to supplement it and fished deeper. My

soundings do not begin until I am well beyond the limits of modern

etymology, and they are no more affected by the cross-currents of

historic languages than the activities of a deep-water fisherman are

interrupted or affected by the tide eddies on the shore. The defect of

official philology is that it offers no explanation for radicals. It

does not, for example, attempt to explain why the word _ap_ was the

Sanscrit for water, why _pri_ was the Sanscrit for love, or why _pat_

was the Sanscrit for fly. It refers the word oak to the Anglo-Saxon

_ac_, Dr. Murray merely describing it as "a consonantal stem, ulterior

meaning obscure". Etymology to-day is in fact very much in the situation

of an insolvent bank which, unable to satisfy its creditors with cash on

demand, blandly endeavours to satisfy them with corresponding cheques of

equally uncashable face value. Words can never properly be interpreted

merely by parallel words: originally they must have expressed ideas, and

it is these underlying ideas that I am in search of. My previous work

was a pioneer, and in many respects bungling attempt to pick up the

threads where at present philology is content to lose them. Using the

same keys as hitherto, I shall attempt to explore further the darkness

which is at present the only achieved goal of the much trumpeted Science

of Language.

In a moment of noteworthy frankness Prof. Skeat has admitted that

"Scientific etymology is usually clumsy and frequently wrong".

Similarly, Prof. Sayce issues the warning: "Comparative philology has

suffered as much from its friends as from its opponents; and now that it

has at last won its way to general recognition and respect, there is a

danger that its popularity may lead to the cessation of sound and honest

work, and to an acquiescence in theories which, however plausible, are

not yet placed upon a footing of scientific certainty. It is much easier

for the ordinary man to fill in by patient elaboration what has already

been sketched for him in outline, than to venture upon a new line of

discovery, in which the sole clue must be the combinative powers of his

own imagination and comprehensive learning. And yet, now as much as

ever, comparative philology has need at once of bold and wide-reaching

conceptions, of cautious verification, and of a mastery of facts. It is

true the science is no longer struggling for mere life, and the time is

gone by for proving the possibility of its existence. But it is still

young, scarcely, indeed, out of its nursery; a small portion only of its

province has hitherto been investigated, and much that is at present

accepted without hesitation will have to be subjected to a searching

inquiry, and possibly be found baseless after all."[53]

The value of any system must be measured by its results, and the fruits

of philology as formulated only a year or so ago were unquestionably

false. Where now are the "successes" of the Max Müller school which were

advertised in such shrill and penetrating tones? Sanscrit is deposed

from its pride of place, it being now recognised that primitive sounds

are preserved more faithfully in Europe than elsewhere. Who to-day

admits there is any basis for the Disease of Language theory, or that

all fairy-tales and myths are resolvable into the Sun chasing the

Dawn?[54] What anthropologist accepts the theory of Aryan overland

immigration from somewhere in Asia? The archæologists of the last

generation were, in the light of modern findings, quite justified when,

contrary to the then stereotyped idea, they maintained that skulls were

harder things than consonants. In short, large sections of the

card-castle of German philology have more or less crumbled, and in the

cruel words of a modern authority on Crete: "Happily, archæology has

emerged from the slough into which the philologists had led her".

For the causes of this fiasco it is unnecessary to seek further than the

fundamental fallacy upon which the "Science of Language" has been

erected. According to Max Müller, "etymology is indeed a science in

which identity, or even similarity, whether of sound or meaning, is of

no importance whatever. Sound etymology has nothing to do with sound. We

know words to be of the same origin which have not a single letter in

common, and which differ in meaning as much as black and white."

To maintain that "_sound etymology has nothing to do with sound_," is

tantamount to the contention that language is not sound, which is

obviously absurd. In the saner view of Dr. Latham: "language begins with

voice, language ends with voice". The Germans, Poles, and Russians had

no acquaintance with letters until the ninth century, and speech, which

certainly existed for unnumbered centuries before either writing or

spelling was evolved, must, primarily and essentially, have been a

system of pure and simple phonetics, spreading, as a mother teaches her

child, syllable by syllable, word upon word, and line upon line. To rule

sound out of language, is, indeed, far more fatal than to purge Hamlet

out of _Hamlet_. One may prove by super-ingenious logic and an

elaborate code of cross references that black is white and white black,

yet common sense knows all the time that it is not so. There are, I am

aware, certain races who are unable to vocalise certain sounds and

accordingly modify them. The obscure causes governing these phonetic

changes must be taken into account, and as far as possible formulated

into "laws," but the pages of Skeat and Murray demonstrate beyond

refutation two very simple but very certain fundamental, universal

facts, to which hitherto wholly insufficient attention has been given.

These elementary and seemingly never-varying facts are: (1) That

originally vowel sounds were of no importance whatever, for in the same

word they vary to the utmost limits, not only in different areas and in

different eras, but contemporaneously in different grades of society;

(2) that heavy and light consonants such as _b_ and _p_, _d_ and _t_,

_f_ and _v_, _g_ and _k_, etc., are always interchangeable. Whether in

place-names, words, or proper names, the changes are found _always_ to

occur, and they are precisely those variations which common sense would

suggest must occur in every case where words travel _viva voce_ and not

via script or print. A man suffering from what Shakespeare would term "a

whoreson rheum," says, for instance, _did vor dad_ instead of _tit for

tat_, and there is, so far as I can discover, not a single word or a

solitary place-name in which a similar variation of thin and thick

consonants is not traceable.

The formidable Grimm's Law, any violation of which involves summary and

immediate condemnation, is merely a statement of certain phonetic facts

which happen invariably--unless they are interfered with by other facts.

The permutations of sound codified by Grimm are as follows:--

Greek _p_ Gothic _f_ Old High German _b_(_v_)

" _b_ " _p_ " _f_

" _ph_ " _b_ " _p_

" _t_ " _th_ " _d_

" _d_ " _t_ " _z_

" _th_ " _d_ " _t_

" _k_ " (_h_) " _g_(_h_)

" _g_ " _k_ " _ch_

" _kh_ " _g_ " _k_

It is said that the causes which brought about the changes formulated in

Grimm's Law are "obscure" (they may have been due to nothing more

obscure than a prevalence to colds in the head), and that they were

probably due to the settlement of Low German conquerors in Central and

Southern Germany. The changes above formulated all fall, however, within

the wider theory I am now suggesting, with the exception of _d_ and _t_

becoming in High German _z_. This particular syllabic change was, I

suggest, due to _z_ at one time being synonymous with _d_ or _t_, and

not to any inability of certain tribes to vocalise the sound _t_.

Max Müller observes that "at first sight the English word _fir_ does not

look very like the Latin word _quercus_, yet it is the same word". _Fir_

certainly does not look like _quercus_, nor, of course, is it any more

the "same word" than _six_ is the same word as _half a dozen_. There are

a thousand ways of proving _six_ to be radically and identically the

same as _half a dozen_, and the ingenious system of permutations by

which philologists identify _fir_ with _quercus_, and _alphana_ with

_equus_,[55] are parallel to some of the methods by which common sense,

by cold gradation and well-balanced form, would quite correctly equate

_six_ with _half a dozen_.

The term "_word_" I understand not in the loose sense used by Max

Müller, but as the dictionary defines it--"an oral or written sign

expressing an idea or notion". Thus I treat John as the same word as

_Jane_ or _Jean_, and it is radically the same word as _giant_, old

English _jeyantt_, French _geante_, Cornish _geon_. Jean is also the

same word as _chien_, a dog, Irish _choin_; Welsh _chin_ or _cyn_, and

all these terms by reason of their radical _an_ are cognate with the

Greek _kuon_, a dog, whence _cyn_ical. The Gaelic for _John_ is _Jain_,

the Gaelic for _Jean_ or _Jane_ is _Sine_, with which I equate _shine_,

_shone_, and _sheen_, all of which have respect to the _sun_, as also

had the Arabic _jinn_, _genii_, and "_Gian Ben Gian_," a title of the

fabulous world-ruler of the Golden Age. Among the Basques _Jaun_ means

Lord or Master, and the Basque term for God, _Jainko_, _Jeinko_, or

_Jinko_, is believed to have meant "Lord or Master on High". The Irish

Church attributes its origin to disciples of St. _John_--Irish _Shaun_,

and one may detect the pre-Christian _Sinjohn_ in the British divinity

Shony, and evolving from the primeval _Shen_ at Shenstone near

Litchfield. Here, a little distance from the church, was a well, now

called _St. John's_ Well, after the saint in whose honour the parish

church is dedicated. In all probability the present-day church of St.

John was built on the actual site of the original _Shen stone_ or rock;

and that John stones were once plentiful in Scotland is probably implied

by the common surname Johnstone. Near the Shannon in Ireland, and in

close proximity to the church and village of Shanagolden, is "castle"

_Shenet_ or Shanid, attached to which is a rath or earthwork of which

the ground-plan, from Mr. Westropp's survey, is here reproduced. As it

is a matter of common knowledge that the worldwide wheel cross was an

emblem of the sun, I should therefore have no scruples in connoting

Castle Shenet with the primeval _jeyantt_ or the Golden _Shine_; and

suggesting that it was a sanctuary originally constructed by the

Ganganoi, a people mentioned by Ptolemy as dwelling in the neighbourhood

of the Shannon. The eponymous hero of the Ganganoi was a certain

Sengann,[56] who is probably the original St. Jean or Sinjohn to whom

the fires of St. Jean and St. John have been diverted.

We shall see that _Giant_ Christopher was symbolically represented as

_chien_ headed, that he was a personification of the _Shine_ or _Sheen_

of the _Sun_, and that he was worshipped as the solar dog at the holy

city of Cynopolis or _dog-town_. We have already noted English "_chien_"

or _cyn_ coins inscribed _cun_, which is seemingly one of the

innumerable puns which confront philology.

[Illustration: FIG. 6.--From _Proc. of the Royal Irish Acad._,

xxxiii., C., No. 2.]

Years ago Bryant maintained that "the fable of the horse certainly arose

from a misprision of terms, though the mistake be as old as Homer".

There was nothing therefore new in the theories of the Max Müller school

that all mythologies originated from a "disease of language". Dr.

Wilder, alluding to symbolism, speaks of the punning so common in those

days, often making us uncertain whether the accident of similar name or

sound led to adoption as a symbol or was merely a blunder. It was, I

think, neither, and many instances will be adduced in favour of the

supposition, that words originated from symbolic ideas, and not _vice

versa_. That symbolism existed before writing is evident from the

innumerable symbols unearthed at Mykenæ, Troy, and elsewhere, where few

traces of script or inscriptions have been found. By symbolism,

primitive man unquestionably communicated ideas, and, as has already

been pointed out, the roots of language bear traces of the rudimentary

symbolism by which our savage forefathers named the objects around them

as well as the conceptions of their primitive religion.[57] Faced by the

"curiosity" that the Greek and Latin words for _archaic_, _arch_, _ark_,

_arc_, are all apparently connected in an intricate symbolism in which

there is more than a suspicion that there is an etymological as well as

a mystical interconnection, a writer in _The Open Court_ concludes: "it

would seem as though the roots of such words derived their meaning from

the Mysteries rather than that their mystical meaning was the result of

coincidence".[58]

That the Mysteries--or in other words dramatised mythology--Symbolism,

and Etymology, are all closely connected with each other is a certitude

beyond question. The theory, so pertinaciously put forward by Max

Müller, was that myths originated from a subsequent misunderstanding of

words. Using the same data as Max Müller, I suggest that words

originated from the mysteries and not myths from the words.

In _The Holy Wells of Cornwall_, Mr. T. Quiller Couch observes that Dr.

Borlase, learned, diligent, and excellent antiquary as he was, to whom

we are all indebted in an iconoclastic age for having copied for us fair

things which time had blurred, seems to have had little sympathy with

the faiths of the simple, silly, country folk (I use these adjectives in

their older meaning), and to have passed them with something like

contempt. At present the oral traditions of a people, their seeming

follies even, have become of value as indicating kinship between nations

shunted off by circumstances, to use the most modern term, in divergent

ways.

Dr. Johnson would not admit _fun_ into his Dictionary as he deemed it a

"low word": I turn up my nose at nothing, being convinced that it is to

low origins that the great lexicographers will eventually have to stoop.

In truth, the innate strength of the English language, which is becoming

more and more the Master Tongue of the world, lies in its homely,

trivial, and democratic origin.[59] This origin, as I have elsewhere

endeavoured to show, is due largely to symbolism, which is merely

another term for metaphor. We used to be taught that every language was

a dictionary of faded metaphor, and such an origin is undoubtedly more

true than the current theory of barbaric yawps. The essence of symbolism

is its simplicity. Who, for instance, does not understand that the Lion

is the symbol of High Courage, and the Bull-dog of Tenacity, or holding

on? At the present day the badge of one of His Majesty's warships is the

picture of a butting goat, accompanied by the words "Butt in". This, as

the authorities rightly describe it, is "pure symbolism," but to a

symbolist the legend "Butt in" is superfluous, as the mere butting goat

adequately carries the idea. As Prof. Petrie has well said: "To

understand the position and movement of thought in a primitive age, it

must be approached on a far simpler plane than that of our present

familiarity with writing. To reach the working of the childhood of our

races we should look to the minds of children. If the child passes

through ancestral changes in its bodily formation, so certainly it

passes through such stages in the growth and capacity of its

brain."[60] I shall push the childish and extremely simple theory of

symbolism to its logical conclusions, and shall show, for instance, that

the Boar, because it burrowed with its plough-like snout, was the emblem

of the ploughman, and that thus, _boar_ and _boer_ are the same word.

Or, to take another instance, I shall show that probably because the cat

sits washing herself, and is a model of cleanliness in sanitary

respects, the cat who figures on the head of the Magna Mater of Crete

was elevated into a symbol of the Immaculate or Pure One, and that the

word _cat_, German _kater_, is identical with the name Kate or Caterina

which means _purity_. The Sanscrit word for _cat_ means literally _the

cleanser_, whence it is obvious that the cleanly habits of the cat

strongly impressed the Aryan imagination.

Whether or not my theories are right, it is undeniable that the

etymologies of Skeat and Murray are very often painfully wrong. The

standard explanation, for instance, of the word _haha_, meaning a sunk

fence, is that it is from the French ha-ha, "an interjection of

laughter, hence a surprise in the form of an unexpected obstacle that

laughs at one". This may be so, but it is a far wilder guess than

anything to be found in my pages, or that I should ever dare to venture.

In 1913 I suggested in _Notes and Queries_ that the word ha-ha or

haw-haw was simply a re-duplication or superlative of the French _haie_,

a fence or hedge, old English _haw_. In the new edition of Skeat I am

glad to find this suggestion accepted, and that _ha-ha!_ has been

expunged. It still figures in Dr. Murray.

In his Canons of Etymology, Prof. Skeat observes:--"The history of a

nation accounts for the constituent parts of its language. When an

early English word is compared with Hebrew or Coptic, as used to be done

in the _old_ editions of Webster's Dictionary, history is set at

defiance; and it was a good deed to clear the later editions of all such

rubbish".

This is curiously parochial, yet it seems to have been seriously

accepted by etymologers. But what would Science say nowadays to that

geologist or anthropologist who committed the foul deed of discarding or

suppressing a vast body of facts simply because they clashed with, or

"set at defiance," the "historic" assertions of the Pentateuch? It is

true that the history of a nation, _if it were fully known_, must

account for the constituent parts of its language, but how much British

history do we pretend to know? To suggest that philology must limit its

conclusions by the Roman invasion, or bound its findings by the pages of

Mrs. Markham, is ludicrous, yet, nevertheless, these fictitious

boundaries are the mediæval and pre-Darwinian limits within which the

Science of Language is now coffined. Prof. Skeat was reluctantly

compelled to recognise a Semitic trace in words such as _bad_ and

_target_, but was unable to accept the connection owing to the absence

of any historic point of contact between Syria and this country prior to

the Crusades! So, too, M. Sebhlani observed numerous close similarities

between Arabic and English, but was "unable to press them for lack of a

theory as to how they got into English!"

As history must be constructed from facts, and facts must not be

peremptorily suppressed simply because at present they clash with the

meagre record of historians, I shall have no scruples in noting a word

from Timbuctoo if it means precisely what it does in English, and

proves reasonably to be a missing piece. As Gerald Massey thirty or

forty years ago very properly observed: "We have to dig and descend mine

under mine beneath the surface scratched with such complacent

twitterings over their findings by those who have taken absolute

possession of this field, and proceeded to fence it in for themselves,

and put up a warning against everybody else as trespassers. We get

volume after volume on the 'science of language' which only make us

wonder when the 'science' is going to begin. At present it is an opera

that is all overture. The comparative philologists have not gone deep

enough, as yet, to see that there is a stage where likeness may afford

guidance, because there was a common origin for the primordial stock of

words. They assume that Grimm's Law goes all the way back. They cling to

their limits, as the old Greek sailors hugged the shore, and continually

insist upon imposing these on all other voyagers, by telling terrible

tales of the unknown dangers beyond."[61]

As soon as etymologists appreciate the value of the comparative method

it is undeniable that a marked advance will be made in the "Science of

Language," but during the last few decades it must be confessed that

that science--_pace_ the bombastic language of some of its

adherents--has retrogressed rather than moved forward.

Prof. Skeat was admittedly a high authority on early English, and his

Dictionary of the English Language is thus almost inevitably conspicuous

for its Anglo-Saxon colouring. Had, however, the influence of the Saxons

been as marked and immediate as he assumes, the language of

Anglo-Saxondom would have coincided exactly or very closely with the

contemporary German. But, according to Dr. Wm. Smith, "There is no

proof that Anglo-Saxon was ever spoken anywhere but on the soil of Great

Britain; for the 'Heliend,' and other remains of old Saxon, are not

Anglo-Saxon, and I think it must be regarded, not as a language which

the colonists, or any of them, brought with them from the Continent, but

as a new speech resulting from the fusion of many separate elements. It

is, therefore indigenous, if not aboriginal, and as exclusively local

and national in its character as English itself."[62]

That modern English contains innumerable traces of pure Celtic words

used to be a matter of common acceptance, and in the words of Davies,

the stoutest assertor of a pure Anglo-Saxon or Norman descent is

convicted by the language of his daily life, of belonging to a race that

partakes largely of Celtic blood. If he calls for his _coat_ (W. _cota_,

Germ. _rock_), or tells of the _basket_ of fish he has caught (W.

_basged_, Germ. _korb_), or the _cart_ he employs on his land (W.

_cart_, from _càr_, a dray, or sledge, Germ. _wagen_), or of the

_pranks_ of his youth, or the _prancing_ of his horse (W. _prank_, a

trick, _prancio_, to frolic), or declares that he was _happy_ when a

_gownsman_ at Oxford (W. _hap_, fortune, chance, Germ. _glück_, W.

_gwn_), or that his servant is _pert_ (W. _pert_, spruce, dapper,

insolent); or if, descending to the language of the vulgar, he affirms

that such assertions are _balderdash_, and the claim a _sham_ (W.

_baldorddus_, idle prating; _siom_, _shom_, a deceit, a sham), he is

unconsciously maintaining the truth he would deny. Like the M. Jourdain

of Molière, who had been talking prose all his life without knowing it,

he has been speaking very good Celtic without any suspicion of the

fact.[63]

It is noteworthy that in his determination to ignore the Celtic

influence, Prof. Skeat concedes only one among the above-mentioned words

to the British--(_gwn_). The Welsh _hap_ "_must_," he says, be borrowed

from the Anglo-Saxon _gehoep_, and the remainder he ascribes to Middle

English or to an "origin unknown".

Tyndall has observed that imagination, bounded and conditioned by

co-operant reason, is the mightiest instrument of the physical

discoverer. It is to imagination that words born in the fantastic and

romantic childhood of the world were due, and it is only by a certain

measure of imagination that philology can hope to unravel them. The

extent to which mythology has impressed place-names may be estimated

from the fact that to King Arthur alone at least 600 localities owe

their titles. That Arthur himself has not been transmogrified into a

Saxon settler[64] is due no doubt to the still existing "Bed," "Seat,"

"Stables," etc., with which popular imagination connected the mystic

king.

"Geographical names," says Rice Holmes, "testify to the cult of various

gods," and he adds: "it is probable that every British town had its

eponymous hero. The deities, however, from whom towns derived their

names, were doubtless often worshipped near the site long before the

first foundations were laid: the goddess Bibracte was originally the

spirit of a spring reverenced by the peasants of the mountain upon which

the famous Aeduan town was built".[65]

I shall not lead the reader into the intricacies of British mythology

deeper than is requisite for an understanding of the words and

place-names under consideration, nor shall I enlarge more than is

necessary upon the mystic elements in that vast and little known

mythology.

It has been said that the mediæval story-teller is not unlike a peasant

building his hut on the site of Ephesus or Halicarnassus with the stones

of an older and more majestical architecture. That Celtic mythology

exhibits all the indications of a vast ruin is the opinion not only of

Matthew Arnold, but of every competent student of the subject, and it is

a matter of discredit that educated Englishmen know so little about it.

Among the phenomena of Celtic mythology are numerous identities with

tales related by Homer. Sir Walter Scott, alluding to one of these many

instances, expresses his astonishment at a fact which, as he says, seems

to argue some connection or communication between these remote highlands

of Scotland, and the readers of Homer of former days which one cannot

account for.[66] His explanation that "After all, perhaps, some

Churchman, more learned than his brethren, may have transferred the

legend from Sicily to Duncrune, from the shores of the Mediterranean to

those of Loch Lomond," is not in accord with any of the probabilities,

and it is more likely that both Greek and Highlander drew independently

from some common source. The astonishing antiquity of these tales may be

glimpsed by the fact that the Homeric poems themselves speak of a store

of older legends from an even more brilliant past.

Somebody once defined symbolism as "silent myth". To what extent it

elucidates primeval custom has yet to be seen, but there is

unquestionably an intimate connection between symbolism and burial

customs. Among some prehistoric graves disclosed at Dunstable was one

containing the relics of a woman and of a child. The authorities

suggest that the latter _may have been buried alive with its mother_,

which is a proposition that one cannot absolutely deny. But there is

just as great a possibility that neither the mother nor the child came

to so sinister and miserable an end. Apart from the pathetic attitude of

the two bodies, the skulls are as moral and intellectual as any modern

ones, and in face of the simple facts it would be quite justifiable to

assume that the mother and the child were not buried alive, nor

committed suicide, but died in the odour of sanctity and were reverently

interred. The objects surrounding the remains are fossil echinoderms,

which are even now known popularly among the unlettered as fairy loaves,

and as there is still a current legend that whoso keeps at home a

specimen of the fairy loaf will never lack bread,[67] one is fairly

entitled to assume that these "fairy loaves" were placed in the grave in

question as symbols of the spiritual food upon which our

animistic-minded ancestors supposed the dead would feed. It is well

known that material food was frequently deposited in tombs for a similar

purpose, but in the case of this Dunstable grave there must have been a

spiritual or symbolic idea behind the offering, for not even the most

hopeless savage could have imagined that the soul or fairy body would

have relished fossils--still less so if the material bodies had been

buried alive.

[Illustration: FIG. 7.--From _Man the Primeval Savage_ (Smith, G.

Worthington).]

I venture to put forward the suggestion that primeval stone-worship,

tree-worship, and the veneration paid to innumerable birds and beasts

was largely based upon symbolism. In symbolism alone can one find any

rational explanation for the intricacies of those ancient mysteries the

debris of which has come down to us degraded into between symbolism and

burial customs. Among some prehistoric graves disclosed at Dunstable was

one containing the relics of a woman and of a child. The authorities

superstitious "custom" and it is probable that in symbolism may also be

found the origin of totemism.

Is symbol the husk, the dry bone,

Of the dead soul of ages agone?

Finger-post of a pilgrimage way

Untrodden for many a day?

A derelict shrine in the fane

Of an ancient faith, long since profane?

A gew-gaw, once amulet?

A forgotten creed's alphabet?

Or is it....[68]

Whatever symbolism may or may not be it has certainly not that close and

exclusive connection with phallicism which some writers have been

pleased to assign it. On the contrary, it more often flushes from

unlikely quarters totally unexpected coveys of blue birds. Symbolism was

undeniably a primitive mode of _thinging_ thought or expressing abstract

ideas by things. As Massey says of mythology: "There is nothing insane,

nothing irrational in it, ... the insanity lies in mistaking it for

human history or Divine Revelation. Mythology is the depository of man's

most ancient science, and what concerns us chiefly is this--when truly

interpreted once more it is destined to be the death of those false

theologies to which it has unwittingly given birth."[69] That the

ancients were adepts at constructing cunningly-devised fables is

unquestionable: to account for the identities of these pagan fables with

certain teachings of the New Testament it was the opinion of one of the

Early Fathers--Tertullian, I believe--that "God was rehearsing

Christianity".

In the opinion of those best able to judge, Druidism originated in

neolithic times. Just as the Druid sacrificed white bulls before he

ascended the sacred oak, so did the Latin priest in the grove, which was

the holy place of Jupiter. "But," says Rice Holmes, "while every ancient

people had its priests, the Druids alone were a veritable clergy".[70]

The clergy of to-day would find it profitable to study the symbolism

which flourished so luxuriously among their predecessors, but,

unfortunately, with the exception of a few time-honoured symbols such as

the Dove, the Anchor, and the Lamb, symbolism in the ecclesiastical and

philosophic world is now quite dead. It still, however, lingers to a

limited extent in Art, and it will always be the many-coloured radiancy

which colours Poetry. The ancient and the at-one-time generally accepted

idea that mythology veiled Theology, has now been discarded owing to the

disconcerting discovery that myths were seemingly not taught to the

common people by the learned, but on the contrary spread upwards from

the vulgar to the learned. This latter process has usually been the doom

of Religion, and it is quite unthinkable that fairy-tales could survive

its blighting effect. As a random instance of the modern attitude

towards Imagination, one may cite the Rev. Prof. Skeat, who, commenting

upon the Music of the Spheres, gravely informs the world that: "Modern

astronomy has exploded the singular notion of revolving hollow

concentric spheres". "These spheres," he adds, "have disappeared and

their music with them except in poetry."[71]

Whether or not our predecessors really heard the choiring of the

young-eyed cherubim, or whether the music was merely in their souls is a

point immaterial to the present inquiry, which simply concerns itself

with the physical remains of that poetic once-upon-a-time temperament

which at some period or other was prevalent,[72] and has left its

world-wide imprints on river names, such as the Irish "Morning

Star".[73] One would have supposed it quite superfluous at this time of

day to have to claim imagination for the anonymous ancients who mapped

the whole expanse of heaven into constellations, and wove fairy-tales

around the Pleiades and every other group of stars, and it is simply

astonishing to find a Doctor of Divinity writing to-day in kultured

complacency: "It is to the imagination of us moderns _alone_ that the

grandeur of the universe appeals,[74] and it was relatively late in the

history of religion--so far as can be reconstructed from the scanty data

in our possession that the higher nature cults were developed."[75]

Is it wonderful that again and again the romantic soul of the Celtic

peasantry has risen against the grey dogmas of official Theology, and

has expressed itself in terms such as those taken down from the mouth of

a Gaelic old woman in 1877: "We would dance there till we were seven

times tired. The people of those times were full of music and dancing

stories, and traditions. The clerics have extinguished these. May ill

befall them! And what have the clerics put in their place? Beliefs about

creeds and disputations about denominations and churches! May lateness

be their lot! It is they who have put the cross round the heads and the

entanglements round the feet of the people. The people of the Gaeldom of

to-day are anear perishing for lack of the famous feats of their

fathers. The black clerics have suppressed every noble custom among the

people of the Gaeldom--precious customs that will never return, no,

never again return."[76]

There are features about the wisdom of the ancients which the theologian

neither understands nor tries to understand,[77] and it is like a breath

of fresh air to find the Bishop of Oxford maintaining, "We have got to

get rid of everything that makes the sound of religion irrational, and

which associates it with bygone habits of thought in regard to science

and history". Sir Gilbert Murray has recently expressed the opinion that

"it is the scholar's special duty to trim the written signs in our old

poetry now enshrined back into living thought and feeling"; but at

present far from forwarding this desideratum scholarship not only

discountenances imagination, but even eliminates from consideration any

spiritual idea of God. To quote from a modern authority: "Track any God

right home and you will find him lurking in a ritual sheath from which

he slowly emerges, first as a _dæmon_ or spirit of the year, then as a

full-blown divinity.... The May King, the leader of the choral dance,

gave birth not only to the first actor of the drama, but also, as we

have just seen, to the God, be he Dionysus or be he Apollo."[78]

The theory here assumed grossly defies the elementary laws of logic, for

every act of ritual must essentially have been preceded by a thought:

Act is the outcome and offspring of Thought: Idea was never the

idiot-child of Act. The assumption that the first idea of God evolved

from the personation of the Sun God in a mystery play or harvest dance

is not really or fundamentally a mental tracking of that God right home,

but rather an inane confession that the idea of God cannot be traced

further backward than the ritual of ancient festivals.

Speaking of that extremely remote epoch when the twilight and mists of

morning shed dim-looming shapes and flickering half lights about the

path of our scarcely awakened race, _The Athenæum_ a year or two ago

remarked: "No wonder that to such purblind eyes men appear as trees, and

trees as men--Balder the Beautiful as the mystic oak, and the oak as

Balder". This passage forms part of a congratulation that the work of

Sir James Frazer is now complete, and that _The Golden Bough_ "has at

length carried us forward into broad daylight".

I have studied the works of Sir James Frazer in the hope of finding

therein some insight as to the origin and why of custom, but I have

failed to perceive the broad daylight of _The Athenæum's_ satisfaction.

One might lay down _The Golden Bough_ without a suspicion that our

purblind ancestors ever had a poetic thought or a high and beautiful

ideal, and it is probable that scholarship will eventually arraign Sir

James Frazer for this _suggestio falsi_. In the meanwhile it should

hardly be necessary to enter a _caveat_ against the popular idea that we

are now "in broad daylight". The value of _The Golden Bough_ lies

largely in the evidence therein adduced of what may be termed universal

ritual. But all ritual must have originated from ideas, and these

original ideas do not seem to have entered the horizon of Sir James

Frazer's speculations. What reason does he suppose lurked necessarily

behind, say, the sacred fire being kindled from _three_ nests in _three_

trees, or by _nine_ men from _nine_ different kinds of wood? And why do

the unpleasant Ainos scrupulously kill their sacred bear by _nine_ men

pressing its head against a pole?

It is now the vogue to resolve every ancient ceremony into a magic charm

for producing fire, or food, or rain, or what not, and there is very

little doubt that magic, or sacred ceremonies, verily sank, in many

instances, to this melancholy level. But, knowing what history has to

tell us of priestcraft, and judging the past from the present, is it not

highly likely that the primitive divine who found his tithes and

emoluments diminishing from a laxity of faith would spur the public

conscience by the threat that _unless_ sacred ceremonies were faithfully

and punctually performed the corn would not flourish and the rain would

either overflow or would not fall?[79]

It is now the mode to trace all ceremonial to self-interest, principally

to the self-interest of fear or food. But on this arbitrary, stale, and

ancient theory[80] how is it possible to account for the almost

universal reverence for stone or rock? Rocks yield neither food, nor

firing, nor clothing, nor do they ever inflict injuries: why, then,

should the artless savage trouble to gratify or conciliate such

innocuous and unprofitable objects? The same question may be raised in

other directions, notably that of the oak tree. Here the accepted

supposition is that the oak was revered because it was struck more

frequently by lightning than any other tree, but if this untoward

occurrence really proves the oak tree was the favourite of the Fire God

surely it was an instance of affection very brilliantly dissembled.

Sir James Frazer has used his _Golden Bough_ as he found it employed by

Virgil--as a talisman which led to the gloomy and depressing underworld.

In Celtic myth the Silver Bough played a less sinister part, and figures

as a fairy talisman to music and delight.

Whether the appeal of Sir Gilbert Murray meets with any sympathy and

response, and whether the written signs in our old poetry will ever be

enshrined back into living thought and feeling remains to be seen. I

think they will, and that the better sense of English intellectualism

will sooner or later recoil from the present mud-and-dust theories of

protoplasm for, as has been well said, "Materialism considered as a

system of philosophy never attempts to explain the _Why_? of things".

Certainly protoplasm has unravelled nothing, nor possibly can. One of

our standard archæologists lamented a few decades ago: "As the Germans

have decreed this it is in vain to dispute it, and not worth while to

attempt it". But the German, an indefatigable plodder, is but a

second-rate _thinker_, and the time must inevitably come when English

scholars will deem it well worth while to unhitch their waggons from

Germania. With characteristic assurance the Teutonic _litterati_ are

still prattling of The Fatherland as a "centre" of civilisation, and are

pluming themselves upon the "spiritual values" given to mankind by

Germany. Some of us are not conscious of these "spiritual values," but

that German scholarship has poison-gassed vast tracts of modern thought

is evident enough. The theories of Mannhardt, elaborated by Sir James

Frazer and transmuted by him into the pellucid English of _The Golden

Bough_, have admittedly blighted the fair humanities of old religion

into a dull catalogue of common things,[81] and no one more eloquently

deplores the situation than Sir James Frazer himself. As he says: "It is

indeed a melancholy and in some respects thankless task to strike at the

foundations of beliefs in which as in a strong tower the hopes and

aspirations of humanity through long ages have sought refuge from the

storm and stress of life. Yet sooner or later it is inevitable that the

battery of the Comparative Method should breach these venerable walls

mantled over with ivy and mosses, and wild flowers of a thousand tender

and sacred associations."

When the Comparative Method is applied in a wider and more catholic

spirit than hitherto it will then--but not till then--be seen whether

the fair humanities are exploded superstitions or are sufficiently alive

to blossom in the dust.

It is quite proper to designate _The Golden Bough_ a puppet-play of

corn-gods,[82] for the author himself, referring to Balder the

Beautiful, writes: "He, too, for all the quaint garb he wears, and the

gravity with which he stalks across the stage, is merely a puppet, and

it is time to unmask him before laying him up in the box".

But to me the divinities of antiquity are not mere dolls to be patted

superciliously on the head and then remitted to the dustbin. Our own

ideals of to-day are but the idols or dolls of to-morrow, and even a

golliwog if it has comforted a child is entitled to sympathetic

treatment. To the understanding of symbolism sympathy is a useful key.

The words _doll_, _idol_, _ideal_, and _idyll_, which are all one and

the same, are probably due to the island of Idea which was one of the

ancient names of Crete. Not only was Crete known as Idæa, but it was

also entitled Doliche, which may be spelled to-day Idyllic. Crete, the

Idyllic island, the island of Ideas, was also known as Aeria, and I

think it probably was the centre whence was spun the gossamer of aerial

and ethereal tales, which have made the Isles of Greece a land of

immortal romance. We shall also see as we proceed that the mystic

philosophy known to history as the Gnosis[83] was in all probability the

philosophy taught in prehistoric times at Gnossus, the far-famed capital

of Crete. From Gnossus, whence the Greeks drew all their laws and

science, came probably the Greek word _gnosis_, meaning _knowledge_. But

the mystic Gnosis connoted more than is covered by the word _knowledge_:

it claimed to be the wisdom of the ancients, and to disclose the ideal

value lying behind the letter of all mysteries, myths, and religious

ordinances.

I am convinced that the Christian Gnostics, with whom the Tertullian

type were in constant conflict, really did know much that they claimed,

and that had they not been trampled out of the light of day Europe would

never have sunk into the melancholy, well-designated Dark Ages. Gnostic

emblems have been found abundantly in Ireland: the Pythagorean or

Gnostic symbol known as the pentagon or Solomon's seal occurs on British

coins,[84] and the Bardic literature of Wales is deeply steeped with a

Gnostic mysticism for which historians find it difficult to account. The

facts which I shall adduce in the following pages are sufficiently

curious to permit the hope that they may lead a few of us to become less

self-complacent, and in the words of the author of _Ancient Britain_

relative to aboriginal Britons, "to think more of those primitive

ancestors. In some things we have sunk below their level."[85]

FOOTNOTES:

[39] _Words and Places._

[40] Schliemann, _Mykenæ_.

[41] _Cf._ Johnson, W., _Byways in British Archæology_.

[42] _The Cromlechs of Anglesey and Carnarvonshire._

[43] _Ancient Britain_, p. 70.

[44] Windle, Sir B. C. A., _Life in Early Britain_, p. 135.

[45] Johnston, Rev. James B., _The Place-names of England and

Wales_, 1915, p. 321. The Horse-lie-down theory is enunciated

by Sir Walter Besant.

[46] Preface to _The Place-names of Oxfordshire_.

[47] 1915.

[48] _Cf._ Bonwick, J., _Irish Druids_, p. 278.

[49] Virchow, intro. to Schliemann, _Ilios_ XII.

[50] _Cf._ _Brittany_, p. 28.

[51] Clodd, Ed., _The Story of Primitive Man_, 9, 18.

[52] Sweet, H., _The History of Language_, p. vi.

[53] _The Principles of Comparative Philology._

[54] Even after Troy had been discovered by Schliemann, Max Müller

maintained his belief that the Siege of Troy was a Sun and

Dawn myth.

[55] _Alphana_ vient d'_equus_, sans doute, Mais il faut avouer

aussi Qu'en venant de là jusqu'ici Il a bien changé sur la

route.

[56] Westropp, T. J., _Proc. R. Irish Acad._, xxxiv., C., 8, p.

159.

[57] Dallas, H. A.

[58] Norwood, J. W.

[59] Such obvious concoctions of the study as _exsufflicate_,

_deracinate_, _incarnadine_, etc., never strike root or

survive.

[60] Petrie, W. M. F., _The Formation of the Alphabet_, p. 3.

[61] _A Book of the Beginnings_, 1, p. 136.

[62] _Lectures on the English Language_, 1862, p. 16.

[63] Quoted from _ibid._, p. 30.

[64] The _Edin_ of the prehistoric British _Dun edin_, now

Edinburgh, has been calmly misappropriated to a supposed

_Edwin_.

[65] _Ancient Britain_, pp. 273, 283.

[66] _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft._

[67] Johnson, W., _Byways in British Archæology_, p. 304.

[68] Cloudesley Brereton, in _The Quest_.

[69] _Luniolatry_, p. 2.

[70] _Ancient Britain_, p. 298.

[71] This dictum would have cheered the heart of Tertullian, who

maintained that God could never forgive an actor because

Christ said: _No man by taking thought can add one cubit to

his stature_; a statement which the actor impiously falsified

by wearing high heeled boots. Commenting upon _The Lost

Language of Symbolism_, _The Expository Times_ very

courteously observed: "To the reader of the Bible its worth

is more than to all others, for the Bible is full of symbols

and we have lost their language. We are very prosaic. The

writers of the Old Testament and of the New were very

imaginative. Between us there is a gulf fixed of which we are

aware only in unquiet moments."

[72] "There must have been a time when a simple instinct for

poetry was possessed by all nations as it still is by

uncivilised races and children. Among European nations this

instinct appears to be dead for ever. We can name neither a

mountain nor a flower."--Prof. Weekley, _Romance of Words_.

"Who did first name the flowers? Who first gave them, not

their Latin titles, but the old, familiar, fanciful, poetic,

rustic ones, that run so curiously alike in all the vulgar

tongues? Who first called the lilies of the valley the

Madonna's tears? the wild blue hyacinth, St. Dorothy's

flower? the starry passiflora, the Passion of Christ; who

named them all first, in the old days that are forgotten? All

the poets that ever the world has known might have been

summoned together for the baptism of the flowers, and have

failed to name them half so well as popular tradition has

done long ago in the dim lost ages, with names that still

make all the world akin."--Anon.

[73] "This pretty name (which Fitzgerald, _History of Limerick_,

vol. i., p. 320, calls the River Dawn) arose from a change of

Samhair or Samer to Caimher, 'the daybreak,' or 'Morning

Star'".--Westropp, T. J., _Proc. of Royal Irish Acad._,

xxxiii., C. 2, p. 13.

[74] The peculiar temperament of "us moderns alone" is, I am

afraid, more acutely diagnosed by Prof. Weekley, in

_Surnames_, where he observes: "The 'practical man,' when his

attention is accidentally directed to the starry sky,

appraises that terrific spectacle with a non-committal grunt:

but he would receive with a positive snort any suggestion

that the history of European civilisation is contained in the

names of his friends and acquaintances. Still, even the

practical man, if he were miraculously gifted with the power

of interpreting surnames, could hardly negotiate the length

of Oxford Street on a motor-bus without occasionally

marvelling and frequently chuckling."

[75] Coneybeare, Dr. F. C., _The Historical Christ_, p. 19.

[Italics mine.] The views of Dr. Coneybeare may be connoted

with those of his fellow-cleric, the Rev. H. C. Christmas:

"The astrotheology into which Egyptian fables are ultimately

resolved having taken animals as symbols, soon elevated those

symbols in the minds of the people at large into real

divinities. The signs of the zodiac were worshipped, and the

constellations not in that important circle did not go

without adoration. Various stars became noted as rising or

setting at particular seasons, and serving as marks of time;

while the physical circumstances of the animal creation gave

an easy means of naming the stars and constellations, and

thus connected natural history with the symbolical theology

of the times.... In their [the Egyptians'] view the earth was

but a mirror of the heavens, and celestial intelligences were

represented by beasts, birds, fishes, gems, and even by

rocks, metals, and plants. The harmony of the spheres was

answered by the music of the temples, and the world beheld

nothing that was not a type of something divine."--_Universal

Mythology_, 1838, p. 19.

[76] Quoted from Wentz, W. D. Y., _The Fairy Faith in Celtic

Countries_.

[77] "The current ignorance of those pre-Christian evidences that

have been preserved by the petrifying past must be wellnigh

invincible when a man like Prof. Jowett could say, as if with

the voice of superstition in its dotage: '_To us the

preaching of the Gospel is a New Beginning, from which we

date all things; beyond which we neither desire, nor are

able, to inquire_.'"--Massey, G., _The Logic of the Lord_,

1897.

[78] Harrison, Miss Jane, _Ancient Art and Ritual_, pp. 192-3.

[79] A bogey of the present Bishop of London is not "no crops" but

"no foreign monarchs". _The Daily Chronicle_ of 13th May,

1914, reports his Lordship as saying: "If the British Empire

was not to be disgraced by the heart of London becoming

pagan, _his fund must be kept going_." [Italics mine.] "Once

religion went, everything else went; it would be good-bye to

the visits of foreign monarchs to London, because Londoners

would have disgraced the Empire and themselves before the

whole world."

[80] The "celebrated but infamous" Petronius, surnamed Arbiter,

philosophised in the first century to the following

up-to-date effect:--

Fear made the first divinities on earth

The sweeping flames of heaven; the ruined tower,

Scathed by its stroke. The softly setting sun,

The slow declining of the silver moon,

And its recovered beauty. Hence the signs

Known through the world, and the swift changing year,

Circling divided in its varied months.

Hence rose the error. Empty folly bade

The wearied husbandman to Ceres bring

The first fair honours of his harvest fields

To gird the brow of Bacchus with the palm,

And taught how Pales, 'mid the shepherd bands,

Stood and rejoiced, how Neptune in the flood

Plunged deep, and ruled the ever-roaring tide;

How Vallas reigned o'er earth's stupendous caves

Mightily. He who vowed and he who reaped

With eager contest, made their gods themselves.

[81] The intelligible forms of ancient poets

The fair humanities of old religion

The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty

That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain

Or forest or slow stream, or pebbly spring

Our chasms and watery depths; all these have vanished

They live no longer in the faith of reason.

--COLERIDGE.

[82] There is, of course, no novelty in these ideas, which are

merely a recrudescence and restatement of the notions to

which Plutarch thus alludes:--

"We shall also get our hands on the dull crowd, who take pleasure

in associating the ideas about these gods either with changes

of the atmosphere according to the seasons, or with the

generation of corn and sowings and ploughings, and in saying

that Osiris is buried when the sown corn is hidden by the

earth, and comes to life and shows himself again when it

begins to sprout.... They should take very good heed, and be

apprehensive lest unwittingly they write off the sacred

mysteries and dissolve them into winds and streams and

sowings and ploughings and passions of earth and changes of

seasons."

[83] "The Gnostic movement began long before the Christian era

(what its original historical impulse was we do not know),

and only one aspect of it, and that from a strictly limited

point of view, has been treated by ecclesiastical

historians."--Lamplugh, Rev. F., _The Gnosis of the Light_,

1918, p. 10.

[84] Holmes, Rice, _Ancient Britain_, p. 295.

[85] _Ibid._, p. 373.

CHAPTER III

A TALE OF TROY

Upon the Syrian sea the people live,

Who style themselves Phoenicians,

These were the first great founders of the world--

Founders of cities and of mighty states--

Who showed a path through seas before unknown.

In the first ages, when the sons of men

Knew not which way to turn them, they assigned

To each his first department; they bestowed

Of land a portion and of sea a lot,

And sent each wandering tribe far off to share

A different soil and climate. Hence arose

The great diversity, so plainly seen,

'Mid nations widely severed.

--DYONYSIUS of Susiana, A.D. 300.

It is a modern axiom that the ancient belief expressed in the above

extract has no foundation in fact, and that the Phoenicians, however

far-spread may have been their commercial enterprise, never extended

their voyages beyond the Pillars of Hercules. It is conceded that it

would be easy to demonstrate in Britain the elaborate machinery of

sun-worship, if only it could be shown that there were at any time

intimate and direct relations between Britain and Phoenicia. The

historical evidence, such as it is, of this once-supposed connection,

having been weighed and found wanting, the present teaching is thus

expressed: "But what of the Phoenicians, and where do they come in? It

is a cruel thing to say to a generation which can ill afford to part

with any fragment of its diminished archæological patrimony; but it must

be said without reserve or qualification: the Phoenicians do not come

in at all."[86]

But before bidding a final and irrevocable adieu to Tyre and Tarshish,

one is entitled to inquire whence and how Phoenician or Hebrew words

and place-names reached this country, particularly on the western

coasts. The cold-shouldering of Oriental words has not extinguished

their existence, and although these changelings may no longer find an

honoured home in our Dictionaries, the terms themselves have survived

the ignominy of their expulsion and are as virile to-day as hitherto.

The English language, based upon an older stratum of speech and

perpetually assimilating new shades of sense, has descended in direct

ancestry from the Welsh or Kymbric, and Kymbric, still spoken to-day,

has come down to us in verbal continuity from immemorial ages prior to

the Roman invasion. It was at one time supposed that of the Celtic

sister-tongues the Irish or Gaelic was the more ancient, but according

to the latest opinion, "In the vocabularies of the two languages where

strict phonetic tests of origin can be applied it is found that the

borrowing is mainly on the side of the Irish".[87] The identities

between Welsh and Hebrew are so close and pressing that from time to

time claims have been put forward that the old Welsh actually _was_

Hebrew. "It would be difficult," said Margoliouth, "to adduce a single

article or form of construction in the Hebrew Grammar, but the same is

to be found in Welsh, and there are many whole sentences in both

languages exactly the same in the very words".[88] Entire sentences of

archaic Hebraisms are similarly to be found in the now obsolete Cornish

language, and there are "several thousand words of Hebrew origin" in the

Erse or Gaelic. According to Vallencey, "the language of the early

inhabitants of Ireland was a compound of Hebrew and Phoenician,"[89]

and this statement would appear to be substantiated by the curious fact

that in 1827 the Bible Societies presented Hebrew Bibles to the native

Irish in preference to those printed in English, as it was found that

the Irish peasants understood Hebrew more readily than English.[90]

Is it conceivable that these identities of tongue are due to chance, or

that the terms in point permeated imperceptibly overland to the farthest

outposts of the Hebrides?

It is a traditional belief that the district now known as Cornwall had

at some period commercial relations with an overseas people, referred to

indifferently as "Jews," "Saracens," or "Finicians". That certain of the

western tin mines were farmed by Jews within the historic period is a

fact attested by Charters granted by English kings, notably by King

John; yet there is a tradition among Cornish tinners that the

"Saracens," a term still broadly applied to any foreigner, were not

allowed to advance farther than the coast lest they should discover the

districts whence the tin was brought. The entire absence of any finds of

Phoenician coins is an inference that this tradition is well founded,

for it is hardly credible that had the "Finicians" penetrated far inland

or settled to any extent in the country, some of their familiar coins

would not have come to light.

The casual or even systematic visits of mere merchants will not account

for integral deep-seated identities. The Greeks had a powerful

settlement at Marseilles centuries before Cæsar's time, yet the vicinity

of these Greek traders, although it may have exercised some social

influences upon arts and habits, did not effect any permanent impression

on the language, religion, or character of the Gaulish nation.

One is thus impelled to the conclusion that the resemblances between

British and Phoenician are deeper seated than hitherto has been

supposed, and that it may have been due to both peoples having descended

from, or borrowed from, some common source.

The Phoenicians, though so great and enterprising a people, have left

no literature; and it is thus impossible to compare their legends and

traditions with our own. With Crete the same difficulty exists, as at

present her script is indecipherable, and no one knows positively the

name of a single deity of her Pantheon.

There is no historic record of any intercourse between the British and

the Greeks, but both Irish and British traditions specify the Ægean as

the district whence their first settlers arrived. Tyndal, the earliest

translator of the Greek Testament into English, asserts that "The Greek

agreeth more with the English than the Latin, and the properties of the

Hebrew tongue agreeth a thousand times more with the English than with

the Latin". Happily Greece possesses a literature, and one may thus

compare the legends of Greece with those of our own country.

An Hellenic author of the first century is thus rendered by Sir John

Rhys:[91] "Demetrius further said that of the islands round Britain

many lie scattered about uninhabited, of which some are named after

deities and heroes. He told us also that being sent by the Emperor with

the object of reconnoitring and inspecting, he went to the island which

lay nearest to those uninhabited, and found it occupied by few

inhabitants who were, however, sacrosanct and inviolable in the eyes of

the Britons.... There is there, they said, an island in which Cronus is

imprisoned with Briareus, keeping guard over him as he sleeps, for as

they put it--sleep is the bond forged for Cronus. They add that around

him are many deities, his henchmen and attendants."[92]

It is remarkable that Greek mythology was thus familiar to the

supposedly blue-painted savages of Britain. Nor is the instance

solitary, for at Bradford a Septennial festival used to be held in

honour of Jason and the Golden Fleece,[93] and at Achill in Ireland

there is a custom which seemingly connects Achill and Achilles.

Pausanias tells the tale of young Achilles attired in female garb and

living among maidens, and to this day the peasantry of Achill Island on

the north-west coast of Ireland dresses its boys as girls for the

supposed purpose of deceiving a boy-seeking devil.[94] Are these and

other coincidences which will be adduced due to chance, to independent

working of the primitive mind, or to intercourse with a maritime people

who were not restricted by the Pillars of Hercules?

The exit of the Phoenicians has created a dilemma which impels Mr.

Donald A. Mackenzie to inquire: "By whom were Egyptian beads carried to

Britain between 1500 B.C. and 1400 B.C.? Certainly not the

Phoenicians. The sea-traders of the Mediterranean were at the time the

Cretans. Whether or not their merchants visited England we have no means

of knowing."[95] There are, however, sure and certain sources of

information if one looks into the indelible evidence of fairy-tales,

monuments, language, traditions, and place-names.

Ammianus Marcellinus records that it was a traditional belief among the

Gauls that "a few Trojans fleeing from the Greeks and dispersed occupied

these places then uninhabited".[96] The similar tradition pervading

early British literature we shall consider in due course and detail.

This legend runs broadly that Bru or Brutus, after sailing for thirty

days and thirty nights, landed at Totnes, whence after slaying the giant

Gogmagog and his followers he marched to Troynovant or New Troy now

named London.

It was generally believed that this supposed fiction was a fabrication

by Geoffrey of Monmouth, but it was subsequently discovered in the

historical poems of Tyssilia, a Welsh Bard. According to a poem

attributed to Taliesin, the semi-mythical "Chief of the Bards of the

West," whose reputation Sir J. Morris Jones has recently so brilliantly

resuscitated,[97] "A numerous race, fierce, they are said to have been,

were thy original colonists Britain first of Isles. Natives of a country

in Asia, and the city of Gafiz. Said to have been a skilful people, but

the district is unknown which was mother to these children, warlike

adventurers on the sea. Clad in their long dress who could equal them?

Their skill is celebrated, they were the dread of Europe."

According to the Welsh Triads the first-comer to these islands was not

Bru, but a mysterious and mighty Hu: "The first of the three chieftains

who established the colony was Hu the Mighty, who came with the original

settlers. They came over the hazy sea from the summer country, which is

called Deffrobani; that is where Constantinople now stands."[98]

Although, as will subsequently be seen, Hu and Bru were seemingly one

and the same, it is not to be supposed that Britain can have been

populated from one solitary shipload of adventurers; argosy after argosy

must have reached these shores. The name Albion suggests Albania, and in

due course I shall connect not only Giant Alban, but also the Lady

Albion and the fairy Prince Albion with Albania, Albany, and "Saint"

Alban.

The Albanian Greek is still characterised by hardihood, activity, bodily

strength, and simplicity of living; and there is unquestionably some

connection between the highlanders of Albania and the highlanders of

Albany who, up to a few hundred years ago, used to rush into battle with

the war-cry of "Albani! Albani!" By the present-day Turk the Albanians

are termed Arnaouts.[99] Whether this name has any connection with

_argonauts_ is immaterial, as the historic existence of argonauts and

argosies is a matter of fact, not fancy. A typical example of the

primitive argosies is recorded in the British Chronicles where the

arrival of Hengist and Horsa is described. Layamon's _Brut_ attributes

to Hengist the following statement:--

"Our race is of a fertile stock, more quick and abounding than any other

you may know, or whereof you have heard speak. Our folk are marvellously

fruitful, and the tale of the children is beyond measure. Women and men

are more in number than the sand, for the greater sorrow of those

amongst us who are here. When our people are so many that the land may

not sustain nor suffice them, then the princes who rule the realm

assemble before them all the young men of the age of fifteen and

upwards, for such is our use and custom. From out of these they choose

the most valiant and the most strong, and, casting lots, send them forth

from the country, so that they may travel into divers lands, seeking

fiefs and houses of their own. Go out they must, since the earth cannot

contain them; for the children come more thickly than the beasts which

pasture in the fields. Because of the lot that fell upon us we have

bidden farewell to our homes, and putting our trust in Mercury, the god

has led us to your realm."

In all probability this is a typical and true picture of the perennial

argosies which periodically and persistently fared forth from Northern

Europe and the Mediterranean into the Unknown.

The Saxons came here peaceably; they were amicably received, and it

would be quite wrong to imagine the early immigrations as invasions

involving any abrupt breach in place-names, customs, and traditions. Of

the Greeks, Prof. Bury says: "They did not sweep down in a great

invading host, but crept in, tribe by tribe, seeking not political

conquest but new lands and homesteads".

At the time of Cæsar the tribe occupying the neighbourhood of modern

London were known as the Trinovantes,[100] and as these people can

hardly be supposed to have adopted their title for the purpose of

flattering a poetic fiction in far Wales, the name Trinovant lends some

support to the Bardic tradition that London was once termed Troy Novant

or New Troy. Argonauts of a later day christened their new-found land

New York, and this unchangingly characteristic tendency of the emigrant

no doubt accounts for the perplexing existence of several cities each

named "Troy". That many shiploads of young argonauts from one or another

Troy reached the coasts of Cornwall is implied by the fact that in

Cornwall _tre's_ were seemingly so numerous that _tre_ became the

generic term for home or homestead. It is proverbial that by _tre_,

_pol_, and _pen_, one may know the Cornish men.

[Illustration: FIG. 8.--Welsh Shepherd's "Troy Town."

From _Prehistoric London_ (Gordon, E. O.).]

[Illustration: FIG. 9.--Cretan maze-coins and British mazes at

Winchester, Alkborough, and Saffron Walden.

From _Prehistoric London_ (Gordon, E. O.).

[_To face p. 87._]

Borlase, in his glossary of Cornish words, gives both _tre_ and _dre_ as

meaning dwelling; the Welsh for Troy is Droia, the Greek was Troie, and

this invariable interchange of _t_ and _d_ is again apparent in _derry_,

the Irish equivalent for the Cornish _tre_. The standard definition of

_true_ is _firm_ or _certain_; whence it may appear that the primeval

"Troys" were, so to speak, the permanent addresses of the wandering

families and tribes. These _Troys_ or _trues_ were maybe caves--whence

_trou_, the French for hole or cave; maybe the foot of a big tree,

preferably the sacred oak-tree, which was alike sacred in Albion and

Albania. _Tree_ is the same word as _true_, and _dru_, the Sanscrit for

tree, is the same word as _dero_ or _derry_, the Irish for oak tree,

as in London_derry_, Kil_dare_, etc. The Druids have been generally

supposed to have derived their title of _Druid_ from the _drus_ or oak

tree under which they worshipped, but it is far more probable that the

tree was named after the Druids, and that _druid_ (the accusative and

dative of _drui_, a magician or sorcerer), is radically the Persian

_duru_, meaning _a good holy man_, the Arabic _deri_, meaning _a wise

man_.[101]

But apart from the generic term _tre_ or _dre_ there are numerous "Troy

Towns" and "Draytons" in Britain. Part of Rochester is called Troy Town,

which may be equated with the _Duro-_ of _Duro_brevis the ancient name

of Rochester. There is a river Dray in Thanet and the ancient name for

Canterbury was _Duro_vern. Seemingly all over Britain the term Troy Town

was applied to the turf-cut mazes of the downs and village greens, and

the hopscotch of the London urchin is said to be the Troy game of the

Welsh child.

In London, _tempus_ Edward II., a military ride and tournament used to

be performed by the young men of the royal household on every Sunday

during Lent.[102] This also so-called Troy game had obviously some

relation to the ancient Trojan custom thus described by Virgil:--

In equal bands the triple troops divide,

Then turn, and rallying, with spears bent low,

Charge at the call. Now back again they ride,

Wheel round, and weave new courses to and fro,

In armed similitude of martial show,

Circling and intercircling. Now in flight

They bare their backs, now turning, foe to foe,

Level their lances to the charge, now plight

The truce, and side by side in friendly league unite.

E'en as in Crete the Labyrinth of old

Between blind walls its secret hid from view,

With wildering ways and many a winding fold,

Wherein the wanderer, if the tale be true,

Roamed unreturning, cheated of the clue;

Such tangles weave the Teucrians, as they feign

Fighting, or flying, and the game renew;

So dolphins, sporting on the watery plane,

Cleave the Carpathian waves and distant Libya's main.

These feats Ascanius to his people showed,

When girdling Alba Longa; there with joy

The ancient Latins in the pastime rode,

Wherein the princely Dardan, as a boy,

Was wont his Trojan comrades to employ.

To Alban children from their sires it came,

And mighty Rome took up the "game of Troy,"

And called the players "Trojans," and the name

Lives on, as sons renew the hereditary game.[103]

In Welsh _tru_ means a twisting or turning, and this root is at the base

of _tourney_ and _tournament_. One might account for the courtly jousts

of the English Court by the erudition and enterprise of scholars and

courtiers, but when we find turf Troy Towns being dug by the illiterate

Welsh shepherd and a Troy game being played by the uneducated peasant,

the question naturally arises, "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?"

In the Scilly Islands there is a Troy Town picked out in stones which

the natives scrupulously restore and maintain: in the words of Miss

Courtney, "All intricate places in Cornwall are so denominated, and I

have even heard nurses say to children, when they were surrounded by a

litter of toys, that they looked as if they were in Troy Town".[104]

In the _Æneid_ Virgil observes that "Tyrians and Trojans shall I treat

as one". Apart from Tyrians and Trojans the term Tyrrheni or Tyrseni was

applied to the Etrurians--a people the mystery of whose origin is one of

the unsolved riddles of archæology. It was Etruria that produced not

only Dante, but also a galaxy of great men such as no other part of

Europe has presented. In Etruria woman was honoured as nowhere else in

Europe except, perhaps, in Crete and among the Kelts; and in Etruria--as

in Crete--religion was veiled under an "impenetrable cloud of mysticism

and symbolism".

It is supposed that Etruria derived much from the prehistoric Greeks who

dwelt in Albania and worshipped Father Zeus in the sacred derrys or

oak-groves of Dodona. The Etrurians and Greeks were unquestionably of

close kindred, and it would seem from their town of Albano and their

river Albanus that the Etrurians similarly venerated St. Alban or Prince

Albion. The capital of Etruria was Tarchon, so named after the Etruscan

Zeus, there known as Tarchon. In the Introduction to _The Cities and

Cemeteries of Etruria_, Dennis points out that for ages the Etruscans

were lords of the sea, rivalling the Phoenicians in enterprise;

founding colonies in the islands of the Tyrrhene Sea "even on the coast

of Spain where Tarragona (in whose name we recognise that of Tarchon)

appears to have been one of their settlements--a tradition confirmed by

its ancient fortifications. Nay, the Etruscans would fain have colonised

the far 'islands of the blest' in the Atlantic Ocean, probably Madeira

or one of the Canaries, had not the Carthaginians opposed them."

The title _Madeira_, which is radically _deira_, might imply an origin

from either Tyre or Troy, and if place-names have any significance it

seems probable the Etrurians reached even our remote Albion. One may

recognise Targon as at Tarragona in Pentargon, the sonorous, resounding

title of a mighty pen or headland near Tintagel, and it is not unlikely

Tarchon or Tarquin survives in giant Tarquin who is popularly associated

with Cumberland and the North of England. In Arthurian legend it is

seemingly this same Tarquin that figures as Sir Tarquin, a false knight

who was the enemy of the Round Table and a sworn foe to Lancelot: "They

hurtled together like two wild bulls, rashing and lashing with their

shields and swords, that sometimes they fell both over their noses. Thus

they fought still two hours and more and never would have rest."[105]

It will become increasingly evident as we proceed that _tur_ or _true_

served frequently as an adjective, meaning firm, constant, _dur_able,

and _eter_nal, and that it is thus used in the name _Tar_chon, _Tra_jan,

or _Tro_jan. One may thus modernise Tarchon into the Eternal John, Jean,

or Giant, and it is seemingly this same giant that figured as the John,

Joan, or Old Joan of Cornish festivals. In the civic functions at

Salisbury and elsewhere, the elementary giant figures simply as "Giant".

Although the Cornish for _giant_ was _geon_, the authorities--I think

wrongly--translate Inisidgeon, an islet in the Scillies, as having meant

_inis_ or island of _St. John_.

Near Pentargon is the Castle of King Arthur, which, before being known

as Tintagel, was named Dunechein or the _dun_ of _chein_. At Durovern

(now Canterbury) is a large tumulus known as the _Dane John_, and on the

heights behind St. Just in Cornwall is _Chun_ Castle.[106] This is a

noble specimen of Cyclopean architecture, and appears to be parallel in

style of building with the Cyclopean architecture of Etruria. Similarly,

in the Dune Chein neighbourhood may be seen Cyclopean and "herring-bone"

walls, which seemingly do not differ from those of Crete and Etruria.

At Winchelsea in Sussex are the foundations and the doorway of an

ancient building known as "Trojans or Jews' Hall," but of the history of

these ruins nothing whatever is known. There is, however, little if any

doubt that Trojan or Tarchon was an alternative title of the Etrurian

Jonn, Jupiter, or Jou, and that to the Cretan Jou the Greeks added their

_piter_ or father, making thereby Jupiter or Father Jou. Jou was the

title of a kingly dynasty in Crete, but the custom of royal dynasties

taking their title from the All Father likened to the Sun is so constant

as almost to constitute a rule.

The word _Jew_, when pronounced _yew_, will be considered subsequently;

it may here be pointed out that _Jay_, _Gee_, and _Joy_ are common

surnames, query, once tribal names in Britain. Near Penzance is Marazion

or Market Jew, and it may be suggested that the traditional Cornish

"Jews" were pre-Phoenician followers of the Cretan Jou. With

Market-Jew one may connote Margate, which, as will be shown later, was

probably in its origin--like Marazion or Mara San--a port of _mer_, or

_mère_, the generic terms for _sea_ and _mother_. It is a

well-recognised fact that Brittany, Cornwall, and Wales spoke more or

less the same tongue, and according to Cæsar in his time there was

little or no difference between the languages of Gaul and Britain.

As will also be seen later it is probable that the words _mer_ and

_mère_, and the names Maria and Marie, are radically _rhi_, the Celtic

for _lady_ or _princess_; that _Rhea_, the Mother-Goddess of Crete, is

simply _rhia_, the Gælic and the Welsh for _queen_, and that Maria meant

primarily Mother Queen, or Mother Lady. The early forms of Marazion

figure as _Marhasyon_, _Marhasion_, etc.

Among the Basques of Spain _jaun_ meant lord or master; in British

_chun_ or _cun_ meant _mighty chief_,[107] whence it is probable that

the name Tarchon meant _Eternal Chief_ or _Eternal Lord_, and this

anonymity would accord with the custom which most anciently prevailed at

Dodona. "In early times," says Herodotus, "the Pelasgi, as I know by

information which I got at Dodona, offered sacrifices of all kinds and

prayed to the gods, but had no distinct names and appellations for them,

since they had never heard of any. They called them gods (_theoi_)

because they had disposed and arranged all things in such a beautiful

order."[108]

The eternal Chon or Jonn of Etruria may be recognised Latinised in

Janus, the most ancient deity of Rome or _Jan_icula, and we may perhaps

find him not only in John of Cornwall but among the innumerable Jones of

Wales. The Ionians or Greeks of Ionia worshipped _Ione_, the Holy Dove,

whence they are said to have derived their title. In Greek, _ione_, in

Hebrew, _juneh_, means a _dove_, and the Scotch island of Iona is

indelibly permeated with stories and traditions of St. Columba or

Columbkille, the Little Dove of the Church. The dove was the immemorial

symbol of Rhea, and it is highly probable that it was originally

connected with the place-name Reculver, of which the root is unknown,

but "has been influenced by Old English _culfre_, _culver_, a culver

dove or wood pigeon".[109] In Cornwall there is a St. Columb Major and

St. Columb Minor, where the dedication is to a virgin of this name, and

on the coast of Thanet the shoal now called Columbine, considered in

conjunction with the neighbouring place-names Roas Bank and Rayham, may

be assumed to be connected with Rhea's sacred Columbine or Little Dove.

A neighbouring spit is marked Cheney Spit, and close at hand are Cheyney

Rocks. There is thus some probability that Great Cheyne Court, Little

Cheyne Court, Old Cheyne Court, New Cheyne Court, and the Kentish

surname Joynson have all relation to the mysterious ruin "Trojans or

Jews Hall".

[Illustration: FIG. 10.--From _Nineveh_ (Layard).]

[Illustration: FIG. 11.--From _The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria_

(Dennis, G.).]

Fig. 11 shows the Goddess of Etruria holding her symbolic _columba_, in

Fig. 10, the same emblem worshipped in Assyria is being carried with

pomp and circumstance, and Fig. 12 shows the columba, _tur_tle, or

_tor_tora, being similarly honoured in Western Europe.

"Throughout the Ægean," says Prof. Burrows, "we see traces of the Minoan

Empire, in one of the most permanent of all traditions the survival of a

place-name; the word Minoa, wherever it occurs, must mark a fortress or

trading station of the Great King as surely as the Alexandrias, or

Antiochs, or Cæsareas of later days."[110]

[Illustration: FIG. 12.--From _The Everyday Book_ (Hone, W.).]

If a modern place-name be valid evidence in the Mediterranean, the

place-name Minnis Bay between Margate and Reculver has presumably a

similar weight, particularly as a few miles further round the coast is a

so-called Minnis Rock. Here is an ancient hermitage consisting of a

three-mouthed cave measuring precisely 9 feet deep. King Minos of Crete

held his kingship on a tenure of nine years, and the number nine is

peculiarly identified with the idea of _Troy_, _true_, or permanent. In

Hebrew, truth and nine are represented by one and the same term, because

nine is so extraordinarily true or constant to itself, that 9 × 9 = 81 =

9, 9 × 2 = 18 = 9, and so from nine times one to nine times nine.

In Crete there were no temples, but worship was conducted around small

caves situated in the side of hills. This is precisely the position of

Minnis Rock which is situated in a valley running up from Hastings to

St. Helens. "It is," says the local guide-book, "one of the few rock

cells in the country, and though almost choked with earth and rubbish is

still worth inspection. The three square-headed openings were the

entrances to the separate chambers of the cave, which went back 9 feet

into the rock. It is surmised that the Hermitage was used as a chapel or

oratory, dedicated probably to St. Mary, or some other saint beloved of

those who go down to the sea in ships. Many such chapels existed in

olden times within sight and sound of the waves, and passing vessels

lowered their topsails to them in reverence. Torquay, Broadstairs,

Dover, Reculver, Whitby, and other places in England had similar

oratories."[111]

The Etruscans or Tyrrhenians believed in a Hierarchy of Nine Great Gods.

Minos of Crete was not merely one of a line of mighty sea-kings, but

Greek mythology asserts that Minos was the son of Zeus, _i.e._, Jonn or

Tarchon. In a subsequent chapter we shall consider him at length, but

meanwhile it may be noted that it is not unlikely that the whole of

Eastern Kent was known as Minster, Minosterre, or Minos Terra. There

are several Minsters in Sheppey, and another Minster together with a

Mansion near Margate. The generic terms _minster_ and _monastery_ may be

assigned to the ministers of Minos originally congregating in cells or

_trous_ or in groves under and around the oaks or other similarly sacred

trees.

Troy, or as Homer terms it, "sacred Troy," was pre-eminently a city of

_towers_, _tourelles_, _turrets_, or _tors_, and in the West of England

_tor_, as in Torquay, Torbay, etc., is ubiquitous. Tory Island, off the

coast of Ireland, is said to have derived its title from the numerous

torrs upon it. The same word is prevalent throughout Britain, but there

are no torrs at Sindry Island in Essex nor at _Tre_port in the English

Channel. In the Semitic languages _tzur_, meaning rock, is generally

supposed to be the root of Tyre, and in the Near East tor is a generic

term for mountain chain.

Speaking of princely Tyre, Ezekiel says, "Tarshish was thy merchant by

reason of the multitude of all kinds of riches; with silver, iron, tin,

and lead, they traded in thy fairs".[112] Tarshish is usually considered

to have been the western coast of the Mediterranean afterwards called

Gaul, in later times Spain and France, and undoubtedly the men of

Tarshish, Tyre, Troy, or Etruria, toured, trekked, travelled, tramped,

traded, and trafficked far and wide. Etrurian vases have been

disinterred in Tartary and also, it is said, from tumuli in Norway, yet

as Mrs. Hamilton Gray observes: "We believe that they were never made in

those countries, and that the Tartars and Norwegians never worshipped,

and possibly never even knew the names of the gods and heroes thereon

represented".[113] These vases more often than not depicted incidents

of Trojan legend, and of that famous Troy whose exploits in the words of

Virgil "fired the world".

The Tyrians conceived their chief god Hercules or Harokel as a bagman or

merchant, and in Phoenician the word _harokel_ meant merchant. Our own

term _merchant_[114] is etymologically akin to Mercury, the god of

merchants, and as _mere_ among other meanings meant pure or true, it is

not unlikely that _merchant_ was once the intellectual equivalent to

Tarchon or True John. In the West of England the adjective "jonnock"

still means true, straightforward, generous, unselfish, and

companionable.[115] The adjective _chein_ still used by Jews means very

much the same as _jonnock_, with, however, the additional sense of the

French _chic_. Jack is the diminutive endearing form of John, and the

Etruscan Joun is said to have been the Hebrew _Jack_ or _Iou_.[116] Joun

or his consort Jana was in all probability the divinity of the Etruscan

river Chiana, and Giant or Giantess Albion the divinity of the

neighbouring river Albinia.

Close to Market Jew or Marazion is a village called Chyandour, where is

a well named Gulfwell, meaning, we are told, the "Hebrew brook". It is

still a matter of dispute whether the Jews shipped their tin from

_Market_ Jew or overland from Thanet (_? Margate_[117]). From the word

_tariff_, a Spanish and Arabian term connected with Tarifa, the

southernmost town in Spain, it would seem that the dour and daring

traders who carried on their traffic with Market Jew and Margate toured

with a _tarifa_ or price-list. Doubtless the tariff charges were

commensurate with the risks involved, for only too frequently, as is

stated in the Psalms, "the ships of Tarshish were broken with an east

wind". To _try_ a boat means to-day to bring her head to the gale, and

in Somersetshire small ships are still entitled _trows_, a word

evidently akin to _trough_.

[Illustration: FIG. 13]

The Etruscans or Tyrrhenians represented Hercules the Great Merchant in

a kilt, and this seemingly was a _tar_tan or French _tiretaine_.

Speaking of certain figures unearthed at Tarchon, Dennis remarks: "The

drapery of the couches is particularly worthy of notice, being marked

with stripes of different colours crossing each other as in the Highland

plaid; and those who are learned in tartanology might possibly pronounce

which of the Macs has the strongest claim to an Etruscan origin".[118]

Fig. 13 reproduced from Mrs. Murray Aynsley's _Symbolism of the East and

West_, is taken from a fragment of pottery found in what is believed to

be a pre-Etruscan cemetery at Bologna in Italy. It might be a portrait

of Hendry or Sander bonneted in his glengarry, armed with a target, and

trekking off with two terriers. _Terre_, or _terra firma_, the earth, is

the same as _true_, meaning firm or constant. According to Skeat the

present form of the verb _tarry_ is due to _tarien_, _terien_, "to

irritate, provoke, worry, vex; hence to hinder, delay". Having "tarried"

an order there was, it may be, still further "tarrying" on presentation

of the tariff, and it may be assumed that the author of _The Odyssey_

had been personally "tarried" for he refers feelingly to--

A shrewd Phoenician, in all fraud adept,

Hungry, and who had num'rous harm'd before,

By whom I also was cajoled, and lured

T' attend him to Phoenicia, where his house

And his possessions lay; there I abode

A year complete his inmate; but (the days

And months accomplish'd of the rolling year

And the new seasons ent'ring on their course)

To Lybia then, on board his bark, by wiles

He won me with him, partner of the freight

Profess'd, but destin'd secretly to sale,

That he might profit largely by my price.

Not unsuspicious, yet constrain'd to go,

With this man I embark'd.

The hero of _The Odyssey_ was, self-confessedly, no tyro, but was

himself "in artifice well framed and in imposture various". Admittedly

he "utter'd prompt not truth, but figments to truth opposite, for guile

in him stood never at a pause".[119] Obviously he was a sailor to the

bone, and when he says, "I boast me sprung from ancestry renowned in

spacious Crete," with the additional statement that at one time he was

an Admiral of Crete, it is possible we are in face of a fragment of

genuine autobiography.

Doubtless, as our traditions state, the first adventurers on the sea

who reached these shores were oft-times _terrors_ and "the dread of

Europe". To the Tyrrhenes may probably be assigned the generic term

_tyrranos_ which, however, meant primarily not a tyrant as now

understood, but an autocrat or lord. "Clad in their long dress who could

equal them?" wondered a British Bard, and it may be that the long robes

figured herewith are the very moulds of form which created such a

powerful impression among our predecessors. The word _attire_ points to

the possibility that at one time Tyre set the fashions for the latest

_tire_, and like modern Paris fired the contemporary world of dress. In

connection with the word _dress_, which is radically _dre_, it is

noticeable that the Britons were conspicuously dressy men; indeed, Sir

John Rhys, discussing the term Briton, Breton, or Brython, seriously

maintains that "the only Celtic words which can be of the same origin

are the Welsh vocables _brethyn_, 'cloth and its congeners,' in which

case the Britons may have styled themselves 'cloth-clad,' in

contradistinction to the skin-wearing neolithic nation that preceded

them".

[Illustration: FIG. 14.--From _The Cities and Cemeteries of

Etruria_ (Dennis, G.).]

We know from Homer that the Trojans had a pretty taste in tweeds, and

that their waistcoats in particular were subjects of favourable

remark:--

The enter'd each a bath, and by the hands

Of maidens laved, and oil'd, and cloath'd again

With shaggy mantles, and _resplendent vests_,

Sat both enthroned at Menelaus' side.

Time does not alter the radical characteristics of any race, and

the outstanding qualities of the Britons--the traditional "remnant

of Droia," are still very much to-day what they were in the time of

Diodorus the Sicilian. "They are," said he, "of much sincerity and

integrity far from the craft and knavery of men among us."[120] So great

was the Trojan reputation for law and order that the Greeks who owed

their code of laws to Crete paid Minos the supreme compliment of making

him the Lord Chief Justice of the World of Shades. It will probably

prove that the _droits_, laws, rights, or dues of "Dieu et mon Droit"

are traceable to those of Troy, as also perhaps the _Triads_ or triple

axioms of the Drui or Druids. To put a man on trial was originally

perhaps to _try_ or test him at the sacred _tree_: the triadic form of

ancient maxims had doubtless some relation to the Persian Trinity of

Good Thought, Good Deed, Good Word, and these three virtues were

symbolised by the trefoil or shamrock. The Hebrew for law is _tora_ or

_thorah_, the Hill of _Tara_ in Ireland (middle-Irish, Temair), is

popularly associated with the trefoil symbol of the _Tri_nity (Welsh,

_Dri_ndod); that _three_, _trois_, or _drei_ was associated by the game

of Troy is obvious from Virgil's reference to the "_triple_ groups

dividing," and that the trefoil was venerated in Crete would appear from

Mr. Mackenzie's statement: "Of special interest, too, is a clover-leaf

ornament--an anticipation of the Irish devotion to the shamrock".[121]

The primitive _trysts_ were probably at the old Trysting Trees; _trust_

means reliability and credit and _truce_ means peace. Among rude nations

the men who carried with them Peace, Law, and Order must naturally have

been deemed supermen or gods, hence perhaps why in Scandinavia _Tyr_

meant _god_. Our Thursday is from Thor--a divinity who was sometimes

assigned _three_ eyes--and our Tuesday from Tyr, who was supposed to be

the Scandinavian Joupiter. The plural form of Tyr meant "glorious ones,"

and according to _The Edda_, not only were the Danes and Scandinavians

wanderers from Troy or Tyrkland, but Asgard itself--the Scandinavian

Paradise--preserved the old usages and customs brought from Troy.[122]

Homer by sidelights indicates that the Trojans were nice in their

domestic arrangements, took fastidious care of their attire, and were

confirmed lovers of fresh air. Thus Telemachus--

Open'd his broad chamber-valves, and sat

On his couch-side: then putting off his vest

Of softest texture, placed it in the hands

Of the attendant dame discrete, who first

Folding it with exactest care, beside

His bed suspended it, and, going forth,

Drew by its silver ring the portal close,

And fasten'd it with bolt and brace secure.

There lay Telemachus, on finest wool

Reposed, contemplating all night his course

Prescribed by Pallas to the Pylian shore.[123]

The word "Trojan" was used in Shakespeare's time to mean a boon

companion, a jonnock _tyro_, or a plucky fellow, and it is worthy of

note that the trusty lads of Homer's time passed, as does the Briton of

to-day, their liquor scrupulously from left to right:--

So spake Jove's daughter; they obedient heard.

The heralds, then, pour'd water on their hands,

And the attendant youths, filling the cups,

Served them from left to right.[124]

One of the most remarkable marvels of Cretan archæology is the

up-to-date drainage system, and that the Tyrrhenians were equally

particular is recorded apparently for all time by the Titanic evidence

of the still-standing Cloaca Maxima or great main drain of Rome.

The word Troy carries inevitable memories of Helen whose beauty was such

utter perfection that "the Helen of one's Troy" has become a phrase. The

name Helen is philologically allied to Helios the Sun, and is generally

interpreted to mean _torch_, _shiner_, or _giver of light_. The Greeks

called themselves Hellenes, after Hellen their eponymous divine leader.

Oriental nations termed the Hellenes, Iones, and there is little doubt

that Helen and Ione were originally synonymous. In Etruria was the city

of Hellana, and we shall meet St. Helen in Great Britain, from Helenium,

the old name for Land's End, to Great St. Helen's and Little St. Helen's

in London. St. Helen, the lone daughter of Old King Cole, the merry old

soul, figures in Wales and Cumberland as Elen the Leader of Hosts, whose

memory is preserved not only in Elaine the Lily Maid, but also in

connection with ancient roadways such as Elen's Road, and Elen's

Causeway. These, suggests Squire, "seem to show that the paths on which

armies marched were ascribed or dedicated to her".[125] Helen's name was

seemingly bestowed not only on our rivers, such as the Elen, Alone, or

Alne and Allan Water, but it likewise seems to have become the generic

term _lan_ meaning _holy enclosure_, entering into innumerable

place-names--London[126] among others--which will be discussed in

course. The character in which Helen was esteemed may be judged from

the Welsh adjective _alain_, which means "exceeding fair, lovely,

bright". Not only in Wales but also in Ireland _Allen_ seems to have

been synonymous with beauty, whence the authorities translate the

place-name Derryallen to mean _oakwood beautiful_. In Arthurian romance

Elaine or Elen figures as the sister of Sir Tirre,[127] as the builder

of the highest fortress in Arvon, and as sitting _lone_ or _alone_ in a

sea-girt castle on a throne of ruddy gold. It is said that so

transcendent was her beauty that it would be no more easy to look into

her face than to gaze at the sun when his rays were most irresistible.

It would thus seem that Howel, said to be Elen's brother, may be equated

with _hoel_, the Celtic for _Sun_, and that Elen herself, like Diana,

was the glorious twin-sister of Helios or Apollo.

The principal relics of St. Helena are possessed by the city of

_Treves_, and at _Therapne_ in Greece there was a special sanctuary of

Helena the divinely fair daughter of Zeus and a swan. "Troy weight," so

called, originated, it is supposed, from the droits or standards of a

famous fair held at Troyes in France.

From time immemorial Crete seems to have been associated with the symbol

of the cross. This pre-Christian Cross of Crete was the equi-limbed

Cross of St. John (Irish Shane) which form is also the Red Cross of St.

George. In earlier times this cross was termed the Jack--a familiar form

of "the John"--and it was also entitled "the Christopher". In India the

cave temple of Madura, where Kristna[128]-worship is predominant, is

cruciform, and the svastika or solar cross, a variant of John's Cross,

is in one of its Indian forms known as the _Jaina_ cross and the

talisman of the _Jaina_ kings.

"It must never be forgotten," said a prince of the Anglican Church

preaching recently at St. Paul's, "that the cross was primarily an

instrument of torture." Among a certain school, who in Apostolic phrase

deem themselves of all men most miserable, this conception is firmly

fixed and seemingly it ever has been. It was Calvinistic doctrine that

all pain and suffering came from the All Father, and that all pleasure

and joy originated from the Evil One. Thus to Christianity the Latin

Cross has been the symbol of misery and the concrete conception of

Christian Ideal is the agonised Face of the Old Masters. This dismal

verity was exemplified afresh by the melancholy poster which was

recently scattered broadcast over England by the National Mission

engineered by the Bishop of London. Even the Mexican cross, consisting

of four hearts _vis a vis_ (Fig. D)--a form which occurs sometimes in

Europe--has been daubed with imaginary gore, and with reference to this

inoffensive emblem the author of _The Cross: Heathen and Christian_

complacently writes: "The lady to whom I have just alluded considers

(and I think with great propriety) that the circle of crosses formed by

groups of four hearts represents hearts sacrificed to the gods; the dot

on each signifying blood".[2]

[Illustration: A. EARLY CELTIC ISLE OF MAN AND IRELAND EARLY CELTIC

BRITTANY CALLERNISH, HEBRIDES, restored (380 feet in

length.)

B. ETRURIA B.

C. CRETE

D. MEXICO

E. MEXICO

FIG. 15.--From _The Cross: Heathen and Christian_

(Brock, M.).]

But we shall meet with these same dots on prehistoric British

cross-coins as also on the "spindle whorls" of the most ancient Troy,

and it will be seen that, apart from the word _svastika_ which

intrinsically means _it is well_, the svastika or pre-Christian cross

was an emblem not of Melancholia but Joy. The English word _joy_ and the

French word _jeu_ have, I think, been derived from _Jou_, just as jovial

is traceable from Jove, and _joc_und to Jock or Jack. Pagans were the

children of Joy and worshipped with a joyful noise before the Lord, and

with sacred _jeux_ or games. The word _cross_ is in all probability the

same as _charis_ which means _charity_, and akin to _chrestos_ which

means good. Cres, the son of Jou, after whom the Cretans were termed

Eteocretes, is an elementary form of Christopher, and the burning cross

with which the legends state Christopher was tortured by being branded

on the brow was more probably the Christofer or Jack--the Fiery Cross,

with which irresistible talisman the clansmen of Albany were summoned

together. Similarly the solar wheel of Katherine or The Pure One was

supposed by the mediæval monks--whose minds were permanently bent on

melancholia and torture--to have been some frightful implement of knives

and spikes by which Kate or Kitt, the Pure Maiden, was torn into pieces.

It will be seen in due course that almost every single "torture" sign of

the supposed martyrs was in reality the pre-Christian emblem of some

pagan divinity whence the saintly legends were ignorantly and mistakenly

evolved.

When the Saxon monks came into power, in the manner characteristic of

their race, they "tarried" the old British monasteries and sacred

mounds, bringing to light many curious and extraordinary things. At St.

Albans they overthrew and filled up all the subterranean crypts of the

ancient city as well as certain labyrinthine passages which extended

even under the bed of the river. The most world-famous labyrinth was

that at Gnossus which has not yet been uncovered, but every Etrurian

place of any import had its accompanying catacombs, and in the chapter

on "Dene holes" we shall direct attention to corresponding labyrinths

which remain intact in England even to-day.

When pillaging at St. Albans the Saxons found not only anchors, oars,

and parts of ships, imputing that St. Albans was once a port, but they

also uncovered the foundations of "a vast palace". "Here," says

Wright,[129] "they found a hollow in the wall like a cupboard in which

were a number of books and rolls, which were written in ancient

characters and language that could only be read by one learned monk

named Unwona. He declared that they were written in the ancient British

language, that they contained 'the invocations and rites of the

idolatrous citizens of Waertamceaster,' with the exception of one which

contained the authentic life of St. Albans." And as the Abbot before

mentioned "diligently turned up the earth" where the ruins of Verulamium

appeared, he found many other interesting things--pots and amphoras

elegantly formed of pottery turned on the lathe, glass vessels, ruins of

temples, altars overturned, idols, and various kinds of coins.

Many of the jewels and idols then uncovered remained long in the

possession of the Abbey, and are scheduled in the Ecclesiastical

inventories together with a memorandum of the human weaknesses against

which each object was supposed to possess a talismanic value. Thus

Pegasus or Bellerophon is noted as food for warriors, giving them

boldness and swiftness in flight; Andromeda as affording power of

conciliating love between man and woman; Hercules slaying a lion, as a

singular defence to combatants. The figure of Mercury on a gem rendered

the possessor wise and persuasive; a dog and a lion on the same stone

was a sovereign remedy against dropsy and the pestilence; and so on and

so forth.

"I am convinced," says Wright, "that a large portion of the reliques of

saints shown in the Middle Ages, were taken from the barrows or graves

of the early population of the countries in which they were shown. It

was well understood that those mounds were of a sepulchral character,

and there were probably few of them which had not a legend attached.

When the earlier Christian missionaries and the later monks of Western

Europe wished to consecrate a site their imagination easily converted

the tenant of the lonely mound into a primitive saint--the tumulus was

ransacked and the bones were found--and the monastery or even a

cathedral was erected over the site which had been consecrated by the

mystics rites of an earlier age."[130] After purification by a special

form of exorcism the pagan pictures were accepted into Christian

service, the designs being construed into Christian doctrines far from

the purpose of the things themselves.

[Illustration: FIG. 16.--"Kaadman." From _Essays on Archæological

Subjects_ (Wright, T.).]

Among the monkish loot at St. Albans was an ancient cameo herewith

reproduced. This particular jewel was supposed to be of great efficacy

and was entitled _Kaadman_; "perhaps," suggests Wright, "another mode of

spelling _cadmeus_ or _cameus_". But in view of the fact that Alban

means _all good_, it was more probably the picture of a sacred figure

which the natives recognised as the original Kaadman, _i.e., Guidman_ or

the Good Man.[131] The jewels found at St. Albans being unquestionably

Gnostic it is quite within the bounds of probability that the Kaadman

seal was an "idol" of what the Gnostics entitled Adam Caedmon or Adam

Kadman. According to C. W. King the Adam Kadman or Primitive Man of

Gnosticism, was the generative and conceptive principle of life and

heat, Who manifested Himself in ten emanations or types of all

creation.[132] In Irish _cad_ means _holy_; _good_ and _cad_ are the

same word, whence Kaadman and the surnames Cadman and Goodman were

probably once one. The word Albon or Albion means as it stands _all

good_, or _all well_, and the river Beane, like the river Boyne--over

whom presided the beneficent goddess Boanna--means _bien_, good, or

_bene_ well. The Herefordshire Beane was alternatively known as the

river _Beneficia_, a name which to the modern etymologer working on

standard lines confessedly "yields a curious conundrum".[133]

The Anglo-Saxon Abbot of St. Albans after having assured himself that

the idolatrous books before-mentioned proved that the pagan British

worshipped Phoebus, and Mercury consigned them to the flames with the

same self-complacency as the Monk Patrick burnt 180--some say 300--MSS.

relative to the Irish Druids. These being deemed "unfit to be

transmitted to posterity," posterity is proportionately the poorer.

Phoebus was the British Heol, Howel, or the Sun, and Mercury, was, as

Cæsar said, the Hercules of Britain. The snake-encircled club of Kaadman

is the equivalent to the caduceus or snake-twined rod of Mercury; the

human image in the hand of Kaadman implies with some probability that

"Kaadman" was the All Father or the Maker of Mankind. We shall see

subsequently that the Maker of All was personified as Michael or Mickle,

and that St. Mickle and All Angels or All Saints stood for the Great

Muckle leading the Mickle--"many a mickel makes a muckle". St. Michael

is the patron saint of Gorhambury, a suburb of St. Albans, and in

Christian Art St. Michæl is almost invariably represented with the

scales and other attributes of Anubis, the Mercury of Egypt. Both Anubis

of Egypt and Mercury of Rome were connected with the dog, and Anubis was

generally represented with the head of a dog or jackal. In _The Gnostics

and their Remains_, King illustrates on plate F a dog or jackal-headed

man which is subscribed with the name MICHAH, and it is probable the

word _make_ is closely associated with Micah or Mike.

[Illustration: ANUBIS. FIG. 17.]

[Illustration: FIG. 18.--From _An Essay on Ancient Coins, Medals,

and Gems_ (Walsh, R.).]

Eastern tradition states that St. Christopher, or St. Kit, was a

Canaanitish giant, 12 feet in stature, having the head of a dog. The

kilted figure represented in the Gnostic cameo here illustrated, is

seemingly that same Kitman, or Kaadman, Bandog, or Good Dog, and

_chien_, the French for dog, Irish _chuyn_, may be equated with _geon_,

_geant_, or _giant_. The worship of the _chien_ was carried in the Near

East to such a pitch that a great city named Cynopolis or Dog-Town

existed in its honour. The priests of Cynopolis, who maintained a golden

image of their divine _kuon_ or _chien_, termed themselves Kuons, and

these _kuons_ or dog-ministers were, according to some authorities, the

original Cohen family. A beautiful relievo of Adonis and his dog has

been unearthed at Albano in Etruria; Fig. 13 is accompanied by

bandogs(?); Albania in Asia Minor is mentioned by Maundeville as

abounding in fierce dogs, and in Albion, where we still retain memories

of the Dog Days, it will be shown to be probable that sacred dogs were

maintained near London at the mysteriously named Isle of Dogs. Until the

past fifty years the traditions of this island at Barking were so

uncanny that the site remained inviolate and unbuilt over. Whence, I

think, it may originally have been a _kennel_ or _Cynopolis_, where the

_kuons_ of the Cantians or Candians were religiously maintained.[134]

We shall deal more fully with the cult and symbolism of the dog in a

future chapter entitled "The Hound of Heaven". Not only in England, but

also in Ireland, place-names having reference to the dog are so

persistent that Sir J. Rhys surmised the dog was originally a totem in

that country.

In connection with _chuyn_, the Irish for dog, it may be noted that one

of the titles of St. Patrick--whence all Irishmen are known as

Paddies--was Taljean or Talchon, and moreover that Crete was

alternatively known to the ancients as Telchinea. In Cornish and in

Welsh _tal_ meant high; in old English it meant valiant, whence

Shakespeare says, "Thou'rt a _tall_ fellow"; in the Mediterranean the

Maltese _twil_; Arabic _twil_ meant _tall_ and hence we may conclude

that the present predominant meaning of our _tall_ was once far spread,

Talchon meaning either _tall geon_ or _tall chein_, _i.e._, dog-headed

giant Christopher.

The outer inscription around Fig. 18 is described as "altogether

barbarous and obscure," but as far as can be deciphered the remaining

words--"a corruption of Hebrew and Greek--signify 'the sun or star has

shone'".[135] I have already suggested a connection between _John_,

_geon_, _chien_, _shine_, _shone_, _sheen_, and _sun_.

It is probable that not only the literature of the saints but also many

of the national traditions of our own and other lands arose from the

misinterpretation of the symbolic signs and figures which preceded

writing. The "diabolical idols" of Britain, as Gildas admitted, far

exceeded those in Egypt; similarly in Crete, the fantastic hieroglyphics

not yet read or understood far out-Egypted Egypt. The Christian Fathers

fell foul with Gnostic philosophers for the supposed insult of

representing Christ on the Cross with the head of an ass; but it is

quite likely that the Gnostic intention--the ass being the symbol of

meekness--was to portray Christ's meekness, and that no insult was

intended. A notable instance of the way in which ignorant and facetious

aliens misconstrued the meaning of national or tribal emblems has been

preserved in the dialogue of a globe-trotting Greek who lived in the

second century of the present era. The incident, as self-recorded by the

chatty but unintelligent Greek, is Englished by Sir John Rhys as

follows: "The Celts call Heracles in the language of their country

Ogmios, and they make very strange representations of the god. With them

he is an extremely old man, with a bald forehead and his few remaining

hairs quite grey; his skin is wrinkled and embrowned by the sun to that

degree of swarthiness which is characteristic of men who have grown old

in a seafaring life: in fact, you would fancy him rather to be a Charon

or Japetus, one of the dwellers in Tartarus, or anybody rather than

Heracles. But although he is of this description he is, nevertheless,

attired like Heracles, for he has on him the lion's skin, and he has a

club in his right hand; he is duly equipped with a quiver, and his left

hand displays a bow stretched out: in these respects he is quite

Heracles. It struck me, then, that the Celts took such liberties with

the appearance of Heracles in order to insult the gods of the Greeks and

avenge themselves on him in their painting, because he once made a raid

on their territory, when in search of the herds of Geryon he harrassed

most of the western peoples. I have not, however, mentioned the most

whimsical part of the picture, for this old man Heracles draws after him

a great number of men bound by their ears, and the bonds are slender

cords wrought of gold and amber, like necklaces of the most beautiful

make; and although they are dragged on by such weak ties, they never try

to run away, though they could easily do it: nor do they at all resist

or struggle against them, planting their feet in the ground and throwing

their weight back in the direction contrary to that in which they are

being led. Quite the reverse: they follow with joyful countenance in a

merry mood, and praising him who leads them pressing on one and all, and

slackening their chains in their eagerness to proceed: in fact, they

look like men who would be grieved should they be set free. But that

which seemed to me the most absurd thing of all I will not hesitate also

to tell you: the painter, you see, had nowhere to fix the ends of the

cords, since the right hand of the god held the club and his left the

bow; so he pierced the tip of his tongue, and represented the people as

drawn on from it, and the god turns a smiling countenance towards those

whom he is leading. Now I stood a long time looking at these things, and

wondered, perplexed and indignant. But a certain Celt standing by, who

knew something about our ways, as he showed by speaking good Greek--a

man who was quite a philosopher, I take it, in local matters--said to

me, 'Stranger, I will tell you the secret of the painting, for you seem

very much troubled about it. We Celts do not consider the power of

speech to be Hermes, as you Greeks do, but we represent it by means of

Heracles, because he is much stronger than Hermes. Nor should you wonder

at his being represented as an old man, for the power of words is wont

to show its perfection in the aged; for your poets are no doubt right

when they say that the thoughts of young men turn with every wind, and

that age has something wiser to tell us than youth. And so it is that

honey pours from the tongue of that Nestor of yours, and the Trojan

orators speak with one voice of the delicacy of the lily, a voice well

covered, so to say, with bloom; for the bloom of flowers, if my memory

does not fail me, has the term lilies applied to it. So if this old man

Heracles, by the power of speech, draws men after him, tied to his

tongue by their ears, you have no reason to wonder, as you must be aware

of the close connection between the ears and the tongue. Nor is there

any injury done him by this latter being pierced; for I remember, said

he, learning while among you some comic iambics, to the effect that all

chattering fellows have the tongue bored at the tip. In a word, we Celts

are of opinion that Heracles himself performed everything by the power

of words, as he was a wise fellow, and that most of his compulsion was

effected by persuasion. His weapons, I take it, are his utterances,

which are sharp and well-aimed, swift to pierce the mind; and you too

say that words have wings.' Thus far the Celt."[136]

The moral of this incident may be applied to the svastika cross, an

ubiquitous symbol or trade-mark which Andrew Lang surmised might after

all have merely been "a bit of natural ornament". The sign of the cross

will be more fully considered subsequently, but meanwhile one may regard

the svastika as the trade-mark of Troy. The Cornish for _cross_ was

_treus_, and among the ancients the cross was the symbol of truce.[137]

The Sanscrit name _svastika_ is composed of _su_, meaning soft, gentle,

pleasing, or propitious, and _asti_ (Greek _esto_), meaning _being_. It

was universally the symbol of the Good Being or St. Albion, or St. All

Well; it retains its meaning in its name, and was the counterpart to the

Dove which symbolisms Innocence, Peace, Simplicity, and Goodwill. There

is no doubt that the two emblems were the insignia of the prehistoric

Giants, Titans, or followers of the Good Sun or Shine, or Sunshine, men

who trekked from one or several centres, to India, Tartary, China, and

Japan. Moreover, these trekkers whom we shall trace in America and

Polynesia, were seafaring and not overland folk, otherwise we should not

find the Cyclopean buildings with their concomitant symbols in Africa,

Mexico, Peru, and the islands of the Pacific.

The svastika in its simpler form is the cross of St. Andrew, Scotch

Hender or Hendrie. In British the epithet _hen_ meant _old_ or

_ancient_, so that the cross of _Hen drie_ is verbally the cross of old

or ancient Drew, Droia, or Troy. This is also historically true, for

the svastika has been found under the ruins of the ten or dozen Troys

which occupy the immemorial site near Smyrna.

Our legends state that Bru or Brut, after tarrying awhile at Alba in

Etruria, travelled by sea into Gaul, where he founded the city of Tours.

Thence after sundry bickers with the Gauls he passed onward into Britain

which acquired its name from Brute, its first Duke or Leader. We shall

connote Britannia, whose first official portraits are here given, with

the Cretan Goddess Britomart, which meant in Greek "sweet maiden". One

of these Britannia figures has her finger to her lips, or head, in

seemingly the same attitude as the consort of the Giant Dog, and the

interpretation is probably identical with that placed by Dr. Walsh upon

that gnostic jewel. "Among the Egyptians," he says, "it was deemed

impossible to worship the deity in a manner worthy by words, adopting

the sentiments of Plato--that it was difficult to find the nature of the

Maker and Father of the Universe, or to convey an idea of him to the

people by a verbal description--and they imagined therefore the deity

Harpocrates who presided over silence and was always represented as

inculcating it by holding his finger on his lips". We know from Cæsar

that secrecy was a predominant feature of the Drui or Druidic system,

and for this custom the reasons are thus given in a Bardic triad: "The

Three necessary but reluctant duties of the bards of the Isle of

Britain: Secrecy, for the sake of peace and the public good; invective

lamentation demanded by justice; and the unsheathing of the sword

against the lawless and the predatory".

Britain is in Welsh Prydain, and, according to some Welsh scholars, the

root of Prydain is discovered in the epithet _pryd_, which signifies

_precious_, _dear_, _fair_, or _beautiful_. This, assumed Thomas, "was

at a very early date accepted as a surname in the British royal family

of the island".[138] I think this Welsh scholar was right and that not

only Britomart the "sweet maiden," but also St. Bride, "the Mary of the

Gael," were the archetypes of Britannia; St. Bride is alternatively St.

Brighit, whence, in all probability, the adjective _bright_. At

Brightlingsea in Essex is a Sindry or _Sin derry_ island(?); in the West

of England many villages have a so-called 'sentry field,' and

undoubtedly these were originally the saintuaries, centres, and

sanctuaries of the districts. To take sentry meant originally to seek

refuge, and the primary meaning of _terrible_ was _sacred_. Thus we find

even in mediæval times, Westminster alluded to by monkish writers as a

_locus terribilis_ or sacred place. The moots or courts at Brightlingsea

were known as Brodhulls, whence it would appear that the Moothill or

Toothill of elsewhere was known occasionally as a Brod or Brutus Hill.

Some of the Britannias on page 120 have the aspect of young men rather

than maidens, and there is no doubt that Brut was regarded as

androginous or indeterminately as youth or maiden. We shall trace him or

her at Broadstairs, a corruption of Bridestow, at Bradwell, at Bradport,

at Bridlington, and in very many more directions. From Pryd come

probably the words _pride_, _prude_, and _proud_, and in the opinion of

our neighbours these qualities are among our national defects. Claiming

a proud descent we are admittedly a _dour_ people, and our neighbours

deem us _triste_, yet, nevertheless trustworthy, and inclined to truce.

[Illustration: FIG. 19.--From _An Essay on Medals_ (Pinkerton, J.).]

On the shield of one of the first Britannias is a bull's head, whence

it may be assumed the bull was anciently as nowadays associated with

John Bull. At British festivals our predecessors used to antic in the

guise of a bull, and the bull-headed actor was entitled "The Broad". The

bull was intimately connected with Crete; Britomart was the Lady of All

Creatures, and seemingly the _brutes_ in general were named either after

her or Brut. The British word for bull was _tarw_, the Spanish is

_toro_; in Etruria we find the City of Turin or Torino using as its

cognisance a rampant bull; and I have little doubt that the fabulous

Minotaur was a physical brute actually maintained in the terrible

recesses of some yet-to-be-discovered labyrinth. The subterranean

mausoleums of the Sacred Bulls of Egypt are among the greatest of the

great monuments of that country; the bull-fights of Spain were almost

without doubt the direct descendants of sacred festivals, wherein the

slaying of the Mithraic Bull was dramatically presented, but in Crete

itself the bull-fights seem to have been amicable gymnastic games

wherein the most marvellous feats of agility were displayed.

Illustrations of these graceful and intrepid performances are still

extant on Cretan frieze and vase, the colours being as fresh to-day as

when laid on 3000 years ago.

In Britain the national sport seems to have been bull-baiting, and the

dogs associated with that pastime presumably were bull-dogs. Doggedness

is one of the ingrained qualities of our race; of recent years the

bull-dog has been promoted into symbolic evidence of our tenacity and

doggedness. Our mariners are sea-_dogs_, and the modern bards vouch us

to be in general boys of the bull-dog breed. The mascot bull-dogs in the

shops at this moment serve the same end as the mascot emblems and

mysterious hieroglyphics of the ancients, and the Egyptian who carried

a scarabæus or an Eye of Horus, acted without doubt from the same

simple, homely impulse as drives the modern Englishman to hang up the

picture of a repulsive animal subscribed, "What we have we'll hold".

The prehistoric dog or jackal symbolised not tenacity or courage, but

the maker of tracks, for the well-authenticated reason that dogs were

considered the best guides to practicable courses in the wilderness.

Bull-headed men and dog-headed men are represented constantly in Cretan

Art, and these in all likelihood symbolised the primeval bull-dogs who

trekked into so many of the wild and trackless places of the world.

The Welsh have a saying, "Tra Mor, Tra Brython," which means, "as long

as there is sea so long will there be Britons". Centuries ago, Diodorus

of Sicily mentioned the Kelts as "having an immemorial taste for foreign

expeditions and adventurous wars, and he goes on to describe them as

'irritable, prompt to fight, in other respects simple and guileless,'

thus, according with Strabo, who sums up the Celtic temperament as being

simple and spontaneous, willingly taking in hand the cause of the

oppressed".[139]

Diodorus also mentions the Kelts as clothed sometimes "in tissues of

variegated colours," which calls to mind the tartans of the Alban

McAlpines, Ians, Jocks, Sanders, Hendries, and others of that ilk.

The dictionaries define the name Andrew as meaning _a man_, whence

_androgynous_ and _anthropology_; in Cornish _antrou_ meant _lord_ or

_master_, and these early McAndrews were doubtless masterly, tyrannical,

dour, derring-doers, inconceivably daring in der-doing. To _try_ means

make an effort, and we speak proverbially of "working like a Trojan".

The corollary is that tired feeling which must have sorely tried the

tyros or young recruits. After daring and trying and tiring, these dour

men eventually turned _adre_, which is Cornish for _homeward_. Whether

their hearts were turned Troy-ward in the _Ægean_ or to some small

unsung British _tre_ or Troynovant, who can tell? "I am now in Jerusalem

where Christ was born," wrote a modern argonaut to his mother, but, he

added, "I wish I were in Wigan where I was born."

FOOTNOTES:

[86] Taylor, Rev. T., _The Celtic Christianity of Cornwall_, p.

27.

[87] Morris-Jones, Sir J., _Y. Cymmrodor_, xxvii., p. 240.

[88] Margoliouth, M., _The Jews in Great Britain_, p. 33.

[89] As bearing upon this statement I reprint in the Appendix to

the present volume a very remarkable extract from _Britain

and the Gael_ (Wm. Beal), 1860.

[90] Wilkes, Anna, _Ireland: Ur of the Chaldees_, p. 6.

[91] Introduction to Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_ (Everyman's

Library).

[92] Plutarch, _De Defectu Oraculorum_, xvii.

[93] Eckenstein, L., _Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes_, p. 70.

[94] Clodd, E., _Tom Tit Tot_, p. 131.

[95] Mackenzie, D. A., _Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe_,

p. 326.

[96] _Cf._ Poste, B., _Britannic Researches_, p. 220.

[97] _Y Cymmrodor_, xxviii.

[98] Triad 4.

[99] "The notion that the Albanian is a mere mixture of Greek and

Turkish has long been superseded by the conviction that

though mixed it is essentially a separate language. The

doctrine also that it is of recent introduction into Europe

has been similarly abandoned. There is every reason for

believing that as Thunmann suggested, it was, at dawn of

history, spoken in the countries where it is spoken at the

present moment."--Latham, R. G., _Varieties of Man_, p. 552.

[100] Rhys, J., _Celtic Britain_.

[101] The same root may be behind _deruish_ or _dervish_.

[102] Gordon, E. O., _Prehistoric London_, p. 127.

[103] Virgil, _Æneid_, 79, 80, 81.

[104] _Cornish Feasts and Folklore_, p. 119.

[105] Malory, viii.

[106] I question the current supposition that this is a corruption

of _chy an woon_ or "house on the hill".

[107] Beal, W., _Britain and the Gael_, p. 22.

[108] Herodotus, 11, 52.

[109] Johnston, J. B., _Place-names of England and Wales_, p. 413.

[110] Burrows, R. M., _The Discoveries in Crete_, p. 11.

[111] _Hastings_ (Ward Lock & Co.), p. 63.

[112] xxvii. 12.

[113] _Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria_, p. 9.

[114] From _mercari_, to trade (Skeat).

[115] _Jonnock_ is probably cognate with _yankee_, which was in old

times used in the New England States as an adjective meaning

"excellent," "first-class". Thus, a "yankee" horse would be a

first-class horse, just as we talk of English beef and other

things English, meaning that they are the best. Another

explanation of _yankee_ is that when the Pilgrim Fathers

landed at Plymouth Rock, near Massachusetts Bay, in 1620,

they were met on the shore by native Indians who called them

"Yangees"--meaning "white man"--and the term was finally

completed into "Yankees".

[116] Taylor, Rev. R., _Diegesis_, p. 158.

[117] The remarkable serpentine, shell-mosaiked shrine, known as

Margate Grotto, is discussed in chap. xiii.

[118] i., 367.

[119] _Odyssey_, Book IV.

[120] _Cf._ Smith, G., _Religion of Ancient Britain_, p. 65.

[121] _Myths of Crete and Prehistoric Europe_, p. 239.

[122] Rydberg, V., _Teutonic Mythology_, pp. 22-36.

[123] _Odyssey_, Book I.

[124] _Ibid._, Book III.

[125] _The Myth of Br. Islands_, p. 324.

[126] The current idea that London was _Llyn din_, the _Lake town_,

has been knocked on the head since it has been "proved that

the lake which was described so picturesquely by J. R. Green

did not exist". _Cf._ Rice Holmes, _Ancient Britain_, p. 704.

[127] Lon_dres_, the Gaulish form of London, implies that the

radical was _Lon_--and perhaps further, that London was a

_holy enclosure dun or derry_ where _luna_, the moon, was

worshipped. There is a persistent tradition that St. Paul's,

standing on the summit of Ludgate Hill or dun, occupies the

site of a more ancient shrine dedicated to Diana, _i.e._,

Luna.

[128] This name will subsequently be traced to Cres, the son of

Jupiter, to whom the Cretans assigned their origin.

[129] Wright, T., _Essays on Archæological Subjects_, vol. i., p.

273.

[130] Wright, T., _Essays on Archæological Subjects_, vol. i., p.

283.

[131] In Albany the memory of "the gudeman" lingered until late,

and according to Scott: "In many parishes of Scotland there

was suffered to exist a certain portion of land, called _the

gudeman's croft_, which was never ploughed or cultivated, but

suffered to remain waste, like the _Temenos_ of a pagan

temple. Though it was not expressly avowed, no one doubted

that 'the goodman's croft' was set apart for some evil being;

in fact, that it was the portion of the arch-fiend himself,

whom our ancestors distinguished by a name which, while it

was generally understood, could not, it was supposed, be

offensive to the stern inhabitant of the regions of despair.

This was so general a custom that the Church published an

ordinance against it as an impious and blasphemous usage.

"This singular custom sunk before the efforts of the clergy

in the seventeenth century; but there must still be many alive

who, in childhood, have been taught to look with wonder on

knolls and patches of ground left uncultivated, because,

whenever a ploughshare entered the soil, the elementary spirits

were supposed to testify their displeasure by storm and

thunder," _Demonology and Witchcraft._

[132] These Sources of Life or vessels of Almighty Power were

described as Crown, Wisdom, Prudence, Magnificence, Severity,

Beauty, Victory, Glory, Foundation, Empire. _Cf._ King, C.

W., _The Gnostics and their Remains_, p. 34.

[133] Johnston, Rev. J. B., _Place-names of England and Wales_.

[134] "The origin of the name is quite unknown to history....

Possibly because so many dogs were drowned in the Thames

here."--Johnston, Rev. J. B., _Place-names of England_, p.

321.

[135] Walsh, R., _An Essay on Ancient Coins, Medals, and Gems_, p.

58.

[136] Rhys, Sir J., _Celtic Heathendom_, pp. 14-16.

[137] British children still cross their forefingers as a sign of

_treus_, _pax_, or _fainits_.

[138] _Britannia Antiquissima_, p. 4.

[139] _Cf._ Thomas, J. J., _Britannia Antiquissima_, pp. 84, 85.

CHAPTER IV

ALBION

"The Anglo-Saxons, down to a late period, retained the heathenish

Yule, as all Teutonic Christians did the sanctity of Easter-tide;

and from these two, the Yule-boar and Yule-bread, the Easter

pancake, Easter sword, Easter fire, and Easter dance could not be

separated. As faithfully were perpetuated the name and, in many

cases, the observances of midsummer. New Christian feasts,

especially of saints, seem purposely as well as accidentally to

have been made to fall on heathen holidays. Churches often rose

precisely where a heathen god or his sacred tree had been pulled

down; and the people trod their old paths to the accustomed site:

sometimes the very walls of the heathen temple became those of the

church; and cases occur in which idol-images still found a place in

a wall of the porch, or were set up outside the door, as at Bamberg

Cathedral where lie Sclavic-heathen figures of animals inscribed

with runes."--GRIMM.

Our Chronicles state that when Brute and his companions reached these

shores, "at that time the name of the island was Albion". According to

tradition Alba, Albion, or Alban, whence the place-name Albion, was a

fairy giant, but this, in the eyes of current scholarship, is a fallacy,

and _alba_ is merely an adjective meaning _white_, whence wherever met

with it is so translated. But because there happens to be a relatively

small tract of white cliffs in the neighbourhood of Dover, it is a

barren stretch of imagination to suppose that all Britain thence derived

its prehistoric title, and in any case the question--why did _alba_ mean

white?--would remain unanswered. The Highlanders of Scotland still speak

of their country as Albany or Alban; the national cry of Scotland was

evidently at one time "Albani," and even as late as 1138, "the army of

the Scots with one voice vociferated their native distinction, and the

shout of Albani! Albani! ascended even to the heavens".[140]

Not only by the Romans but likewise by the Greeks, Britain was known as

Albion, and one may therefore conjecture that the white-cliff theory is

an unsound fancy.

Strabo alludes to a certain district generally supposed to be Land's

End, under the name "Kalbion,"[141] a word manifestly having some

radical relation to "Albion". By an application of the comparative

method to place-names and proper-names, I arrived several years ago at

the seemingly only logical conclusion that in many directions _ak_ and

its variants meant _great_ or _mighty_. On every hand there is

presumptive evidence of this fact, and I have since found that Bryant

and also Faber, working by wholly independent methods, reached a very

similar conclusion. My _modus operandi_, with many of its results,

having been already published,[142] it is unnecessary here to restate

them, and I shall confine myself to new and corroborative evidence.

In addition to _great_ or _mighty_ it is clear that the radical in

question meant _high_. The German trisagion of _hoch! hoch! hoch!_ is

still equivalent to the English _high! high! high!_ the Swedish for

_high_ is _hog_, the Dutch is _oog_, and in Welsh or British _high_ is

_uch_. It is presumably a trace of the gutteral _ch_ that remains in our

modern spelling of _high_ with a _gh_ now mute, but the primordial Welsh

_uch_ has also become the English _ok_, as in Devonshire where _Ok_ment

Hill is said to be the Anglicised form of _uch mynydd_, the Welsh or

British for _high_ hill. I shall, thus, in this volume treat the

syllable _'k_ or _'g_ as carrying the predominant and apparently more

British meaning of _high_. That the sounds 'g and 'k were invariably

commutable may be inferred from innumerable place-names such as

_Og_bourne St. Andrew, alternatively printed _Oke_bourne, and that the

same mutability applies to words in general might be instanced from any

random page of Dr. Murray's _New English Dictionary_. We may thus assume

that "Kalbion," meant Great Albion or High Albion, and it remains to

analyse Alba or Albion.

B and P being interchangeable, the _ba_ of _Alba_ is the same word as

_pa_, which, according to Max Müller, meant primarily _feeder_; _papa_

is in Turkish _baba_, and in Mexico also _ba_ meant the same as our

infantile _pa_, _i.e._, feeder or father. In _paab_, the British for

_pope_, one _p_ has become _b_ the other has remained constant.

The inevitable interchange of _p_ and _b_ is conspicuously evident in

the place-name--Battersea, alternatively known as Patrickseye, and on

that little _ea_, _eye_, or _eyot_ in the Thames at one time, probably,

clustered the padres or paters who ministered to the church of St.

Peter--the architypal Pater--whose shrine is now Westminster Abbey.

It is a custom of children to express their superlatives by

duplications, such as _pretty pretty_, and in the childhood[143] of the

world this habit was seemingly universal. Thus _pa_, the Aryan root

meaning primarily _feeder_, has been duplicated into _papa_, which is

the same word as _pope_, defined as indicating the father of a church.

In A.D. 600 the British Hierarchy protested against the claims of the

"paab" of Rome to be considered "the Father of Fathers,"[144] and there

is little doubt that Pope is literally _pa-pa_ or _Father Father_. In

Stow's time there existed in London a so-called "Papey"--"a proper

house," wherein sometime was kept a fraternity of St. Charity and St.

John. This was, as Stow says, known as the Papey;[145] "for in some

language priests are called papes".

In the Hebrides the place-names Papa Stour, Papa Westray, and so forth

are officially recognised as the seats of prehistoric padres, patricks,

or papas. Skeat imagines that the words _pap_ meaning food, and _pap_

meaning teat or breast, are alike "of infantine origin due to the

repetition of _pa pa_ in calling for food". They may be so, but to

understand the childhood of the world one must stoop to infantile

levels.

In Celtic _alp_ or _ailpe_ meant _high_, and also _rock_. Among the

ancients rock was a generally recognised symbol of the undecaying

immutable High Father, and in seemingly every tongue will be found puns

such as _pierre_ and _pere_, Peter the pater, and Petra the Rock. The

papacy of Peter is founded traditionally upon St. Petra, the Rock of

Ages, "Upon this Rock will I found my Church," and the St. Rock of this

country, whose festival was celebrated upon Rock Monday, was assumedly a

survival of pagan pre-Christian symbolism.

[Illustration: FIG. 20.--From _Analysis of Ancient Mythology_

(Bryant, J.).]

In the group of coins here illustrated it will be noticed that the

_Mater Deorum_ is conventionally throned upon a rock. "Unto Thee will I

cry, O Lord my Rock," wrote the Psalmist, and the inhabitants of Albion

probably once harmonised in their ideas with the Kafirs of India, who

still say of the stones they worship, "This stands for God, but we know

not his shape." In Cornwall, within living memory, the Druidic stones

were believed in some mysterious way to be sacred to existence, and the

materialistic theory which attributes all primitive worship to fear or

self-interest, will find it hard to account satisfactorily for stone

worship. Cold, impassive stone, neither feeds, nor warms, nor clothes,

yet, as Toland says: "'Tis certain that all nations meant by these

stones without statues the eternal stability and power of the Deity, and

that He could not be represented by any similitude, nor under any figure

whatsoever".

[Illustration: FIG. 21.--Christ and His Apostles, under the form of

Lambs or of Sheep. (Latin sculpture; first centuries

of the Church.)

From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]

It is asserted by one of the classical authors that stones were

considered superior in two respects, first in being not subject to

death, and second in not being harmful. That _Albion_ was harmless and

beneficent is implied by the adjectives _bien_, _bonny_, _benevolent_,

_bounteous_, and _benignant_. That St. Alban was similarly conceived is

implied by the statement that this Lord's son of the City of Verulam was

"a well disposed and seemly young man," who "always loved to do

hospitality _granting meat and drink_ wherever necessary". That St.

Alban was not only _Alpa_, the All Feeder, but that he was also _Alpe_,

the High One and the Rock whence gushed a "living water," is clear from

the statement: "Then at the last they came to the hill where this holy

Alban should finish and end his life, in which place lay a great

multitude of people nigh dead for heat of the sun, and for thirst. And

then anon the wind blew afresh, cool, and also at the feet of this holy

man Alban sprang up a fair well whereof all the people marvelled to see

the cold water spring up in the hot sandy ground, and so high on the top

of an hill, which water flowed all about and in large streams running

down the hill. And then the people ran to the water and drank so that

they were well refreshed, and then by the merits of St. Alban their

thirst was clean quenched. But yet for all the great goodness that was

showed they thirsted strongly for the blood of this holy man."[146]

From this and other miraculous incidents in the life of St. Alban it

would appear that the original compilers had in front of them some

cartoons, cameos, or symbolic pictures of "The Kaadman," which had

probably been recovered from the ruins of the ancient city. The

authenticity of St. Alban's "life" is further implied by the frequency

with which allusions are made to the blazing heat of the sun, a sunshine

so great, so conspicuous, that it burnt and scalded the feet of the

sightseers. The Latin for yellow, which is the colour of the golden sun,

is _galbinus_, a word which like Kalbion resolves into _'g albinus_, the

high or mighty Albanus. From _galbinus_ the French authorities derive

their word _jaune_, but _jaune_ is simply _Joan_, _Jeanne_, _shine_,

_shone_, or _sheen_.

In Hebrew _Albanah_ or _Lebanah_ properly signifies the moon, and

_albon_ means _strength_ and _power_, but more radically these terms may

be connoted with our English surname Alibone and understood as either

_holy good_, _wholly good_, or _all good_.

Yellow is not only the colour of the golden sun, but it is similarly

that of the moon, and at the festivals of the _yellow_ Lights of Heaven

our ancestors most assuredly _halloe'd_, _yelled_, _yawled_, and

_yowled_. The Cornish for the sun is _houl_, the Breton is _heol_, the

Welsh is _hayl_, and until recently in English churches the congregation

used at Yule Tide to _hail_ the day with shouts or _yells_ of Yole,

Yole, Yole! or Ule, Ule, Ule! The festival of Yule is a reunion, a

coming together in amity of the All, and as in Welsh _y_ meant _the_,

the words _whole_, and _Yule_ were perhaps originally _ye all_ or _the

all_. An _alloy_ is a mixture or medley, anything _allowed_ is according

to _law_, and _hallow_ is the same word as _holy_.

The word Alban is pronounced Olbun, and in Welsh _Ol_, meant not only

_all_, but also the Supreme Being. The Dictionaries translate the

Semitic _El_ as having meant _God_ or _Power_, and it is so rendered

when found amid names such as Beth_el_, Uri_el_, _El_eazar,[147] etc.

But among the Semitic races the deity El was subdivided into a number of

Baalim or secondary divinities emanating from El, and it would thus seem

that although the Phoenicians may have forgotten the fact, _El_ meant

among them what _All_ does amongst us. According to Anderson, El was

primarily Israel's God and only later did He come to be regarded as the

God of the Universe--"Rising in dignity as the national idea was

enlarged, El became more just and righteous, more and more superior to

all the other gods, till at last He was defined to be the Supreme Ruler

of Nature, the One and only Lord".[148]

The motto of Cornwall is "One and All," and among the Celtic races there

is still current a monotheistic folk-song which is supposed to be the

relic of a Druidic ritual or catechism. This opens with the question in

chorus, "What is your one O"? to which the answer is returned:--

One is _all alone_,

And ever doth remain so.

There figures in the Celtic memory a Saint Allen or St. Elwyn, and this

"saint" may be modernised into St. "Alone" or St. "_All one_": his

third variant Elian is equivalent to Holy Ane or Holy One.[149]

The Greek philosophers entertained a maxim that Jove, Pluto, Phoebus,

Bacchus, all were one and they accepted as a formula the phrase "All is

one". In India Brahma was entitled "The Eternal All" and in the

_Bhagavad Gita_ the Soul of the world is thus adored:--

O infinite Lord of Gods! the world's abode,

Thou undivided art, o'er all supreme,

Thou art the first of Gods, the ancient Sire,

The treasure-house supreme of all the worlds.

The Knowing and the Known, the highest seat.

From Thee the All has sprung, O Boundless Form!

Varuna, Vazu, Agni, Yama thou,

The Moon; the Sire and Grandsire too of men.

The infinite in power, of boundless force,

The All thou dost embrace; the "Thou art All".

Near Stonehenge there is a tumulus known nowadays as El barrow, and

Salisbury Plain itself was once named Ellendune or Ellen Down. The

Greeks or Hellenes claimed to be descendants of the Dodonian Ellan or

Hellan, a personage whom they esteemed as the "Father of the First-born

Woman". Ellan or Hellan was alternatively entitled Hellas, and in Greek

the word _allos_ meant "the one".

Tradition said that the Temple of Ellan at Dodona--a shrine which

antedated the Greek race, and was erected by unknown predecessors--was

founded by a Dove, one of two birds which flew from Thebes in Egypt. The

super-sacred tree at Dodona, as in Persia and elsewhere, was the oak,

and the rustling of the wind in the leaves of the oak was poetically

regarded as the voice of the All-Father. The Hebrew for an oak tree is

_allon_, _elon_, or _allah_, and Allah is the name under which many

millions of our fellow-men worship The Alone. To this day the oak tree

is sacred among the folk of Palestine,[150] particularly one ancient

specimen on the site of old Beyrut or Berut--a place-name which, as we

shall see, may be connoted with Brut.

[Illustration: FIG. 22.--From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).

Diana, the Moon, with a circular nimbus. (Roman

sculpture.)

Mercury with a circular nimbus. (Roman sculpture.)

Apollo as the Sun, adorned with the nimbus, and

crowned with seven rays. (Roman sculpture.)

Sun, with rays issuing from the face, and a

wheel-like nimbus on the head. (Etruscan sculpture.)]

B being invariably interchangeable with P, the Ban of Alban is the same

as the Greek Pan.[151] From Pan comes the adjective _pan_ meaning

_all_, _universal_, so that Alban may perhaps be equated with Holy Pan.

_Hale_ also means healthy, and the circular _halo_ symbolising the

glorious sun was used by the pagans long before it was adopted by

Christianity. By the Cabalists--who were indistinguishable from the

Gnostics--Ell was understood to mean "the Most Luminous," Il "the

Omnipotent," Elo "the Sovereign, the Excelsus," and Eloi "the

Illuminator, the Most Effulgent". Among the Greeks _ele_ meant

refulgent, and Helios was a title of Apollo or the Sun.

[Illustration: FIG. 23.--The statue of Diana of the Ephesians

worshipped at Massilia.

From _Stonehenge_ (Barclay, E.).]

The Peruvians named their Bona Dea Mama Allpa, whom they represented,

like Ephesian Diana, as having numerous breasts, and they regarded Mama

Allpa as the dispenser of all human nourishment. In Egypt _pa_ meant

_ancestor_, _beginning_, _origin_, and the Peruvian many-breasted Mama

Allpa seemingly meant just as it does in English, _i.e._, mother, _All

pa_ or _All-feeder_.

It is important to note that the British Albion was not always

considered as a male, but on occasions as the "Lady Albine".[152]

The Sabeans worshipped the many-breasted Artemis under the name

Almaquah, which is radically _alma_, and the Greeks used the word _alma_

as an adjective meaning _nourishing_. The river Almo near Rome was

seemingly named after the All Mother, for in this stream the Romans used

ceremoniously to bathe and purify the statue of Ma, the World Mother,

whose consort was known as Pappas. Pappas is the Greek equivalent to

Papa, and Ma or Mama meaning _mother_ is so used practically all the

world over. Skeat is contemptuous towards _mama_, describing it as "a

mere repetition of _ma_ an infantile syllable; many other languages have

something like it". Not only all over Asia Minor but also in Burmah and

Hindustan _ma_ meant mother; in China _mother_ is _mi_ or _mu_, and in

South America as in Chaldea and all over Europe _mama_ meant mother;

Mammal is of course traceable to the same root, and it is evident that

even were _ma_ merely an infantile syllable it obviously carried far

more than a contemptible or negligible meaning.

[Illustration: MA.

FIG. 24.--The Egyptian Ma or "Truth".]

In Europe, Alma and Ilma are proper names which are defined as having

meant either Celtic _all good_, Latin _kindly_, or Jewish _maiden_. In

Finnish mythology the Creatrix of the Universe, or Virgin Daughter of

the Air is named Ilmatar, which is evidently the _All Mater_ or _All

Mother_. Alma was no doubt the almoner of aliment, and her symbol was

the _almond_. In Scotland where there is a river Almond, _ben_ means

mountain or head, and _ben_ varies almost invariably into _pen_, from

the Apennines to the Pennine Range.

It is said that Pan was worshipped in South America, and that his name

was commemorated in the place-name Mayapan. Among the Mandan Indians,

_pan_ meant _head_, and also _pertaining to that which is above_; in

China, _pan_ meant mountain or hill, and in Phoenician, _pennah_ had

the same meaning. As, however, I have dealt somewhat fully elsewhere

with Pan the President of the Mountains, I shall for the sake of brevity

translate his name into _universal_ or _good_.

In England we have the curious surname Pennefather;[153] in Cornwall,

Pender is very common, and it is proverbial that _Pen_ is one of the

three affixes by which one may know Cornishmen.

As Pan was pre-eminently the divinity of woods and forests, Panshanger

or Pan's Wood in Hertfordshire may perhaps be connected with him, and

the river Beane of Hertfordshire may be equated with the kindred British

river-names, Ben, Bann, Bane, Bain, Banon, Bana, Bandon, Banney, Banac,

and Bannockburn.

Bannock or Panak the _Great Pan_ is probably responsible for the English

river name Penk, and the name Pankhurst necessarily implies a hurst or

wood of Pank. Penkhull was seemingly once Penkhill, and it is evident

that Pan or Pank, the God of the Universe, may be recognised in Panku,

the benevolent Chinese World Father, for the account of this Deity is as

follows: "Panku was the _first_, being placed upon the earth at a period

when sea, land, and sky were all jumbled up together. Panku was a giant,

and worked with a mallet and chisel for eighteen thousand years in an

effort to make the earth more shapely. As he toiled and struggled so he

grew in strength and stature, until he was able to push the heavens back

and to put the sea into its proper place. Then he rounded the earth and

made it more habitable, and then he died. But Panku was greater in death

than he was in life, for his head became the surface of the earth; his

sinews, the mountains; his voice, the thunder, his breath, the wind, the

mist, and the clouds; one eye was converted into the sun; the other the

moon; and the beads of perspiration on his forehead were crystallised

into the scintillating stars."

The name Panku is radically the same as Punch, and there is no doubt

that Mr. Punch of to-day represented, according to immemorial wont, with

a hunch, hill, or mountain on his back, has descended from the sacred

farce or drama. Punch and Punchinello, or Pierre and Pierrot are the

father and the son of the ancient holy-days or holidays.

At _Ban_croft, in the neighbourhood of St. Albans, the festivities of

May-day included "_first_" a personage with "a large artificial hump on

his back,"[154] and we may recognise the Kaadman of St. Albans in the

Cadi of Welsh pageantry. In Wales all the arrangements of May-day were

made by the so-called Cadi, who was always the most active person in the

company and sustained the joint rôle of marshal, orator, buffoon, and

money collector. The whole party being assembled they marched in pairs

headed by the Cadi, who was gaudily bedecked with gauds and wore a

bisexual, half-male, half-female costume. With gaud and gaudy, which are

the same words as _good_ and _cadi_, may be connoted _gaudeo_ the Latin

for _I rejoice_.

Punch is always represented with an ample _paunch_, and this conspicuous

characteristic of bonhomie is similarly a feature of Chinese and

Japanese bonifaces or Bounty Gods. The skirt worn by the androgynous

British Cadi may be connoted with the kilt in which the Etrurians

figured their Hercules, and that in Etruria the All Father was

occasionally depicted like Punch, is clear from the following passage

from _The Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria_: "Hercules and Minerva were the

most generally honoured of the Etruscan divinities, the one representing

the most valuable qualities of a man's body and the other of his soul.

They were the excellencies of flesh and spirit, and according to

Etruscan mythology they were man and wife. Minerva has usually a very

fine face with that straight line of feature which we call Grecian, but

which, from the sepulchral paintings and the votive offerings, would

appear also to have been native. Hercules has a prominent and peaky

chin, and something altogether remarkably sharp in his features, which,

from the evidence of vases and scarabæi together, would appear to have

been the conventional form of depicting a warrior. It is probably given

to signify vigilance and energy. A friend of mine used to call it, not

inaptly, 'the ratcatcher style'. Neptune bears the trident, Jove the

thunderbolt or sceptre, and these attributes are sometimes appended to

the most grotesque figures when the Etruscans have been representing

either some Greek fable, or some native version of the same story. This

may be seen on one vase where Jove is entering a window, accompanied by

Mercury, to visit Alcmena. Jove has just taken his foot off the ladder,

and in my ignorance I looked at the clumsy but extraordinary vase,

thinking that the figures represented Punch; and though I give the

learned and received version of the story, I am at this moment not

convinced that I was wrong, for I do not believe the professor who

pointed it out to me, notwithstanding all his learning, extensive and

profound as it was, knew that Punch was an Etruscan amusement. Supposing

it, however, to have been Punch, which I think was my own very just

discovery, the piece acted was certainly Giove and Alcmena."

It is very obvious that the term _holy_ has changed considerably in its

meaning. To the ancients "holidays" were joy-days, pandemoniums, and the

pre-eminent emblem of joviality was the holly tree. The reason for the

symbolic eminence of the holy tree was its evergreen horned leaves which

caused it to be dedicated to Saturn the horned All Father, now degraded

into Old Nick. But "Old Nick" is simply St. Nicholas, or Santa Claus,

and the name Claus is Nicholas minus the adjective _'n_ or _ancient_.

Janus, the Latinised form of Joun, was essentially the God of

_gen_iality and _jov_iality, otherwise Father Christmas and he is the

same as Saturn, whose golden era was commemorated by the Saturnalia. The

Hebrew name for the planet Saturn was Chiun, and this Chiun or Joun (?)

was seemingly the same as the Gian Ben Gian, or Divine Being, who

according to Arabian tradition ruled over the whole world during the

legendary Golden Age.

On the first of January, a month which takes its name from Janus as

being the "God of the Beginning," all quarrelling and disturbances were

shunned, mutual good-wishes were exchanged, and people gave sweets to

one another as an omen that the New Year might bring nothing but what

was sweet and pleasant in its train.

This "execrable practice," a "mere relique of paganism and idolatry,"

was, like the decorative use of holly, sternly opposed by the mediæval

Church. In 1632 Prynne wrote: "The whole Catholicke Church (as

Alchuvinus and others write), appointed a solemn publike faste upon this

our New Yeare's Day (which fast it seems is now forgotten), to bewail

these heathenish enterludes, sports, and lewd idolatrous practices which

had been used on it: prohibiting all Christians, under pain of

excommunication, from observing the Calends, or first of January (which

we now call New Yeare's Day) as holy, and from sending abroad New

Yeare's Gifts upon it (a custom now too frequent), it being a mere

relique of paganisme and idolatry, derived from the heathen Romans'

feast of two-faced Janus, and a practice so execrable unto Christians

that not only the whole Catholicke Church, but even four famous

Councils" [and an enormous quantity of other authorities which it is

useless to quote], "have positively prohibited the solemnisation of New

Yeare's Day, and the sending abroad of New Yeare's Gifts, under an

anathema and excommunication."

There is little doubt that the "Saint" Concord--an alleged subdeacon in

a desert--who figures in the Roman Martyrology on January 1st, was

invented to account for the Holy Concord to which that day was

dedicated. Janus of January 1st, who was ranked by the Latins even above

Jupiter, was termed "The _good_ Creator," the "Oldest of the Gods," the

"Beginning of all Things," and the "God of Gods". From him sprang all

rivers, wells, and streams, and his name is radically the same as

Oceanus.

Before the earth was known to be a ball, Oceanus, the Father of all the

river-gods and water-nymphs, was conceived to be a river flowing

perpetually round the flat circle of the world, and out of, and into

this river the sun and stars were thought to rise and set. Our word

_ocean_ is assumed to be from the Greek form _okeanus_, and the official

surmise as to the origin of the word is--"perhaps from _okis_--swift".

But what "swiftness" there is about the unperturbable and mighty sea, I

am at a loss to recognise. In the Highlands the islanders of St. Kilda

used to pour out libations to a sea-god, known as Shony, and in this

British Shony we have probably the truer origin of _ocean_.

[Illustration: FIG. 25.--Personification of River.

From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]

The ancients generally supposed the All Good as wandering abroad and

peering unobserved into the thoughts and actions of his children. This

proclivity was a conspicuous characteristic of Jupiter, and also of the

Scandinavian All Father, one of whose titles was Gangrad, or "The

Wanderer". The verb to _gad_, and the expression "_gadding about_," may

have arisen from this wandering proclivity of the gods or gads, and the

word _jaunt_, a synonym for "gadding" (of unknown etymology), points to

the probability that the rambling tendencies of "Gangrad" and other gods

were similarly assigned by the British to their _Giant_, "_jeyantt_," or

Good _John_. _Jaunty_ or _janty_ means full of fire or life, and the

words _gentle_, _genial_, and _generous_ are implications of the

original good Giant's attributes.

[Illustration: FIG. 26.--Figure of Time with Three Faces. From a

French Miniature of the XIV. cent.

From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]

[Illustration: FIG. 27.--The Three Divine Faces with two eyes and

one single body. From a French Miniature of the XVI.

cent.

From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]

The coins of King Janus of Sicily bore on their obverse the figure of

god Janus; on the reverse a dove, and it is evident that the dove was as

much a symbol of Father Janus as it was of Mother Jane or Mother Juno.

Christianity still recognises the dove or pigeon as the symbol of the

Holy Ghost, and it is probable that the word _pigeon_ may be attributed

to the fact that the pigeon was invariably associated with _pi_, or _pa

geon_.[155]

[Illustration: FIG. 28.--BRAHMA.--From _A Dictionary of

Non-classical Mythology_ (Edwardes & Spence).]

Janus, "the one by whom all things were introduced into life," was

figured as two-faced, or time past, and time to come, and Janus was the

"I was," the "I am," and the "I shall be".[156] As the "God of the

Beginning," Janus is clearly connected with the word _genesis_; Juno was

the goddess who presided over childbirth, and to their names may be

traced the words _generate_, _genus_, _genital_, and the like. Just as

_Jan_uary is the first or opening month of the year, so _June_,[157]

French _Juin_, was the first or opening month of the ancient calendar.

It was fabled that Janus daily threw open the gate of day whence _janua_

was the Latin for a gate, and _janitor_ means a keeper of the gate.

All men were supposed to be under the safeguard of Janus, and all women

under that of Juno, whence the guardian spirit of a man was termed his

_genius_ and that of a woman her _juno_. The words _genius_ and _genie_

are evidently cognate with the Arabian _jinn_, meaning a spirit. In

Ireland the fairies or "good people" are known as the "gentry"; as the

giver of all increase Juno may be responsible for the word _generous_,

and Janus the Beginning or Leader is presumably allied to _General_.

Occasionally the two faces of Janus were represented as respectively old

and young, a symbol obviously of time past and present, time and

_change_, the ancient of days and the _junior_ or _jeun_. In Irish _sen_

meant _senile_.

It is taught by the mothers of Europe that at Yule-Tide the Senile All

Bounty wanders around bestowing gifts, and St. Nicholas, or Father

Christmas, is in some respects the same as the Wandering Jew of mediæval

tradition. The earliest mention of the Everlasting Jew occurs in the

chronicles of the Abbey of St. Albans,[158] and is probably a faint

memory of the original St. Alban or All Bounty. It was said that this

mysterious Wanderer "had a little child on his arm," and was an

eye-witness of the crucifixion of Christ. Varied mythical appearances of

the Everlasting Jew are recorded, and his name is variously stated as

Joseph, and as Elijah. Joseph is radically _Jo_, Elijah is _Holy Jah_,

whence it may follow, that "Jew" should be spelled "Jou," and that the

Wandering or Everlasting Jew may be equated with the Sunshine or the

Heavenly Joy.

[Illustration: FIG. 29.--The Three Divine Heads within a single

triangle. From an Italian Wood Engraving of the XV.

cent.

From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]

In France the sudden roar of the wind at night is attributed to the

passing of the Everlasting Jew. In Switzerland he is associated with the

mighty Matterhorn, in Arabia he is represented as an aged man with a

bald head, and I strongly suspect that the Elisha story of "Go up, thou

bald head" arose from the misinterpretation of a picture of the Ancient

of Days surrounded by a happy crowd of laughing youngsters. In this

respect it would have accorded with the representation of the Divine

bald-head of the Celts, leading a joyful chain of smiling captives. In

England the Wandering Jew was reputed never to eat but merely to drink

water which came from a rock. Some accounts specify his clothing

sometimes as a "purple shag-gown," with the added information, "his

stockings were very white, but whether linen or jersey deponent knoweth

not, his beard and head were white and he had a white stick in his hand.

The day was rainy from morning to night, but he had not one spot of dirt

upon his clothes".[159] This tradition is evidently a conception of the

white and immaculate Old Alban, in the usual contradistinction to the

_young_ or _le jeun_, and we still speak of an honest or jonnock person

as "a white man". By the Etrurians it was believed that the soul

preserved after death the likeness of the body it had left and that this

elfin or spritely body composed of shining elastic air was clothed in

airy white.[160] There figures in _The Golden Legend_ an Italian St.

Albine, whose name, says Voragine, "is as much as to say primo; as he

was white and thus this holy saint was all white by purity of clean

living". The tale goes on that this St. Albine had two wives, also two

nurses which did nourish him. While lying in his cradle he was carried

away by a she-wolf and borne into the fields where happily he was espied

by a pair of passing maidens. One of these twain exclaimed "Would to God

I had milk to foster thee withal," and these words thus said her paps

immediately rose and grew up filled with milk. Semblably said and prayed

the second maid, and anon she had milk as her fellow had and so they two

nourished the holy child Albine.

[Illustration: FIGS. 30 to 38.--From _Les Filigranes_ (Briquet,

C. M.).]

It has been suggested that the Wandering Jew is a personification "of

that race which wanders _Cain_-like over the earth with the brand of a

brother's blood upon it"; by others the story is connected particularly

with the gipsies. The Romany word for moon is _choon_, the Cornish for

_full moon_ is _cann_, and it is a curious thing that the Etrurian Dante

entitles the Man in the Moon, Cain:--

Now doth Cain with fork of thorns confine

On either hemisphere touching the wave

Beneath the towers of Seville. Yesternight

The moon was round.[161]

Christian symbology frequently associates the Virgin Mary with the new

moon, and in Fig. 39 a remarkable representation of the Trinity is

situated there.

[Illustration: FIG. 39.--The Holy Ghost, as a child of eight or ten

years old, in the arms of the Father. French

Miniature of the XVI. cent.

From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]

In the illustrations overleaf of mediæval papermarks, some of which

depict the Man in the Moon in his conventional low-crowned,

broad-brimmed hat, there is a conspicuous portrayal of the two breasts,

doubtless representative of the milk and honey flowing in the mystic

Land of _Can_aan. This paradise was reconnoitred by Joshua accompanied

by Caleb, whose name means _dog_, and it will be remembered that

dog-headed St. Christopher was said to be a Canaanitish giant.

Irishmen assign the name Connaught to a beneficent King Conn, during

whose fabulously happy reign all crops yielded ninefold, and the furrows

of Ireland flowed with "the pure lacteal produce of the dairy". Conn of

Connaught is expressly defined as "good as well as great,"[162] and the

Hibernian "pure lacteal produce of the dairy" may be connoted with the

Canaanitish "milk". We shall trace King Conn of Connaught at Caen or

Kenwood, near St. John's Wood, London, and also at Kilburn, a burn or

stream alternatively known as the _Cune_burn. This rivulet comes first

within the ken of history in the time of Henry I., when a hermit named

Godwyn--query _Good One_?--had his kil or cell upon its banks. King Conn

of Connaught reigned in glory with "Good Queen Eda," a Breaton princess

who was equally beloved and esteemed. This Eda is seemingly the Lady of

Mount Ida in Candia, and her name may perhaps be traced in Maida Vale

and Maida Hill. Pa Eda or Father Ida is apparently memorised at the

adjacent Paddington which the authorities derive from Paedaington, or

_the town of the children of Paeda_. Cynthia, the Goddess of the Moon or

_cann_, may be connoted with Cain the Man in the Moon, and we shall

ultimately associate her with Candia the alternative title of Crete, and

with Caindea, an Irish divinity, whose name in Gaelic means _the gentle

goddess_.

Near _Con_iston in Cumberland is Yew Barrow, a rugged, cragged,

pyramidal height which like the river Yeo, rising from Seven Sisters

Springs, was probably associated with Jou or Yew. The culminating peak

known as "The Old Man" of Coniston is suggestive of the Elfin

tradition:--

High on the hill-top the Old King sits

He is now so old and grey, he's nigh lost his wits.

The Egyptians figured Ra, the Ancient of Days, as at times so senile

that he dribbled at the mouth.

The traditional attributes of Cain, the Man in the Moon, or Cann, the

full moon, are a dog, a lanthorn, and a bush of thorn. The dog is the

_kuon_ or _chien_ of St. Kit, the Kaadman or the Good Man, and the

lanthorn is probably Jack-a-lantern or Will-o-the-wisp, known of old as

Kit-with-a-canstick or Kitty-with-a-candlestick. The thorn bush was

sacred to the Elves for reasons which will be discussed in a subsequent

chapter. It is sufficient here to note that the equivalent of the sacred

hawthorn of Britain is known in the East as the Alvah or Elluf.[163] The

Irish title of the letter _a_ or _haw_ is _alif_, as also is the

Arabian: the Greek _alpha_ is either _alpa_ or _alfa_.

The Welsh Archbard Taliesin makes the mystic statement:--

Of the ruddy vine,

Planted on sunny days,

And on new-moon nights;

And the white wine.

The wheat rich in grain

And red flowing wine

Christ's pure body make,

Son of Alpha.

The same poet claims, "I was in the Ark with Noah and Alpha," whence it

would seem that Alpha was Mother Eve or the Mother of All Living. Alfa

the Elf King and his followers the elves were deemed to be ever-living,

and the words _love_, _life_, and _alive_ are all one and the same. That

Spenser appreciated this identity between _Elfe_ and _life_ is apparent

in the passage:--

Prometheus did create

A man of many parts from beasts derived,

That man so made he called Elfe to wit,

Quick the first author of all Elfin kind,

Who wandering through the world with wearie feet

Did in the gardens of Adonis find

A goodly creature whom he deemed in mind

To be no earthly wight, but either sprite

Or angel, the author of all woman-kind.[164]

_Quick_ as in "quick and dead" meant living, whence "Elfe, to wit

Quick," was clearly understood by Spenser as life. It meant further, all

_vie_ or all _feu_, for the ancients identified life and fire, and they

further identified the _fays_ or elves with _feux_ or fires. The

place-name Fife is, I suspect, connected with _vif_ or _vive_, and it is

noteworthy that in Fifeshire to this day a circular patch of white snow

which habitually lingers in a certain hill cup is termed poetically "the

Lady Alva's web". Whether this Lady Alva was supposed to haunt Glen

Alva--a name now associated with a more material spirit--I do not know.

The dictionaries define "Alfred" as meaning "Elf in council," and

Allflatt or Elfleet as "elf purity". The big Alfe was no doubt

symbolised by the celebrated Alphian Rock in Yorkshire, and the little

Alf was almost certainly worshipped in his coty or stone cradle at

Alvescott near Witney. That this site was another Kit's Coty or "Cradle

of Tudno," as at Llandudno, is implied by the earlier forms Elephescote

(1216) and Alfays (1274). The Fays and the Elves are one and the same

as the Jinns, the Genii, or "the Gentry".

There used to be an "Alphey" within Cripplegate on the site of the

present Church of St. Alphage in London. It was believed that the Elf

King inhabited the linden tree, and the elder was similarly associated

with him. Linden is the same word as London, and the name elder resolves

into the _dre_ or _der_ or abode of El: in Scandinavia the elves were

known as the Elles, whence probably Ellesmere--the Elves pool--and

similar place-names.

We shall subsequently consider a humble Hallicondane or _Ellie King dun_

still standing in Ramsgate. There was also a famous Elve dun or

Elve-haunt at _Elbo_ton, a hill in Yorkshire, where according to local

legend:--

From Burnsall's Tower the midnight hour

Had toll'd and its echo was still,

And the Elphin bard from faerie land

Was upon _Elbo_ton Hill.

In the neighbourhood of this _ton_ or _dun_ of Elbo there are persistent

traditions of a spectral hound or bandog.

In the immediate neighbourhood of the London Aldermanbury--the barrow or

court of Alderman--is a church dedicated to St. Alban, and in this same

district stood the parish church of St. Alphage. There figures in the

Church Calendar a "St. Alphage the Bald," and also a St. Alphage or

Elphege, known alternatively as Anlaf. The word Anlaf resolves into

_Ancient Alif_, and it may be thus surmised that "Alphage the Bald" was

the Alif, Aleph, or Alpha aged.

As has already been seen the Celts represented their Hercules as

bald-headed. St. Alban's, Holborn, is situated in Baldwin's Gardens

where also is a Baldwin's Place. Probably it was the same Bald

One--_alias_ Father Time--that originated the Baldwin Street in the

neighbourhood of St. Alphage and St. Alban, Aldermanbury.

St. Anlaf may be connoted with the St. Olave whose church neighbours

those of St. Alphage, and St. Alban. By the Church of St. Alban used to

run Love Lane, and _Anlaf_ may thus perhaps be rendered Ancient Love, or

Ancient Life, or Ancient Elf.

The _Olive_ branch is a universally understood emblem of love, in which

connection there is an apparition recorded of St. John the Almoner. "He

saw on a time in a vision a much fair maid, which had on her head a

crown of olive, and when he saw her he was greatly abashed and demanded

her what she was." She answered, "I am Mercy; which brought from Heaven

the Son of God; if thou wilt wed me thou shalt fare the better". Then

he, understanding that the olive betokened Mercy, began that same day to

be merciful.

A short distance from Aldermanbury is Bunhill Row, on the site of

Bunhill fields where used to be kept the hounds or bandogs of the

Corporation of London. The name Bunhill implies an ancient tumulus or

barrow sacred to the same Bun or Ban as the neighbouring St. Albans.

The "Coleman" which pervades this district of London, as in Coleman

Street, Colemanchurch, Colemanhawe, Colemannes, implies that a colony of

St. Colmans or "Doves" settled there and founded the surrounding

shrines. In Ireland, Kil as in Kilpatrick, Kilbride, meant cell or

shrine, whence it may be deduced that the river Cuneburn or Kilburn was

a sacred stream on the banks of which many Godwyns had their cells. In

this neighbourhood the place-names Hollybush Vale, Hollybush Tavern,

imply the existence of a very celebrated Holly Tree. The illustration

herewith represents the Twelfth Night Holly Festival in Westmorland,

which terminated gloriously at an inn:--

To every branch a torch they tie

To every torch a light apply,

At each new light send forth huzzahs

Till all the tree is in a blaze;

Then bear it flaming through the town,

With minstrelsy and rockets thrown.[165]

[Illustration: FIG. 40.--From _The Everyday Book_ (Hone, W.).]

At the Westmorland festival the holly tree was always carried by the

biggest man, and in all probability this was a similar custom in the

Cuneburn or Kilburn district, terminating at the Hollybush Tavern.

Scandinavian legend tells of a potent enchantress who had dwelt for 300

years on the Island of Kunnan (Canaan?) happy in the exquisite innocence

of her youth. Mighty heroes sued for the love of this fairest of giant

maidens, and the sea around Kunnan is said to be still cumbered with the

fragments of rock which her Cyclopean admirers flung jealously at one

another. Ere, however, she was married "the detestable Odin" came into

the country and drove all from the island. Refuging elsewhere the Lady

of Kunnan and her consort dwelt awhile undisturbed until such time as a

gigantic Oluf "came from Britain". This Oluf (they called him the Holy)

making the sign of the cross with his hands drove ashore in a gigantic

ship crying with a loud voice: "Stand there as a stone till the last

day," and in the same instant the unhappy husband became a mass of rock.

The tale continues that on Yule Eve only could the Lord of Kunnan and

other petrified giants receive back their life for the space of seven

hours.[166]

Now Janus _alias_ Saturn had on his coins the figure of a ship's prow;

he was sometimes delineated pointing to a rock whence issued a profusion

of water; seven days were set apart for his rites in December; and the

seven days of the week were no doubt connected with his title of

Septimanus. In Britain the consort of the Magna Mater Keridwen ( =

_Perpetual Love_) or Ked was entitled Tegid, and like Janus and St.

Peter Tegid was entitled the Door-keeper. In Celtic _te_ meant _good_,

whence Tegid might reasonably be understood as either _Good God_ or _The

Good_. Tegid also meant, according to Davies, _serene baldness_, an

interpretation which has been ridiculed, but one which nevertheless is

in all probability correct for every ancient term bore many meanings,

and because one is right it does not necessarily follow that every other

one is wrong.

Tegid and Ked were the parents of an untoward child, whose name Avagddu

is translated as having meant _utter darkness_, but as Davies observes

"mythological genealogy is mere allegory, and the father and the son are

frequently the same person under different points of view. Thus this

character in his abject state may be referred to as the patriarch

himself during his confinement in the internal gloom of the Ark, where

he was surrounded with _utter darkness_; a circumstance which was

commemorated in all the mysteries of the gentile world.... And as our

complex Mythology identified the character of the patriarch with the

sun, so Avagddu may also have been viewed as a type of that luminary in

his veil of darkness and gloom. This gloom was afterwards changed into

_light_ and _cheerfulness_, and thus the son of Keridwen may be

recognised in his illuminated state under the title of Elphin, and

_Rhuvawn Bevyr_ which implies _bursting forth with radiance_, and seems

to be an epithet of the helio-arkite god." Davies continues: "Avagddu

thus considered as a type of the helio-arkite god in his afflicted and

renovated state has a striking coincidence of character with Eros the

blind god of the Greeks".[167] The Cain or "Man in the Moon,"

represented herewith, has the heart of love, or Eros, figured on his

headgear, and he is carrying the pipes of Pan, or of the Elphin Bard of

Fairyland.

It was common knowledge to our predecessors, that Titania--"Our radiant

Queen"--hated sluts and sluttery and when Mrs. Page concocted her fairy

plot against Falstaff she enjoined--

Then let them all encircle him about

And Fairy-like to pinch the unclean Knight,

And ask him why that hour of fairy revel

In their so sacred paths he dares to tread.

[Illustration: FIG. 41.--From _Les Filigranes_ (Briquet, C. M.).]

[Illustration: FIG. 42.--British. From _A New Description of

England and Wales_ (Anon., 1724).]

The White May or Hawthorn which was so dear to the Elves was probably

the symbol of that chastity and cleanliness which was proverbially an

Elphin attribute. It is, for instance, said of Sir Thopas, when questing

for the Fairy Queen, that--

... he was chaste and no lechour

And sweet as is the bramble flower,

That beareth the red hip.

On reaching the domain of Queen Elf, Sir Thopas is encountered by a

"great giaunt" Sire Oliphaunt, who informs him--

Here the Queen of Fairie

With harpe and pipe and symphonie

Dwelleth in this place.

Sire Oliphaunt may be connoted with the Elephant which occurs on our

ancient coinage, and is also found carved on many prehistoric stones in

Scotland, notably in the cave of St. Rule at St. Andrews. The Kate

Kennedy still commemorated at St. Andrews we shall subsequently connote

with Conneda and with Caindea.

The Elephant which sleeps while standing was regarded as the emblem of

the benevolent sentinel, or watchman, and as the symbol of giant

strength, meekness, and ingenuity. According to the poet Donne:--

Nature's great masterpiece, an Elephant

The onely harmelesse great thing; the giant

Of beasts; who thought none bad, to make him wise

But to be just and thankful, loth t' offend

(Yet nature hath given him no knees to bend)

Himself he up-props, on himself relies

And foe to none.

[Illustration: FIG. 43.--From _An Essay on Ancient Coins, Medals,

and Gems_ (Walsh, R.).]

The Elephant or Oliphant (Greek _elephas_, "origin unknown") is the

hugest and the first of beasts, and in India it symbolises the

vanquisher of obstacles, the leader or the opener of the way. Ganesa,

the elephant-headed Hindu god is invariably invoked at the beginning of

any enterprise, and the name Ganesa is practically the same as

_genesis_ the origin or beginning. "Praise to Thee, O Ganesa," wrote a

prehistoric hymnist, "Thou art manifestly the Truth, Thou art

undoubtedly the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer, the Supreme Brahma,

the Eternal Spirit."

One of the reasons for the symbolic eminence of the Elephant seems to

have been the animal's habit of spouting water. It is still said of the

Man in the Moon that he is a giant who at the time of the flow stands in

a stooping posture because he is then taking up water which he pours out

on the earth and thereby causes high tide; but at the time of the ebb he

stands erect and rests from his labour when the water can subside

again.[168]

The moon goddess of the Muysca Indians of Bogota is named Chin (akin to

Cain, _cann_, and Ganesa?), and in her insensate spleen Chin was

supposed at one period to have flooded the entire world. In Mexico one

of the best represented gods is Chac the rain-god, who is the possessor

of an elongated nose not unlike the proboscis of a tapir, which, of

course, is the spout whence comes the rain which he blows over the

earth.[169] The Hebrew Jah, _i.e._, Jon or Joy or Jack, is hailed as the

long-nosed, and Taylor in his _Diegesis_[170] gives the following as a

correct rendering of the original Psalm: "Sing ye to the Gods! Chant ye

his name! Exalt him who rideth in the heavens by his name Jack, and leap

for Joy before his face! For the Lord hath a long nose and his mercy

endureth for ever!" It is quite beyond the possibilities of independent

evolution or of coincidence that the divinity with a long nose or trunk,

should have been known as _Chac_ alike in Mexico and Asia Minor.

The spouting characteristic of the whale rendered it a marine equivalent

to the elephant. _Whale_ is the same word as _whole_, and _leviathan_ is

radically the _lev_ of _elephant_. According to British mythology,

Keridwen or Ked was a leviathian or whale, whence, as from the Ark,

emerged all life.

Not only is the Man in the Moon or the Wandering Jew peculiarly

identified with St. Albans in Britain, but he reappears at the Arabian

city of Elvan. This name is cognate with _elephant_ in the same way as

alpha is correlate to alpa or alba: Ayliffe and Alvey are common English

surnames. In Kensington the memory of Kenna, a fairy princess who was

beloved by Albion a fairy prince, lingered until recently, and this

tradition is seemingly commemorated in the neighbourhood at Albion Gate,

St. Alban's Road, and elsewhere. In St. Alban's Road, Kensington, one

may still find the family name Oliff which, like Ayliffe and Iliffe, is

the same as alif, aleph, or alpha, the letter "a" the first or the

beginning.

Panku, the great giant of the universe, is entitled by the Chinese the

_first_ of Beings or the Beginning, and it is claimed by the Christian

Church that St. Alban was the _first_ of British martyrs. Eastward of

Kensington Gardens is St. Alban's Place and also Albany, generally, but

incorrectly termed "The Albany". The neighbouring Old Bond Street and

New Bond Street owe their nomenclature to a ground landlord whose name

Bond is radically connected with Albany. The original Bond family were

in all probability followers of "Bond," and the curiously named Newbons,

followers of the Little Bond or New Sun. In the Isle of Wight there are,

half a mile apart, the hamlets of Great Pann and Little Pann which,

considered in conjunction with _Bon_church, were probably once sacred

to Old Pan and Little Pan. According to Prof. Weekley the name Lovibond,

Loveband, or Levibond, "seems to mean 'the dear bond'".[171] Who or what

"the dear bond" was is not explained, but we may connote the kindred

surnames Goodbon, Goodbun, and Goodband.

By 24th December, the shortest day in the year, the Old Sun had sunk

seemingly to his death, and at Yuletide it was believed that the

rejuvenate New Sun, the Baby Sun, the Welsh _Mabon_, or _Baby Boy_, was

born anew either from the sea or from a cave or womb of the earth. The

arms of the Isle of Man, anciently known as Eubonia, are the

three-legged solar wheel of the Wandering Joy. _Eu_ of Eubonia is

seemingly the Greek _eu_, meaning soft, gentle, pleasing and propitious,

and the rolling _wheel_ of Eubonia was like the svastika, a symbol of

the Gentle Bounty running his beneficent and never-ending course. St.

Andrew, with his limbs extended to the four quarters, was, I think, once

the same symbol,[172] and it is probable that the story of Ixion bound

to a burning wheel and rolling everlastingly through space was a

perversion of the same original. Ixion is phonetically _Ik zion_,

_i.e._, the Mighty Sun or Mighty Sein or Bosom. It was frankly admitted

by the Greeks that their language was largely derived from barbarians or

foreigners, and the same admission was made in relation to their

theology.[173]

The circle of the Sun or solar wheel, otherwise the wheel of Good _law_,

is found frequently engraved on prehistoric stones and coins. In Gaul,

statues of a divinity bearing a wheel upon his shoulder have been found,

and solar wheels figure persistently in Celtic archæology. It has been

supposed, says Dr. Holmes, that they are symbolical of Sun worship, and

that the God with the wheel was the God of the Sun. It is further

probable that the wheel on the shoulder corresponded to the child on the

shoulder of St. Kit, and I am at a loss to understand how any thinker

can have ever propounded such a proposition as to require Dr. Holmes'

comment, "the supposition that the wheels were money is no longer

admitted by competent antiquaries".[174] Sir James Frazer instances

cases of how the so-called "Fire of Heaven" used sometimes to be made by

igniting a cart wheel smeared with pitch, fastened on a pole 12 feet

high, the top of the pole being inserted in the nave of the wheel. This

fire was made on the summit of a mountain, and as the flame ascended the

people uttered a set form of words with eyes and arms directed

heavenwards. In Norway to this day men turn cart wheels round the

bonfires of St. John, and doubtless at some time the London

urchin--still a notorious adept at cart-wheeling--once exercised the

same pious orgy.

On Midsummer Eve, when the bonfires were lighted on every hill in honour

of St. John, the Elves were at their very liveliest. _Eléve_ in French

means up _aloft_, and _eléve_ means frequently transported with

excitement. Shakespeare refers to elves as ouphes, which is the same

word as _oaf_ and was formerly spelt aulf. Near Wye in Kent there is a

sign-post pointing to Aluph, but this little village figures on the

Ordnance map as Aulph. The ouphes of Shakespeare are equipped "with

rounds of waxen tapers on their heads," and with Jack o' lanthorn may be

connoted Hob-and-his-lanthorn. In Worcestershire Hob has his fuller

title, and is alternatively known as Hobredy:[175] with the further form

Hobany may be correlated Eubonia, and with Hobredy, St. Bride, the _Bona

dea_ of the Hebrides. It is probable that "Hobany" is responsible for

the curious Kentish place name Ebony, and that the Wandering Dame

Abonde, Habonde, or Abundia of French faërie, was Hobany's consort. The

worship of La Dame Abonde, the star-crowned Queen of Fées, is

particularly associated with St. John's Day, and there is little doubt

that in certain aspects she was _cann_, or the full moon:--

The moon, full-orbed, into the well looks down,

Her face is mirrored in the waters clear,

And fées are gathering in the beech shade brown,

From missions far and near.

And there erect and tall, Abonde the Queen,

Brow-girt with golden circlet, that doth bear

A small bright scintillating star between

Her braids of dusky hair.[176]

The Bretons believe in the existence of certain elves termed _Sand Yan y

Tad_ (_St. John and Father_) who carry lights at their finger ends,

which spin round and round like wheels, and, according to Arab

tradition, the Jinn or Jan (Jinnee _m._, Jinniyeh, _f. sing._) are

formed of "smokeless fire".[177] That the ancient British, like the

Peruvians, deemed themselves children of the Fire or Sun is implied

among other testimony from a Druidic folk-tale (collected by a writer in

1795), wherein a young prince, divested of his corporeal envelope, has

his senses refined and is borne aloft into the air. "Towards the disc of

the Sun the young prince approaches at first with awful dread, but

presently with inconceivable rapture and delight. This glorious body

(the Sun) consists of an assemblage of pure souls swimming in an ocean

of bliss. It is the abode of the blessed--of the sages--of the friends

of mankind. The happy souls when thrice purified in the sun ascend to a

succession of still higher spheres from whence they can no more descend

to traverse the circles of those globes and stars which float in a less

pure atmosphere."[178]

At New Grange in Ireland, and elsewhere on prehistoric rock tombs, there

may be seen carvings of a ship or solar barque frequently in

juxtaposition to a solar disc, and the similarity of these designs to

the solar ship of Egypt has frequently been remarked. The Egyptian

believed that after death his soul would be allowed to enter the land of

the Sun, and that in the company of the Gods he would then sail into the

source of immortal Light: hence he placed model boats in the tombs,

sometimes in pairs which were entitled Truth and Righteousness, and

prayed: "Come to the Earth, draw nigh, O boat of Ra, make the boat to

travel, O Mariners of Heaven".

It is no doubt this same Holy Pair of Virtues that suckled the Child

Albine, and that are represented as two streams of nourishment in the

emblem herewith.

[Illustration: FIG. 44.--From the title-page of a

seventeenth-century publication of a Cambridge

printer.]

That the British were enthusiastic astronomers is testified by Cæsar,

who states that the Druids held a great many discourses about the stars

and their motion,[179] about the size of the world and various

countries, about the nature of things, about the power and might of the

immortal gods, and that they instructed the youths in these subjects. It

is equally certain that the British reverenced Sun and Fire not merely

materially but as emblems of the Something behind Matter. "Think not,"

said a tenth-century Persian, "that our fathers were adorers of fire;

for that element was only an exalted object on the lustre of which they

fixed their eyes. They humbled themselves before God, and if thy

understanding be ever so little exerted thou must acknowledge thy

dependence on the Being supremely pure." Among the sacred traditions of

the Hindus which are assigned by competent scholars to 2400 B.C. occurs

what is known as the holiest verse of the Vedas. This reads: "Let us

adore the supremacy of that Divine Sun the Deity who illumines all, from

whom all proceed, are renovated, and to whom all must return, whom we

invoke to direct our intellects aright in our progress towards His holy

Seat". It is quite permissible to cite this Hindu evidence as Hindus and

Celts were alike branches of the same Aryan family, and between Druids

and Brahmins there has, apart from etymology,[180] been traced the same

affinity as existed between the Druids and the Magi.

The primeval symbolism of Fire as Love and Light as Intellect is stamped

indelibly on language, yet like most things which are ever seen it is

now never seen. We say "I see" instead of "I understand"; we speak of

throwing light on a subject or of warm affection, yet in entire

forgetfulness of the old ideas underlying such phraseology. When

Christianity came westward it was compelled to take over almost intact

most of the customs of aboriginal paganry, notably the Cult of Fire.

The sacred fire of St. Bridget was kept going at Kildare until the

thirteenth century when it was suppressed by the Archbishop of Dublin.

It was, however, relighted and maintained by the nineteen nuns of St.

Bridget--the direct descendants of nineteen prehistoric nuns or

Druidesses--until the time of the Reformation, when it was finally

extinguished.

In old Irish MSS. Brigit--who was represented Madonna-like, with a child

in her arms--is entitled "The Presiding Care". The name of her father,

Dagda Mor, is said by Celtic scholars to mean "The Great Good Fire"; the

dandelion is called "St. Bride's Forerunner," and in Gaelic its name is

"Little Flame of God".

We have it on the authority of Shakespeare that "Fairies use flowers for

their charactery," whence probably the pink with its pinked or ray-like

petals was a flower of Pan on High. _Dianthus_, the Greek for pink,

means "divine" or "day flower," and like the daisy or Day's Eye the

Pansy was in all probability deemed to be Pan's eye. Among the list of

Elphin names with which, complained Reginald Scott, "our mothers' maids

have so frayed us,"[181] he includes "Pans" and the "_First_ Fairy" in

Lyly's _The Maid's Metamorphosis_, introduces himself by the remark, "My

name is Penny". To this primary elf may perhaps be assigned the plant

name Pennyroyal, and his haunts may be assumed at various Pennyfields,

Pandowns, and Bunhills.

Some authorities maintain that Bonfire is a corruption of Bonefire, or

fire of bones. But bones will not burn, and the "Blessing Fire,"

Bonfire, Good Fire, or Beltane is still worshipped in Brittany under the

Celtic name of _Tan Tad_ or _Fire Father_. In Brittany there exists to

this day a worship of the Druidic Fire Father, which in its elaborate

ritual preserves seemingly the exact spirit and ceremony of prehistoric

fire-worship. In Provence the grandfather sets the Christmas log alight,

the youngest child pours wine over it, then amid shouts of joy the log

is put upon the fire-dogs and its first flame is awaited with reverence.

This instance is the more memorable by reason of the prayer which has

survived in connection with the ceremony and has been thus quoted in

_Notes and Queries_: "Mix the brightness of thy flames with that of our

hearts, and maintain among us peace and good health. Warm with thy fire

the feet of orphans and of sick old men. Guard the house of the poor,

and do not destroy the hopes of the peasant or the seaman's boat."

The instances of Bonfire or Beltane customs collected by the author of

_The Golden Bough_ clearly evince their original sanctity. In Greece

women jumped over the all-purifying flames crying, "I leave my sins

behind me," and notwithstanding the strenuous efforts of Christianity to

persuade our forefathers that all who worship fire "shall go in misery

to sore punishment," the cult of Fire still continues in out-of-the-way

parts even now. To this day children in Ireland are passed through the

fire by being caught up and whisked over it, my authority for which

statement observing: "We have here apparently an exact repetition of the

worship described in the Old Testament and an explanation of it, for

there the idolatrous Israelites are described as passing their sons and

their daughters through the fire. This the writer always thought was

some purifying cruel observance, but it seems that it could be done

without in any way hurting the children."[182]

Not only the ritual of fire, but also its ethics have largely survived,

notably in Ireland, where it was customary to ask for fire from a

priest's house. But if the priest refused, as he usually did, in order

to discountenance superstition, then the fire was asked from the

happiest man, _i.e._, the best living person in the parish. When

lighting a candle it was customary in England to say "May the Lord send

us the Light of Heaven," and when putting it out, "May the Lord renew

for us the Light of Heaven".

Originally the Persians worshipped the sacred fire only upon hill-tops,

a custom for which Bryant acidly assigns the following reason: "The

people who prosecuted this method of worship enjoyed a soothing

infatuation which flattered the gloom of superstition. The eminences to

which they retired were lonely and silent and seemed to be happily

circumstanced for contemplation and prayer. They who frequented them

were raised above the lower world and fancied that they were brought

into the vicinity of the powers of the air and of the Deity, who resided

in the higher regions."

The Druids, like the Persians, worshipped upon hill-tops or the highest

ground, doubtless because they regarded these as symbols of the Most

High, and there is really nothing in the custom flattering either to

gloom or superstition:--

Mountains are altars rais'd to God by hands

Omnipotent, and man must worship there.

On their aspiring summits _glad_ he stands

And near to Heaven.

If our ancestors were unable to find a convenient highland, they made an

artificial mound, and such was the sacred centre or sanctuary of all

tribal activities. The celebrated McAlpine laws of Scotland were

promulgated from the Mote of Urr, which remarkable construction will be

illustrated in a later chapter.

Not only in Homeric Greece, but universally, Kings and Chiefs were once

treated and esteemed as Sun-gods. "Think not," said a Maori chief to a

missionary, "that I am a man, that my origin is of the earth. I come

from the Heavens; my ancestors are all there; they are gods, and I shall

return to them".[183] The notion of Imperial divinity is not yet dead;

it was flourishing in England to Stuart times, and though the spirit may

now have fled, its traces still remain in our regal ceremonial. In the

Indian Code known as the Laws of Manu, the superstition is thus

enunciated: "Because a King has been formed of particles of those Lords

of the gods, he therefore surpasses all created beings in lustre, and

like the Sun he burns eyes and hearts; nor can anybody on earth even

gaze at him. Through his power he is Fire and Wind, he the Sun and Moon,

he the Lord of Justice, he Kubera, he Varuna, he Great Indra. Even an

infant King must not be despised that he is mortal; for he is a great

deity in human form."[184]

It is obvious that the British carried this conception of the innate

divinity of man much farther than merely to the personalities of kings.

The word _soul_, Dutch _ziel_, is probably the French word _ciel_; to

work with _zeal_ is to throw one's _soul_ into it. That the Celts, like

the Chinese or Celestials, equated the _soul_ with the _ciel_ or the

Celestial, believing, as expressed by Taliesin, the famous British Bard,

that "my original country is the region of the summer stars," is

unquestionable. Max Müller supposed that the word _soul_ was derived

from the Greek root _seio_, to shake. "It meant," he says, "the

storm-tossed waters in contradistinction to stagnant or running water.

The soul being called _saivala_ (Gothic), we see that it was originally

conceived by the Teutonic nations as a sea within, heaving up and down

with every breath and reflecting heaven and earth on the mirror of the

deep."

Whatever the Teutonic nations may have fancied about their souls is

irrelevant to the Druidic teaching, which was something quite different.

In A.D. 45, a Roman author stated that the Druids (who did not flourish

in Germany) taught many things privately, but that _one_ of their

precepts had become public, to wit, that man should act bravely in war,

that souls are immortal, and that there is another life after death.

There is additional testimony to the effect that the Druids of the Isle

of Man, or Eubonia, "raised their minds to the most sublime inquiries,

and despising human and worldly affairs strongly pressed upon their

disciples the immortality of the soul". "Before all things," confirmed

Cæsar, "they (the Druids) are desirous to inspire a belief that men's

souls do not perish." That they successfully inspired this cardinal

doctrine is proved by the fact that among the Celts it was not uncommon

to lend money on the understanding that it should be repaid in the next

world. It is further recorded that the Britons had such an utter

disregard of death that they sang cheerily when marching into battle,

and in the words of an astonished Roman, _Mortem pro joco habent_--"They

turn death into a joke".

It was the belief of the Celt that immediately at death man assumed a

spiritual replica of his earthly body and passed into what was termed

the Land of the Living, the White Land, or the Great Strand, or The

Great Land, and many other titles. An Elphin Land, where there was

neither death nor old age, nor any breach of law, where he heard the

noble and melodious music of the gods, travelled from realm to realm,

drank from crystal cups, and entertained himself with his beloved. In

this Fairyland of happy souls he supposed the virtuous and brave to roam

among fields covered with sweet flowers, and amid groves laden with

delicious fruits. Here some, as their taste inclined, wandered in happy

groups, some reclined in pleasant bowers, while others exercised

themselves with hunting, wrestling, running races, martial feats, and

other manly exercises. No one grew old in this Abode, nor did the

inhabitants feel tedious of enjoyment or know how the centuries passed

away. In this spiritual Land of Immortal Youth "wherein is delight of

every goodness," and "where only truth is known," there was believed to

be "neither age, nor decay; nor gloom, nor sadness, nor envy, nor

jealousy, nor hatred, nor haughtiness"; in short, the Fairyland or

Paradise of the Britons coincided exactly with the celestial garden of

the Persians wherein, it is said, there was "no impotent, no lunatic, no

poverty, no lying, no meanness, no jealousy, no decayed tooth, no

leprous to be confined," nor any of the brands wherewith evil stamps the

bodies of mortals.

To this day the unsophisticated Celts of Britain and Brittany believe in

this doctrine of a heavenly hereafter, and the conception of an

all-surrounding "Good People" and elemental spirits is still vividly

alive. In England fairies were known as Mawmets, meaning "little

mothers," and in Wales as _y mamau_, which means "the mothers". They

were also known as "mothers' blessings".

To the early Christian preachers the "gentry" and the "good people" were

the troops of Satan continually to be combated and exorcised, but it was

a hard task to dispel the exquisite images of the fairy-paradise,

substituting in lieu of it the monkish purgatory. There is a tale extant

of how St. Patrick once upon a time tried to convince Oisin that the

hero Fingal was roasting in hell. "If," cried out the old Fenian, "the

children of Morni and the many tribes of the clan Ovi were alive, we

would force brave Fingal out of hell or the habitation should be our

own."

Not only did the British believe that their friends were in Elysium, but

they likewise supposed themselves to be under the personal and immediate

guardianship of the "gentry". The Rev. S. Baring-Gould refers to the

beautiful legends which centre around this belief as too often, alas,

but apples of Sodom, fair cheeked, but containing the dust and ashes of

heathenism. After lamenting the heresy--"too often current among the

lower orders and dissenters"--that the souls of the departed become

angels, he goes on to explain: "In Judaic and Christian doctrine the

angel creation is distinct from that of human beings, and a Jew or a

Catholic would as little dream of confusing the distinct conception of

angel and soul as of believing in metempsychosis. But not so dissenting

religion. According to Druidic dogma the souls of the dead were

guardians of the living, a belief shared with the Ancient Indians, etc.

Thus the hymn, 'I want to be an Angel,' so popular in dissenting

schools, is founded on a venerable Aryan myth and therefore of exceeding

interest, but Christian it is not."[185]

Lucan, the Roman poet, alluding to the Druids observed--

If dying mortals doom they sing aright,

No ghosts descend to dwell in dreadful night

No parting souls to grisly Pluto go

Nor seek the dreary silent shades below,

But forth they fly immortal to their kind

And other bodies in new worlds they find.

[Illustration: FIG. 45.--From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]

The symbolism of the butterfly is crystallised in the word _psyche_,

which in Greek meant not only _butterfly_ but also _soul_, and to this

day butterflies in some districts of Great Britain are considered to be

souls, though this may have arisen not from an ethereal imagination, but

from the ancient doctrine of metemphsychosis which the Druids seemingly

held. It was certainly believed that souls, like serpents, shed their

old coverings and assumed newer and more lovely forms, that all things

changed, but that nothing perished. In Cornwall moths, regarded by some

as souls, by others as fairies, are known as pisgies or piskies. The

connection between the Cornish words _pisgie_ or _piskie_ and the Greek

_psyche_ has been commented upon as being "curious but surely casual".

Grimm has recorded that in old German, the caterpillar was named Alba,

and that the Alp often takes the form of a butterfly.[186]

Referring to Ossian, Dr. Waddell states: "He recognised the Deity, if he

could be said to recognise him at all, as an omnipresent vital essence

everywhere diffused in the world, or centred for a lifetime in heroes.

He himself, his kindred, his forefathers, and the human race at large

were dependent solely on the atmosphere, their souls were identified

with the air, heaven was their natural home, earth their temporary

residence."

But, though certainly upholders of what would nowadays be termed

complacently "the Larger Hope," it was certainly not supposed that evil

was capable of admittance to the Land of Virtues: on the contrary, the

Celts believed firmly in the existence of an underworld which their

poets termed "the cruel prison of the earth," "the abode of death," "the

loveless land," etc.

According to the Bardic Triads there were "Three things that make a man

equal to an angel; the love of every good; the love of exercising

charity; and the love of pleasing God". It was further inculcated that

"In creation there is no evil which is not a greater good than an evil:

the things called rewards or punishments are so secured by eternal

ordinances, that they are not consequences, but properties of our acts

and habits."

It was not imagined as it is to-day that "the awful wrath of God" could

be assuaged by the sacrifice of an innocent man, or that--

Believe in Christ, who died for thee,

And sure as He hath died,

Thy debt is paid, thy soul is free,

And thou art justified.[187]

It is still the doctrine of the Christian Church that infants dying

unbaptised are doomed to hell, but to the British this barbaric dogma

evidently never appealed. In the fifth century the peace of the Church

was vastly disturbed by the insidious heresy called Pelasgian, and it is

a matter of some distinction to these islands that "Pelasgus," whose

correct name was Morgan, was British-born. Morgan or Pelasgus, seconded

by Coelestius, an Irish Scot, wilfully but gracelessly maintained that

Adam's sin affected only himself, not his posterity; that children at

their birth are as pure and innocent as Adam was at his creation, and

that the Grace of God is not necessary to enable men to do their duty,

to overcome temptations, or even to attain perfection, but that they may

do all this by the freedom of their own wills. A Council of 214 Bishops,

held at Carthage, formally condemned these pestilent and insidious

doctrines which, according to a commentator, "strike at the root of

genuine piety".

There is no known etymology for the words _God_ and _good_, and some

years ago it was a matter of divided opinion whether or not they were

radically the same. In Danish the two terms are identical, and there is

very little doubt that the one is an adjective derived from the other.

Max Müller, however, sums up the contrary opinion as follows: "God was

most likely an old heathen name of the Deity and for such a name the

supposed etymological meaning of _good_ would be far too modern, too

abstract, too Christian".

One might ignore this marvellous complacency were it not for the fact

that it still expresses the opinion of a considerable majority. To

refute the presumption that Christianity alone is capable of abstract

thought, or of conceiving God as good, one need only turn to any

primitive philosophy. It is, however, needless to look further afield

than pagan Albion. Strabo alludes to the Druidic teaching as "moral

science," and no phrase better defines the pith and dignity of certain

British Triads. It was daringly maintained that God cannot be matter,

therefore everything not matter was God: that:--

In every person there is a soul,

In every soul there is intelligence:

In every intelligence there is thought,

In every thought there is either good or evil:

In every evil there is death:

In every good there is life,

In every life there is God.[188]

The Bards of Britain, who claimed to maintain the "sciences" of piety,

wisdom, and courtesy, taught that--the three principal properties of the

Hidden God were "Power, knowledge, and love": that the three purposes of

God in his works were "to consume the evil; to enliven the dead; and to

cause joy from doing good": that the three ways in which God worked

were "experience, wisdom, and mercy".

It will be observed that all these axioms are in three clauses, and it

was claimed by the Welsh Bards of the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth,

and fifteenth centuries that they possessed many similar Triads or

threefold precepts which had been handed down by memory and tradition

from immemorial times.[189] It is generally accepted by competent

scholars that the Welsh Triads, particularly the poems attributed to

"Taliesin," undoubtedly contain a great deal of pagan and pre-Christian

doctrine, but to what extent this material has been garbled and alloyed

is, of course, a matter of uncertainty and dispute. In some instances

external and internal evidence testify alike to their authenticity. For

example, Diogenes Laertius, who died in A.D. 222, stated: "The Druids

philosophise sententiously and obscurely--to worship the Gods, to do no

evil, to exercise courage". This precise and comprehensive summary of

the whole duty of man is to be found among the Bardic Triads, where it

has been translated to read: "The three First Principles of Wisdom:

obedience to the laws of God, concern for the good of mankind, and

bravery in sustaining all the accidents of life".

In _Celtic Heathendom_ Sir John Rhys prints the following noble and

majestic prayer, of which four MSS. variants are in existence:--

Grant, O God, Thy protection;

And in Thy protection, strength,

And in strength, understanding;

And in understanding, knowledge,

And in knowledge, the knowledge of justice;

And in the knowledge of justice, the love of it,

And in that love, the love of all existences;

And in that love of all existences, the love of God.

God and all goodness.

Some have supposed that Druidism learned its secrets from the Persian

Magi, others that the Magi learnt from Druidism. Pliny, speaking of the

vanities of _Magiism_ or _Magic_, recorded that "Britain celebrates them

to-day with such ceremonies it might seem possible that she taught Magic

to the Persians". In Persian philosophy the trinity of Goodness was Good

Thought, Good Deed, and Good Word, and in Britain these Three Graces

were symbolised by the three Golden Berries of the Mistletoe or Golden

Bough. They figure alternatively as Three Golden Balls or Apples growing

on a crystal tree. The Mistletoe--sacred alike in Persia and in

Britain--was worshipped as the All-Heal, and it was termed the Ethereal

Plant, because alone among the vegetable creation it springs etherially

in mid-air, and not from earth. Among the adventures of Prince Conneda

of Connaught--the young and lovely son of Great and Good King Conn and

Queen Eda--was a certain quest involving the most strenuous seeking.

Aided by a Druid, the youthful Conneda carried with him a small bottle

of extracted All-Heal, and was led forward by a magic ball, which rolled

ever in advance. The story (or rather allegory, for it is obviously

such) tells us that the Three Golden Apples were plucked from the

Crystal Tree in the midst of the pleasure garden, and deposited by

Conneda in his bosom. On returning home Conneda planted the Three Golden

Apples in his garden, and instantly a great tree bearing similar fruit

sprang up. This tree caused all the district to produce an exuberance of

crops and fruits, so that the neighbourhood became as fertile and

plentiful as the dominion of the Firbolgs, in consequence of the

extraordinary powers possessed by the Golden Fruit.[190]

The trefoil or shamrock (figured constantly in Crete) was another symbol

of the Three in One, and I have little doubt that at Tara there once

existed a picture of St. Patrick holding this almost world-wide emblem.

Tara is the same word as _tri_ or _three_ and in Faërie this number is

similarly sacred. The Irish used to march in battle in threes, the

Celtic _mairae_ or fairy mothers were generally figured in groups of

three, and the gown of the Fairy Queen is said to have been--

Of pansy, pink, and primrose leaves,

Most curiously laid on in _threaves_.[191]

The word shamrock in Persian is _shamrakh_, and three to four thousand

years ago a Persian poet hymned: "We worship the pure, the Lord of

purity. We worship the universe of the true spirit, visible, invisible,

and all that sustains the welfare of the good creation. We praise all

good thoughts, all good words, all good deeds, which are and will be,

and keep pure all that is good. Thou true and happy Being! we strive to

think, to speak, to do only what, of all actions, may promote the two

lives, the body and the mind. We beseech the spirit of earth, by means

of these best works (agriculture) to grant us beautiful and fertile

fields, for believer and unbeliever, for rich and poor. We worship the

Wise One who formed and furthered the spirit of the earth. We worship

Him with our bodies and souls. We worship Him as being united with the

spirits of pure men and women. We worship the promotion of all good, all

that is very beautiful, shining, immortal, bright, everything that is

good."

The alleged author of this invocation to the God of Goodness and Beauty

lived certainly as early as 1200 B.C., some think 2000 B.C.: the hymn

itself was collected into its present canon during the fourth century of

this era, but, like the British Triads and all other Bardic lore, it is

supposed to have been long orally preserved. It is perfectly legitimate

to compare the literature of Ancient Persia with that of Britain, for

the religious systems of the two countries were admittedly almost

identical; and until recently Persia was the most generally accepted

cradle of the Aryans.

It is impossible to suppose that the earliest compilers and transcribers

of the British Triads had access to the MSS. of the hymn just quoted;

yet while Persian tradition records, "We worship the promotion of all

good, all that is very beautiful, shining, immortal, bright, everything

that is good," the British Bards seemingly worshipped the promotion of

all good, in fact the Three Ultimate Objects of Bardism are on record as

being "to reform morals and customs; to secure peace and _praise

everything that is good and excellent_".

British literature, British folklore, and British custom, all alike

refute Max Müller's preposterous supposition that the equation _God =

Good_ is "far too modern, too abstract, too Christian," and there is

manifestly some evidence in favour of the probability that Giant Albion

was worshipped as the _Holy Good_ and the _All Good_. There is no known

tribe of savages that is destitute of some code of ethics, and it is

seemingly a world-wide paradox that spiritual wisdom and low

civilisation can, and often do, exist concurrently. Side by side with

the childish notions of modern savages, one finds, not infrequently,

what Andrew Lang termed, "astonishing metaphysical hymns about the first

stirrings of light in darkness, of becoming, of being, which remind us

of Hegel and Heraclitus".[192] The sacred Books of Christendom emanated

from one of the crudest and least cultivated of all the subject races of

the Roman Empire. It is self-evident that the Hebrews were a predatory

and semi-savage tribe who conceived their Divinity as vengeful, cursing,

swearing, vomiting, his fury coming up into his face, and his nostrils

smoking; nevertheless, as in the Psalms and elsewhere, are some of the

noblest and most lofty conceptions of Holiness and Beauty.

As a remarkable instance of this seeming universal paradox, one may

refer to Micah, a Hebrew, whose work first appeared in writing about 300

B.C. There is in Micah some of the best philosophy ever penned, yet the

status of the tribe among whom he lived and to whom he addressed

himself, was barbarous and brutal. Of this, an example is found in

Chapter III, where the prophet writes: "And I said, Hear I pray you, O

heads of Jacob and ye princes of the house of Israel; Is it not for you

to know judgement? who hate the good, and love the evil; who pluck off

their skin off them, and their flesh from off their bones; who also eat

the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them, and they

break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh

within the caldron".

As a parallel to this cannibalism it is thus quite conceivable that

while some of the MacAlpines were lauding Albani, others were larding

their weaker brethren for the laird's table: but the whole trend of

Alban custom and Alban literature renders the supposition unlikely.

There is extant a British Triad inculcating the three maxims for good

health as "cheerfulness, temperance, and early rising". There is another

enunciating the three cares that should occupy the mind of every man as:

"To worship God, to avoid injuring any one, and to act justly towards

every living thing". The latter of these is curiously reminiscent of

Micah's Triadic utterance: "He hath showed thee O man what is good, and

what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and

walk humbly with God".

FOOTNOTES:

[140] Toland, _History of the Druids_, p. 428.

[141] _Cf._ Poste, B., _Britannic Researches_, p. 110.

[142] _The Lost Language of Symbolism_, 1912.

[143] The earliest example of Irish Bardism is to the following

effect:--

I invoke thee Erin

Brilliant Brilliant sea,

Fertile Fertile Hill,

Wavy Wavy Wood

Flowing Flowing stream,

Fishy Fishy Lake, etc.

[144] Haslam, W., _Perran Zabuloe_, p. 8.

[145] _Survey of London_, Ev. Lib., p. 132.

[146] _Golden Legend_, III, 248.

[147] Skeat postulates a mute vowel by deriving _lazar_ or leper

from _Eleazer_--_He whom God assists_.

[148] _Extinct Civilisations of the East_, p. 104.

[149] I have a chapter of evidence in MSS. supporting this

suggestion.

[150] Frazer, Sir J. G., _Folklore in the Old Testament_, iii., 45.

[151] Bulfinch put the horse before the cart when he wrote: "As the

name of the god signifies _all_, Pan came to be considered a

symbol of the universe and personification of nature."

[152] Wavrin, John de, _Chronicles_.

[153] This name is supposed to have meant a miser or father of

pennies. The _penny_ is said to have been so named from the

_pen_ or _head_ figured upon it.

[154] Hone, W., _Everyday Book_, i., col. 566.

[155] The _New English Dictionary_ notes the following "forms" of

"pigeon," _pejon_, _pejoun_, _pegion_, _pegyon_, _pigin_,

_pigen_, _pigion_, _pygon_. The supposed connection between

pigeon and _pipio_, "I chirp," is surely remote, for young

pigeons do not "chirp".

[156] Mrs. Hamilton Gray in _The Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria_,

writes: "I was particularly struck with one large carved

group, which bore a greater resemblance to a Hindoo

representation of a trinity than anything not Indian I have

ever seen. Did we not know the thing to be impossible, I

should be tempted on the strength of this sculptured stone to

assert that Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu must at some former

period have found adorers in Etruria. Three monstrous faces,

growing together, one full face in the middle and a profile

on each side" (p. 309).

[157] The official etymology of _June_ is "probably from root of

Latin _juvenis_, _junior_," but where is the sense in this?

[158] Baring-Gould, S., _Curious Myths_, p. 5.

[159] _Curious Myths_, p. 23.

[160] Gray, Mrs. Hamilton, _Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria_, pp.

187, 189.

[161] _Hell._, c. xx.

[162] Yeats, W. B., _Fairy and Folk-tales of the Irish Peasantry_,

p. 306.

[163] "Theta," _The Thorn Tree, being a History of Thorn Worship_.

London, 1863, p. 127.

[164] _Faërie Queene_, Book XI., c. ix., st. 70-71.

[165] Hone, W., _Everyday Book_, 111., col. 27.

[166] Keightley, T., _Fairy Mythology_, p. 138.

[167] Davies, E., _Myth of Brit. Druids_, pp. 203, 204.

[168] Baring-Gould, _Curious Myths_, p. 194.

[169] Spence, Lewis, _Myths of Mexico and Peru_, p. 170.

[170] P. 159.

[171] _Surnames_, p. 230.

[172] The ecclesiastical _raison d'être_ for St. Andrew's situation

is stated as having been "_to the end that his pain should

endure the longer_".

[173] "Diogenes Lærtius, in the proem of his philosophical history,

reckons the Druids among the chief authors of the barbarous

theology and philosophy, long anterior to the Greeks, their

disciples: and Phurnutus, in his treatise of the Nature of

the Gods, says most expressly that among the many and various

fables which the antient Greecs had about the Gods, some were

derived from the Mages, the Africans, and Phrygians, and

others from other nations: for which he cites Homer as a

witness, nor is there anything that bears a greater witness

to itself."--Toland, _History of Druids_. London, 1814, p.

106.

[174] _Ancient Britain_, p. 284.

[175] Keightley, _Fairy Mythology_, p. 818.

[176] Anon., _The Fairy Family_, 1857.

[177] Keightley, _Fairy Mythology_, pp. 25, 441.

[178] Quoted from Davies, E., _Celtic Researches_, p. 560.

[179] Livy mentions that during the Macedonian War a Gaulish

soldier foretold an eclipse of the moon to the Roman Army

(Liber XLIV., c. xxxvii.).

[180] "A few years ago it would have been deemed the height of

absurdity to imagine that the English and the Hindus were

originally one people, speaking the same language, and

clearly distinguished from other families of mankind; and yet

comparative philology has established this fact by evidence

as clear and irresistible as that the earth revolves round

the sun."--Smith, Dr. Wm., _Lectures on the English

Language_, p. 2.

[181] Keightley, _Fairy Mythology_, p. 290.

[182] Canon ffrench, _Prehistoric Faith in Ireland_, p. 80.

[183] _Cf._ Frazer, Sir J. G., _Psyche's Task_, pp. 7, 14.

[184] _Cf._ _Ibid._

[185] _Curious Myths_, p. 557.

[186] _Cf._ Keightley, T., _Fairy Mythology_, p. 298.

[187] There is a certain section of Christianity that still revels

in hymns such as the following:--

"His nostrils breathe out fiery streams,

He's a consuming fire,

His jealous eyes His wrath inflame

And raise His vengeance higher."

[188] This and the several subsequent quotations from Bardic

"Philosophy" are taken from the collection published in 1862,

by the Welsh MSS. Society, under the title _Barddas_.

Whatever may be the precise date of these axioms the ideas

they express well repay careful consideration.

[189] According to Cæsar the Druidic philosophy was transmitted

orally for the purpose of strengthening the memory. The

disciples of Pythagoras followed a similar precept, hence

when the majority of them were destroyed in a fire the axioms

of Pythagoras were largely lost. That the traditional tales

of Ireland were maintained in their verbal integrity for

untold years is implied by Mr. Yeats' statement: "In the

Parochial Survey of Ireland it is recorded how the

story-tellers used to gather together of an evening, and if

any had a different version from the others, they would all

recite theirs and vote, and the man who had varied would have

to abide by their verdict. In this way stories have been

handed down with such accuracy, that the long tale of Dierdre

was, in the earlier decades of this century, told almost word

for word, as in the very ancient MSS. in the Royal Dublin

Society. In one case only it varied, and then the MSS. was

obviously wrong--a passage had been forgotten by the copyist.

But this accuracy is rather in the folk and bardic tales than

in the fairy legends, for these vary widely, being usually

adapted to some neighbouring village or local fairy-seeing

celebrity."--Yeats, W. B., _Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish

Peasantry_, p. 11.

[190] _Cf._ Yeats, W.B., _Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish

Peasantry_, p. 318.

[191] Keightley, T., _Fairy Mythology_, p. 346.

[192] _Myth, Ritual and Religion_, 1. 186.