DOWN UNDER.
"It is our duty to begin research even if we have to penetrate many
a labyrinth leading to nowhere and to lament the loss of many a
plausible system. A false theory negatived is a positive
result."--THOS. J. WESTROPP.
In the year 1585 a curious occurrence happened at the small hamlet of
Mottingham in Kent: betimes in the morning of 4th August the ground
began to sink, so much so that three great elm trees in a certain field
were swallowed up into a pit of about 80 yards in circumference and by
ten o'clock no part of them could be seen. This cavity then filled with
water of such depth that a sounding line of 50 fathoms could hardly find
or feel any bottom: still more alarming grew the situation when in an
adjacent field another piece of ground sunk in like manner near the
highway and "so nigh a dwelling house that the inhabitants were greatly
terrified therewith".[905]
To account for a subsidence much deeper than an elm tree one must
postulate a correspondingly lofty _soutterrain_: the precise spot at
Mottingham where these subsidences are recorded was known as Fairy Hill,
and I have little doubt that like many other Dunhills this particular
Fairy Hill was honeycombed or hollowed. Almost every Mottingham[906] or
Maiden's Home consisted not only of the characteristic surface features
noted in the preceding chapter, but in addition the thoroughly ideal
Maiden's Home went down deep into the earth: in Ireland the children of
Don were popularly reputed to dwell in palaces _underground_; similarly
in Crete the Great Mother--the Earth Mother associated with circles and
caves, the goddess of birth and death, of fertility and fate, the
ancestress of all mankind--was assumed to gather the ghosts of her
progeny to her abode in the Underworld.[907]
Caves and caverns play a prime and elementary part in the mythologies of
the world: their role is literally vital, for it was believed that the
Life of the World, in the form of the Young Sun, was born yearly anew on
25th December, always in a cave: thus caves were invariably sacred to
the Dawn or God of Light, and only secondarily to the engulfing powers
of Darkness; from the simple cell, _kille_, or little church gradually
evolved the labyrinthine catacomb and the stupendous rock-temple.
The County of Kent is curiously rich in caves which range in importance
from the mysterious single _Dene_ Hole to the amazing honeycomb of
caverns which underlie Chislehurst and Blackheath: a network of caves
exists beneath Trinity Church, Margate; moreover, in Margate is a
serpentine grotto decorated with a wonderful mosaic of shell-work which,
so far as I am able to ascertain, is unique and unparalleled. The grotto
at Margate is situated in the Dene or Valley underneath an eminence now
termed _Dane_ Hill: one of the best known of the Cornish so-called
Giant's Holts is that situated in the grounds of the Manor House of
Pen_deen_, not in a dene or valley, but on the high ground at Pendeen
Point. In Cornish _pen_ meant head or point, whence Pendeen means _Deen
Headland_, and one again encounters the word _dene_ in the mysterious
Dene holes or Dane holes found so plentifully in Kent: these are
supposed to have been places of refuge from the Danes, but they
certainly never were built for that purpose, for the discovery within
them of flint, bone, and bronze relics proves them to be of neolithic
antiquity.
There must be some close connection in idea between the serpentine
grotto in The _Dane_, Margate, the subterranean chamber at Pen_deen_,
Cornwall, the Kentish _Dene_ Holes and the mysterious tunnellings in the
neighbourhood of County _Down_, Ireland: these last were described by
Borlase as follows: "All this part of Ireland abounds with Caves not
only under mounts, forts, and castles, but under plain fields, some
winding into little hills and risings like a volute or ram's horn,
others run in zigzag like a serpent; others again right forward
connecting cell with cell. The common Irish think they are skulking
holes of the Danes after they had lost their superiority in that
Island."[908] They may conceivably have served this purpose, but it is
more probable that these mysterious tunnellings were the supposed
habitations of the subterranean Tuatha te Danaan, _i.e._, the Children
of _Don_ or _Danu_.
[Illustration: FIG. 462.--Ground plan of a section of the Chislehurst
caves, from an article by Mr. W. J. Nichols, published
in _The Journal of the British Archæological
Association_, 1903.]
In County Down we have a labyrinthine connection of cell with cell, and
in some parts of Kent the same principle appears to have been at work
culminating in the extraordinary subterranean labyrinth known as "The
Chislehurst Caves": these quarryings, hewn out of the chalk, cover in
seemingly unbroken sequence--superposed layer upon layer--an enormous
area, under the Chislehurst district: between 20 and 30 miles of
extended burrowings have, it is said, already been located, yet it is
suspected that more remain to be discovered. Commenting upon this
extraordinary labyrinth Mr. W. J. Nichols, a Vice-President of the
British Archæological Association, has observed: "Not far from this
shaft we see one of the most interesting sights that these caves can
show us: a series of galleries, with rectangular crossings, containing
many chambers of semicircular, or apsidal form, to the number of thirty
or more--some having altar-tables formed in the chalk, within a point or
two of true orientation. This may be accidental, but the fact remains;
and the theory is supported by the discovery of an adjoining chamber,
apparently intended for the officiating priest. There is an air of
profound mystery pervading the place: a hundred indications suggest that
it was a subterranean Stonehenge; and one is struck with a sense of
wonder, and even of awe, as the dim lamplight reveals the extraordinary
works which surround us."
In the caverns of Mithra twelve apses corresponding to the twelve signs
of the Zodiac used to be customary: the _thirty_ apses at Chislehurst
may have had some relation to the thirty dies or days, and if the number
of niches extended to thirty-three this total should be connoted with
the thirty-three elementary giants considered in an earlier chapter.
There are no signs of the Chislehurst Caverns having at any time been
used systematically as human abodes, but in other parts of the world
similar sites have been converted into villages: one such existing at
Troo in France is thus described by Baring-Gould: "What makes Troo
specially interesting is that the whole height is like a sponge
perforated with passages giving access to halls, some of which are
circular and lead into stone chambers; and most of the houses are wholly
or in part underground. The caves that are inhabited are staged one
above another, some reached by stairs that are little better than
ladders, and the subterranean passages leading from them form a
labyrinth within the bowels of the hill and run in superposed
stories."[909] The name of this subterranean city of Troo may be
connected with _trou_, the French generic term for a hole or pit: the
Provençal form of _trou_ is _trauc_, which etymologists identify with
_traugum_, the Latin for a cave or den. The Latin _traugum_ (origin
unknown) is radically the same as _troglos_, the Greek for a cave,
whence the modern term _troglodite_ or cave dweller, and it is not
unlikely that the _dene_ of _denehole_ is the same word as _den_: the
Provençal _trauc_ may be connoted with the English place-name Thurrock,
which is on the Essex side of the river Thames, and is famous for the
large number of deneholes that still exist there.
The place-name Thurrock and the word _trauc_, meaning a cave, may
evidently be equated with the two first syllables of _traugum_ and
_troglos_. According to my theories the primitive meaning of _tur og_
was Eternal, or _Enduring Og_, and it is thus a felicitous coincidence
that Og, the famous King of Bashan, was a troglodite: the ruins of his
capital named Edrei, which was situated in the Zanite Hills, still
exist, and are thus described by a modern explorer: "We took with us a
box of matches and two candles. After we had gone down the slope for
some time, we came to a dozen rooms which, at present, are used as goat
stalls and store-rooms for straw. The passage became gradually smaller,
until at last we were compelled to lie down flat and creep along. This
extremely difficult and uncomfortable progress lasted for about eight
minutes, when we were obliged to jump down a steep well, several feet in
depth. Here I noticed that the younger of my two attendants had remained
behind, being afraid to follow us; but probably it was more from fear of
the unknown European, than of the dark and winding passages before us.
We now found ourselves in a broad street, which had dwellings on both
sides, whose height and width left nothing to be desired. The
temperature was mild, the air free from unpleasant odours, and I felt
not the smallest difficulty in breathing. Further along there were
several cross-streets, and my guide called my attention to a hole in the
ceiling for air, like three others which I afterwards saw, now closed
from above. Soon after we came to a market-place, where, for a long
distance, on both sides of the pretty broad street were numerous shops
in the walls, exactly in the style of the shops seen in Syrian cities.
After a while we turned into a side street, where a great hall, whose
roof was supported by four pillars, attracted my attention. The roof, or
ceiling, was formed of a single slab of jasper, perfectly smooth and of
immense size, in which I was unable to perceive the slightest
crack."[910] The here-described holes in the ceiling for air "now closed
from above" correspond very closely to the shafts running up here and
there from the Chislehurst caves to the private gardens overhead.
In connection with the troglodite town of Troo, and with the French word
_trou_ meaning a hole, it is worthy of note that a subterranean chamber
or "Giant's Holt," exists at _Trew_ in Cornwall, and a similar one at
the village of _Trew_oofe: the name Trewoofe suggests the word
_trough_, a generic term for a scooped or hollowed-out receptacle: we
have already noted that in the west of England a small ship is still
called a _trow_; the Anglo-Saxon for a trough was _troh_, the German is
_trog_, the Danish is _trug_, and the Swedish _trag_.
The artificial cave at _Trewoofe_ also suggests a connection with the
famous Cave-oracle in Livadia known as the Den of _Trophonius_: this
celebrated oracle contained small niches for the reception of
gift-offerings and there are curious little wall-holes in some of the
Cornish _souterrains_ which cannot, so far as one can judge, have filled
any other purpose than that served by the niches in the Cave of
Trophonius. The calcareous mountain in which the oracle of Trophonius
was situated is tunnelled by a number of other excavations, but over the
entrance to what is believed to be the veritable prophetic grotto is
graved the mysterious word CHIBOLET, or, according to others, ZEUS
BOULAIOZ, meaning ZEUS THE COUNSELLOR. The Greek for _counsellor_ is
_bouleutes_, and the radical _bouleut_ of this term is curiously
suggestive of Bolleit, the name applied to _two_ of the Cornish
subterranean chambers, _i.e._, the Bolleit Cave in the parish of St.
Eval and the Bolleit Cave near St. Buryan: the latter of these sites
includes a stone circle and other monolithic remains which are believed
by antiquarians to mark the site of some battle; whence the name Bolleit
is by modern etymologers interpreted as having meant _field of blood_,
but it exceeds the bounds of coincidence that there should also be a
Bolleit cave elsewhere, and the greater probability would seem that
these Cornish _souterrains_ were sacred spots serving among other uses
the purposes of Oracle and Counsel Chambers. If the disputed
inscription over the Trophonian Den really read CHIBOLET it would decode
agreeably in accordance with my theories into CHI or Jou the COUNSELLOR;
but I am unaware that the Greek Zeus was ever known locally as Chi.[911]
The celebrated Blue John cave of Derbyshire--where we have noted Chee
Dale--is situated in _Tray_ Cliff, and in the neighbouring "Thor's Cave"
have been found the remains of prehistoric man: similar remains have
been unearthed at Thurrock where the dene holes are conspicuously
abundant, and in view of the persistent recurrence of the cave-root
_tur_ or _trou_ it is worth noting that cave making was a marked
characteristic of the people of _Tyre_: "Wherever the Tyrians
penetrated, to Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, similar burial places have been
discovered."[912] According to Baring-Gould all the subterranean
dwellings of Europe bear a marked resemblance to the troglodite town of
King Og at Edrei--a veritable Tartarus or Underworld--and the _drei_ of
Edrei is no doubt a variant of trou, Troo, Trew or Troy, for, as already
seen, in the Welsh language "Troy town" is Caer _Droia_ or Caer _Drei_.
One has to consider three forms or amplifications of the same
phenomenon: (1) the single cave; (2) several caves connected to one
another by serpentine tunnels; (3) a labyrinth or honeycomb of caves
leading one out of the other and ranged layer upon layer. Etymology and
mythology alike point to the probability, if not the certainty, that
among the ancients a cave, natural or artificial, was regarded as the
symbol of, and to some extent a facsimile of the intricate Womb of
Creation, or of Mother Nature. "Man in his primitive state," says a
recent writer, "considers himself to have emerged from some cave; in
fact, _from the entrails of the Earth_. Nearly all American
creation-myths regard men as thus emanating from the bowels of the great
terrestrial mother."[913]
[Illustration: FIG. 463.]
[Illustration: Sections of a Dene-hole and Ground Plan of Chambers.
(_Based upon a plan and description by Mr. T. V.
Holmes, F.G.S._)
FIG. 464.--From _The Chislehurst Caves_ (Nichols, W. J.).]
Fig. 463, evidently representative of the Great terrestrial Mother
holding in her hand a simple horn, the fore-runner of the later _cornu
copia_ or horn of abundance, is the outline sketch of a rock-carved
statue, 2 feet in height, discovered on the rubble-covered face of a
rock cliff in the Dordogne: this has been proved to be of Aurignacian
age and is the only yet discovered statue of any size executed by the
so-called Reindeer men; in the Chislehurst caves have been discovered
the deer horn picks of the primeval men who apparently first made them.
[Illustration: FIG. 465.--Ground plan of a group of Dene Holes in
Hangman's Wood, Kent. From a plan by Mr. A. R.
Goddard, F.S.A.]
The Kentish Dene hole is never an aimless quarrying; on the contrary it
always has a curiously specific form, dropping about 100 feet as a
narrow shaft approximately 3 feet in diameter and then opening out into
a six-fold chamber, _vide_ the plans[914] herewith. This is not a
rational or business-like form of chalk quarry, and it must have been
very difficult indeed to bucket up the output in small driblets,
transport it from the tangled heart of woods, and pack-horse it on to
galleys in the Thames: nevertheless something similar seems to have been
the procedure in Pliny's time for he tells that white chalk, or
_argentaria_, "is obtained by means of pits sunk like wells with narrow
mouths to the depth sometimes of 100 feet, when they branch out like the
veins of mines and this kind is chiefly used in Britain".[915]
In view of the fact that either chalk or flints could have been had
conveniently in unlimited quantities for shipment, either from the coast
cliffs of Albion, or if inland from the commonsense everyday form of
chalk quarry, it is difficult to suppose otherwise than that the
Deneholes--which do _not_ branch out indiscriminately like ordinary
mine-veins--were dug under superstitious or ecclesiastical control. Of
this system perhaps a parallel instance may be found in the remarkable
turquoise mines recently explored at Maghara near Sinai: "These mines,"
says a writer in _Ancient Egypt_,[916] "lie in the vicinity of two
adjacent caves facing an extensive site of burning, which has the
peculiarities of the high-places of which we hear so much in the Bible.
These caves formed a sanctuary which, judging from what is known of
ancient sanctuaries in Arabia generally, was at once a shrine and a
store house, presumably in the possession of a priesthood or clan, who,
in return for offerings brought to the shrine, gave either turquoise
itself, or the permission to mine it in the surrounding district. The
sanctuary, like other sanctuaries in Arabia, was under the patronage of
a female divinity, the representative of nature-worship, and one of the
numerous forms of Ishthar."
The name of this Istar-like or Star Deity is not recorded, but in this
description she is alluded to as _Mistress of the Turquoise Country_,
and later simply as _Mistress of Turquoise_. We may possibly arrive at
the name of the British Lady of the star-shaped dene holes by reference
to a votive tablet which was unearthed in 1647 near Zeeland: this is to
the following effect:--
To the Goddess Nehalennia--
For his goods well preserved--
Secundus Silvanius
A chalk Merchant
Of Britain
Willingly performed his merited vow.
I am acquainted with no allusions in British mythology to Nehalennia,
but she is recognisable in the St. Newlyna of Newlyn, near Penzance, and
of Noualen in Brittany: it is not an unreasonable conjecture that St.
Nehalennia of the Thames was a relative of Great St. Helen, and she was
probably the little, young, or _new Ellen_. At Dunstable, where also
there are dene holes, we find a Dame Ellen's Wood, and it may be
surmised that _Nelly_ was originally a _diminutive_ of Ellen.
Among the Bretons as among the Britons precisely the same mania for
burrowing seems at one period to have prevailed, and in an essay on _The
Origin of Dene Holes_, Mr. A. R. Goddard pertinently inquires: "What,
then, were these great excavations so carefully concealed in the midst
of lone forests?" Mr. Goddard points out that an interesting account of
the use made of very similar places in Brittany by the peasant armies,
during the war in La Vendee, is to be found in Victor Hugo's _Ninety
Three_, and that that narrative is partially historic, for it ends, "In
that war my father fought, and I can speak advisedly thereof". Victor
Hugo writes: "It is difficult to picture to oneself what these Breton
forests really were. They were towns. Nothing could be more secret, more
silent, and more savage. There were wells, round and narrow, masked by
coverings of stones and branches; the interior at first vertical, then
horizontal, spreading out underground like funnels, and ending in dark
chambers." These excavations, he states, had been there from time
immemorial, and he continues: "One of the wildest glades of the wood of
Misdon, perforated by galleries and cells, out of which came and went a
mysterious society, was called The Great City. The gloomy Breton forests
were servants and accomplices of the rebellion. The subsoil of every
forest was a sort of _madrepore_, pierced and traversed in all
directions by a secret highway of mines, cells, and galleries. Each of
these blind cells could shelter five or six men."
The notion that the dene holes of Kent were built as refuges from the
Danes, and that the tortuous _souterrains_ of County Down were
constructed by the defeated Danes as skulking holes is on a par with the
supposition that the _souterrains_ of La Vendee were built as an
annoyance to the French Republic; and the idea that the solitary or
combined dene holes situated in the heart of lone, dense, and
inaccessible forests were due to action of the sea, or mere shafts sunk
by local farmers simply for the purpose of obtaining chalk seems to me
irrational and inadequate. It is still customary for hermits to dwell in
caves, and in Tibet there are Buddhist Monasteries "where the inmates
enter as little children, and grow up with the prospect of being
literally immured in a cave from which the light of day is excluded as
well as the society of their fellow-men, there to spend the rest of
their life till they rot": it is thus not impossible that each dene hole
in Britain was originally the abode of a hermit or holy man, and that
clusters of these sacred caves constituted the earliest monasteries. In
Egypt near Antinoe there is a rock-hewn church known as _Dayn_ Aboo
Hannes, which is rendered by Baring-Gould as meaning "The Convent of
Father John": it would thus appear that in that part of the world _dayn_
was the generic term for _convent_, and it is not unlikely that the
ecclesiastical _dean_ of to-day does not owe his title to the Greek word
_diaconus_, but that the original deaneries were congeries of dene holes
or dens. The mountains and deserts of Upper Egypt used to be infested
with ascetics known as Therapeutæ who dwelt in caves, and the immense
amount of stone which the extensive excavations provided served
secondarily as material for building the pyramids and neighbouring
towns: the word Therapeut, sometimes translated to mean "holy man," and
sometimes as "healer," is radically _thera_ or _tera_, and one of the
most remarkable of the Egyptian cave temples is that situated at Derr or
Derri.
In addition to dene holes on the coast of _Dur_ham and at _Dun_stable
there are dene holes in the _dun_, _down_, or hill overlooking Kit's
Coty: it may reasonably be surmised that the latter were inhabited by
the _drui_ or wise men who constructed not only Kit's Coty but also the
other extensive megalithic remains which exist in the neighbourhood. The
well-known cave at St. Andrews contains many curious Pictish sculptures,
and the connection between _antrou_ (or _Andrew_), a cave, and _trou_, a
hole, extends to the words _entrails_, _intricate_, and _under_.
Practically all the "Mighty Childs" of mythology are represented as
having sprung from caves or underground: Jupiter or Chi (the _chi_ or
[Greek: ch] is the cross of _Andrew_[917]) was cave-born and worshipped
in a cave; Dionysos was said to have been nurtured in a cave; Hermes was
born at the mouth of a cave, and it is remarkable that, whereas a cave
is still shown as the birthplace of Jesus Christ at Bethlehem, St.
Jerome complained that in his day the pagans celebrated the worship of
Thammuz, or Adonis, _i.e._, Adon, _at that very cave_.
Etymology everywhere confirms the supposition that underlying cave
construction and governing worship within caves was a connection, in
idea, between the cave and the Mother of Existence or the Womb of
Nature. The "Womb of Being" is a common phrase applied to Divinity, and
in Scotland the little pits which were constructed by the aborigines are
still known as _weems_, from _wamha_, meaning a cave. In Lowland Scotch
_wame_ meant _womb_, and _wamha_, a cave, is obviously akin not only to
_wame_ but also to _womb_, Old English _wambe_; indeed the cave was
considered so necessary a feature of Mithra-worship that where natural
cavities did not exist artificial ones were constructed. The standard
reason given for Mithraic cave-worship was that the cave mystically
signified "the descent of the soul into the sublunary regions and its
regression thence". Doubtless this sophisticated notion at one period
prevailed: that all sorts of Mysteries were enacted within caves is too
well known to need emphasis, and I think that the seemingly
unaccountable apses within the Chislehurst labyrinth may have served a
serious and important purpose in troglodite philosophy.
The celebrated cave at Royston is remarkably bell-shaped; many of the
barrows at Stonehenge were _bell_-formed, and in Ceylon the gigantic
bell-formed pyramids there known as Dagobas are connected by
etymologists with _gabba_, which means not only _shrine_ but also
_womb_. In the design on p. 783, Isis, the Great Mother, is surrounded
by a cartouche or halo of bell-like objects: the sistrum of Isis which
was a symbol of the Gate of Life was decorated with bells; bells formed
an essential element of the sacerdotal vestments of the Israelites;
bells are a characteristic of modern Oriental religious usage, and in
Celtic Christianity the bell was regarded--according to C. W. King--as
"the actual type of the Godhead".[918]
[Illustration: FIG. 466.--Section of Royston Cave traced from a
drawing in _Cliff Castles and Cliff Dwellings of
Europe_ (Baring-Gould, S.).]
[Illustration: FIG. 467.--From _Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian
Symbolism_ (Inman, C. W.).]
[Illustration: FIG. 468. [_To face page 788._]
The Royston Cave is said to be an exact counterpart to certain caves in
Palestine,[919] which are described as "tall domes or bell-shaped
apartments ranging in height from 20 to 30 feet, and in diameter from 10
to 12 to 20 or 30 feet, or more. The top of these domes usually
terminates in a small circular opening for the admission of light and
air. These dome-shaped caverns are mostly in clusters three or four
together. They are all hewn regularly. Some of them are ornamented
either near the bottom or high up, or both with rows of small holes or
niches like pigeon holes extending quite round."[920] It was customary
to sell pigeons in the Temple at Jerusalem: there is a prehistoric cave
in Dordogne on the river Dronne which _vide_, Fig. 468 is distinguished
by pigeon holes. This sacred cave is still used as a pigeonry, and in
view of the mass of evidence connecting doves with prehistoric caves and
Diana worship, I should not be surprised if the pigeons which congregate
to-day around St. Paul's are the direct descendants of the Diana's Doves
of the prehistoric _domus columbae_.[921] At _Chadwell_ in Essex are
ordinary dene holes, and at Tilbury there were "several spacious caverns
in a chalky cliff built artificially of stone to the height of 10
fathoms and somewhat straight at the top": I derive this information, as
also the illustrations here reproduced, from the anonymous _New
Description of England and Wales_, published in 1724.
[Illustration: FIGS. 469 and 470.--From _A New Description of
England_ (Anon, 1724).]
[Illustration: FIG. 471.--Sculpturings from the interior of Royston
Cave.
[_To face page 784._]
Both St. Kit and St. Kate figure on the walls of the bell-shaped cave
situated beneath Mercat House at the cross roads at Royston; and thus
the name Mercat may here well have meant Big Kit or Kate: close by was
an ancient inn known as the Catherine Wheel. We shall probably be safe
not only in assigning Kit's Coty to Kate or Ked "the most generous and
most beauteous of ladies," but also in assigning to her the Kyd brook,
on the right bank of which the Chislehurst caves are situated: "It is
somewhat remarkable," says Mr. Nichols, "that the archæological
discoveries hitherto made have been for the most part on the line of
this stream". The Kyd brook rises in what is now known as the Hawkwood,
which was perhaps once equivalent to the Og from whom the King of Edrei
took his title.
Following the course of the Kyd brook--in the neighbourhood of which the
Ordnance Map records a "Cadlands"--there exists to this day within
Elmstead Woods a sunken road, a third of a mile in length, now covered
with venerable oaks: three miles southward are the great earthworks at
Keston, the supposed site of the Roman station of Noviomagus, "with its
temple tombs and massive foundations of flint buildings scattered
through the fields and woodland in the valley below".[922]
The name Noviomagus meant seemingly New Magus; that Keston was a seat of
the Magi is implied by the fact that the ruins in question are situated
in Holwood Park: whether this meant Holywood Park, or whether it was so
known because there were holes in it, is not of essential importance; it
is sufficiently interesting to note that there are legends at Keston
that two subterranean passages once ran from the ruins, the one to Coney
Hall Hill adjoining Hayes Common, the other towards Castle Hill at
Addington.[923] These burrows have not been explored within living
memory, but at Addington itself near the remains of a monastery which
stand upon an eminence "a subterranean passage communicates which even
now is penetrable for a considerable distance".[924] At Addington are
not only numerous tumuli, but it is a tradition among the inhabitants
that the place was formerly of much greater extent than at present, and
we are told that timbers and other material of ruined buildings are
occasionally turned up by the plough: here also is an oak of which the
trunk measures nearly 36 feet in girth, and in the churchyard is a yew
which from the great circumference of its trunk must be of very great
antiquity; that Addington was once a seat of the Aeddons or Magi, is an
inference of high probability.
Addington is situated in what is now Surrey, and is in close proximity
to a place named Sanderstead: the Sander whose stead or enclosure here
stood may be connoted with the French Santerre, which district abounds
with _souterrains_: in the valley of the Somme alone there are at least
thirty "singular excavations" which _communicate with parish
churches_:[925] these Santerre and Sanderstead similarities may be
connoted with the fact that on the coast of _Dur_ham are caverns hewn in
the limestone and known as Dane's holes.
In the forest of Tournehem near St. Omer are some curious square and
circular _fosses_ known locally as Fosses, Sarrasines, or Fosses des
Inglais:[926] saracens is the name under which the Jews or Phoenicians
are still known in Cornwall, and in view of the Tyrians love of
burrowing or making trous, Tournehem may here perhaps be identified with
Tyre, or the Tyrrhenians of Etruria. The Inglais can hardly be the
modern English, but are more probably the prehistoric Ingles whose
marvellous monument stands to-day at Mount Ingleborough in Yorkshire, or
ancient Deira: this must have been a perfect Angel borough, or Eden, for
not only is it a majestic hill crowned by a tower called the Hospice,
and with other relics previously noted, but it also contains one of the
most magnificent caverns in the kingdom. This is entered by a low wide
arch and consists for the first 600 feet, or thereabouts, of a mere
tunnel which varies in height from 5 to 15 feet: one then enters "a
spacious chamber with surface all elaborated in a manner resembling the
work of a Gothic cathedral in limestone formations of endless variety of
form and size, and proceeds thence into a series of chambers, corridors,
first made accessible in 1838, said to have an aggregate extent of about
2000 feet, and displaying a marvellous and most beautiful variety of
stalactites and stalagmites. A streamlet runs through the whole, and
helps to give purity to the air."[927] This description is curiously
reminiscent of the famous and gigantic Han Grotto near Dinant: with the
Han Grotto, through which run the rivers Lesse and Tamise, may be
connoted the Blue John Cavern in Derbyshire, and I have little doubt
that Han or Blue John, or Tarchon was the Giant originally worshipped by
the Chouans or Jacks, who inhabited the terrible recesses of La Vendee.
The name Joynson which occurs in the Kentish dene hole district implies
possibly the son of a Giant, or a son of Sinjohn: it is not unlikely
that the "Hangman's" Wood, in which the group of dene holes here planned
occur, was originally the Han, Hun, giant, or Hahnemann's Wood. At
Tilbury the spacious caverns were adjacent to _Shen_field, in the
neighbourhood of Downs Farm: at Dunstable is a little St. John's Wood, a
Kensworth, and a Mount Pleasant; this district is dotted with "wells,"
and the adjacent Caddington is interpreted as having meant "the hill
meadow of Cedd or Ceadda".
Dinant or Deonant is generally supposed to derive its name from Diana,
and we are told that the town originally possessed "_onze_ eglises
paroissales". Whether these eleven parishes were due to chance or
whether they were originally sacred to an elphin eleven must remain a
matter of conjecture: at the entry to the Grotto in Dane Hill, Margate
(Thanet), is a shell-mosaic _yoni_ surmounted by an eleven-rayed star.
The association of "les Inglais" with the fosses in the forest of
Tournehem may possibly throw some light upon the curiously persistent
sixfold form in which our British dene holes seem invariably to have
been constructed. Engelland as we have seen was the mystic Angel Land in
which the unborn children of the future were awaiting incarnation: that
six was for some reason associated with birth and creation is evident
from the six days of Jewish tradition, and from the corresponding 6000
years of Etrurian belief. The connection between six and creation is
even more pointed in the Druidic chant still current in Brittany, part
of which has already been quoted:--
Beautiful child of the Druid, answer me right well.
What would'st thou that I should sing?
Sing to me the series of number one that I may learn it this very day.
There is no series for one, for One is Necessity alone.
The father of death, there is nothing before and nothing after.
Nevertheless the Druid or Instructor runs through a sequence expounding
three as the three Kingdoms of Merlin, five as the terrestrial zones, or
the divisions of time, and _six_ as "_babes of wax quickened into life
through the power of the moon_":[928] the moon which periodically wanes
and waxes like a matron, was of course Diana, whence possibly the
sixfold form of the dene or Dane holes.
In the Caucasus--the land of the Kimbry, _don_ was a generic term for
water and for river:[929] we have a river _Dane_ in Cheshire, a river
_Dean_ in Nottinghamshire, a river _Dean_ in Forfarshire, a river _Dun_
in Lincolnshire, a river _Dun_ in Ayrshire, and a river _Don_ in
Yorkshire, Aberdeen, and Antrim. There is a river Don in Normandy, and
elsewhere in France there is a river Madon which is suggestive of the
_Madonna_: the root of all these terms is seemingly Diane, Diana, or
Dione, and it may reasonably be suggested that the dene or Dane holes of
this country, like many other dens, were originally shrines dedicated to
the prehistoric Madonna.
The fact that the subsidence at Modingham immediately filled up with
water is presumptive evidence not only of a vast cavern, but also of a
subterranean river, or perhaps a lake. That such spots were sacrosanct
is implied by numerous references such as that quoted by Herbert wherein
an Italian poet describes a visit of King Arthur to a small mount
situated in a plain, and covered with stones: into that mount the King
followed a hind he was chasing, tracking her through subterranean
passages until he reached a cavern where "he saw the preparations for
earthquakes and volcanic fires. He saw the flux and reflux of the sea."
[Illustration: Thirteenth Century Window from Chartres. FIG.
472.--From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
Among the poems of Taliesin is one entitled _The Spoils of Hades_,
wherein the mystic Arthur is figured as the retriever of a magic
cauldron, no doubt the sun or else the _pair dadeni_, or cauldron of
new birth: "It commences," says Herbert, "with reference to the
prison-sepulchre of Arthur describing in all _six_ such sanctuaries;
though I should rather say one such under _six_ titles". This mysterious
_six_ is suggestive of the _six_fold dene holes, and that this six was
for some reason associated with the Madonna is obvious from the
Christian emblem here illustrated. According to the theories of the
author of _L'Antre des Nymphes_, "the cave was considered in ancient
times as the universal matrix from which the world and men, light and
the heavenly bodies, alike have sprung, and the initiation into ancient
mysteries always took place in a cave". I have not read this work, and
am unacquainted with the facts upon which M. Saintyves bases his
conclusions: these, however, coincide precisely with my own. It will not
escape the reader's attention that Fig. 472 is taken from Chartres, the
_central_ site of Gaul, to which as Cæsar recorded the Druids annually
congregated.
Layamon in his _Brut_ recounts that Arthur took counsel with his knights
on a spot exceeding fair, "beside the water that Albe was named":[930] I
am unable to trace any water now existing of that name which, however,
is curiously reminiscent of Coleridge's romantic Alph:--
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree,
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
It has already been noted that the Saxon monks filled up passages at St.
Albans which ran even under the river: that similar constructions
existed elsewhere is clear from the Brut of Kings where it is stated
that Lear was buried by his daughter Cordelia in a vault under the river
Soar in Leicestershire: "a place originally built in honour of the god
Janus, and in which all the workmen of the city used to hold a solemn
ceremony before they began upon the new year".[931] That the Druids
worshipped and taught in caves is a fact well attested; that solemn
ceremonies were enacted at Chislehurst is probable; that they were
enacted in Ireland at what was known as Patrick's Purgatory even to
comparatively modern times is practically certain. This famous
subterranean Purgatory, which Faber describes as a "celebrated engine of
papal imposture," flourished amazingly until 1632, when the Lords
Justices of Ireland ordered it to be utterly broken down, defaced, and
demolished; and prohibited any convent to be kept there for the time to
come, or any person to go into the said island on a superstitious
account.[932] The popularity of Patrick's Purgatory, to which immense
numbers of pilgrims until recently resorted, is connected with a local
tradition that Christ once appeared to St. Patrick, and having led him
to a desert place showed him a deep hole: He then proceeded to inform
him that whoever entered into that pit and continued there a day and a
night, having previously repented and being armed with the true faith,
should be purged from all his sins, and He further added that during the
penitent's abode there he should behold both the torments of the damned,
and the joyful blisses of the blessed. That both these experiences were
dramatically represented is not open to doubt, and that the actors were
the drui or magi is equally likely: Lough _Derg_, the site of the
Purgatory, is suggestive of drui, and also of Thurrock where, as we have
seen, still exist the dene holes of troglodites.
On page 558 was reproduced a coin representing the Maiden in connection
with a right angle, and there may be some connection between this emblem
and the form of Patrick's Purgatory: "Its shape," says Faber, "resembles
that of an L, excepting only that the angle is more obtuse, and it is
formed by two parallel walls covered with large stones and sods, its
floor being the natural rock. Its length is 16-1/2 feet, and its width 2
feet, but the building is so low that a tall man cannot stand erect in
it. It holds nine persons, and a tenth could not remain in it without
considerable inconvenience."[933] This Irish chapel to hold nine may be
connoted with Bishop Arculf's description in A.D. 700 of the Holy
Sepulchre at Jerusalem. He describes this church as very large and
round, encompassed with three walls, with a broad space between each,
and containing three altars of wonderful workmanship, in the middle
wall, at three different points; on the south, the north, and the west.
"It is supported by twelve stone columns of extraordinary magnitude; and
it has eight doors or entrances through the three opposite walls, four
fronting the north-east, and four to the south-east. In the middle space
of the inner circle is a _round grotto cut in the solid rock_, the
interior of which is _large enough to allow nine men to pray standing_,
and the roof of which is about a foot and a half higher than a man of
ordinary stature."[934] To the above particulars Arculf adds the
interesting information that: "On the side of Mount Olivet there is a
cave not far from the church of St. Mary,[935] on an eminence looking
towards the valley of Jehoshaphat, in which are two very deep pits. One
of these extends under the mountain to a vast depth; the other is sunk
straight down from the pavement of the cavern, and is said to be of
great extent. These pits are always closed above. In this cavern are
four stone tables; one, near the entrance, is that of our Lord Jesus,
whose seat is attached to it, and who, doubtless, rested Himself here
while His twelve apostles sat at the other tables."[936]
Jerusalem was for many centuries regarded as the admeasured centre of
the whole earth, and doubtless every saintuaire was originally the local
_centre_: in Crete there has been discovered a small shrine at Gournia
"situated in the very centre of the town," and with the mysterious pits
of elsewhere may be connoted the "three walled pits," nearly 25 feet
deep, which remain at the northern entrance of Knossus: the only
explanation which has been suggested for these constructions is that
"they may have been oubliettes".
Around Patrick's Purgatory in Lough Derg were built seven chapels, and
it is evident that at or near the site were many other objects of
interest: Giraldus Cambrensis says there were nine caves there,[937]
another account states that an adventurer--a venerable hermit, Patrick
by name--"one day lighted on this cave which is _of vast extent_. He
entered it and wandering on in the dark lost his way so that he could no
more find how to return to the light of day. After long rambling through
the gloomy passages he fell upon his knees and besought Almighty God if
it were His will to deliver him from the great peril wherein he
lay."[938] This adventure doubtless actually befell an adventurous
Patrick, and before starting on his foolhardy expedition he would have
been well advised to have consulted some such experienced Bard as the
Taliesin who--claiming himself to be born of nine constituents--wrote--
I know every pillar in the Cavern of the West.
Similarly the author of _The Incantation of Cunvelyn_ maintained:--
With the habituated to song (Bard)
Are flashes of light to lead the tumult
In ability to descend
Through spikes along brinks
Through the opening of trapdoors.[939]
This same poet speaks of the furze or broom bush in blossom as being a
talisman: "The furzebush is it not radiance in the gloom?" and he adds
"of the sanctity of the winding refuge they (the enemy) have possessed
themselves". Upon this Herbert very pertinently observes: "This sounds
as if the possessors of the secret had an advantage over their opponents
from their faculty of descending into chambers and galleries cunningly
contrived, and artfully obscured and illuminated.... I think there was
somewhere a system of chambers, galleries, etc.,[940] approaching to the
labyrinthine character."[941]
The Purgatory of St. Patrick was once called _Uamh Treibb Oin_, the
_wame_, or cave of the tribe of Oin or Owen, upon which Faber comments:
"Owen, in short, was no other than the Great God of the Ark, and the
same as Oan, Oannes, or Dagon": he was also in all probability the
_Janus_ of the river Soar, the _Shony_ of the Hebrides, the Blue _John_
of Buxton, the Tar_chon_ of Etruria, and the St. Patrick on whose
festival and before whose altar all the fishes of the sea rose and
passed by in procession. After expressing the opinion "I am persuaded
that Owen was the very same person as Patrick," Faber notes the
tradition, no doubt a very ancient one among the Irish, that Patrick was
likewise called Tailgean or Tailgin: there is a celebrated Mote in
Ireland named Dun_dalgan_, and the Glen_dalgeon_, to which the
miraculous Bird of St. Bridget is said to have taken its flight, was
presumably a glen once sacred to the same Tall John, or Chief King, or
Tall Khan, or High Priest, as was worshipped at the Pictish town of
Delginross in Caledonia; we have already considered this term in
connection with the Telchines of Telchinia, Khandia, or Crete.
That Lough _Derg_ was associated with Drei, Droia, or Troy, and with the
_drui_ or Druids, is further implied by its ancient name Lough _Chre_,
said to mean lake of the _soothsayers_. Sooth is Truth and the Hibernian
_chre_ may be connoted with the "Cray," which occurs so persistently in
the Kentish dene hole district, _e.g._, Foots Cray, St. Mary Cray, and
St. Paul's Cray: the Paul of this last name may be equated with the
Poole of the celebrated Buxton Poole's Cavern, Old Poole's Saddle, and
Pell's Well: the "bogie" of Buxton was no doubt the same Puck, Pooka, or
Bwcca, as that of the Kentish Bexley, Bickley, and Boxley at each of
which places are dene holes.
[Illustration: FIG. 473.--Sculpture on the Wall of St. Clement's
Cave, Hastings.
[_To face page 797._]
The cauldron of British mythology was known occasionally as Pwyll's
Cauldron, Pwyll, the chief of the Underworld, being the infernal or
Plutonic form of the Three Apollos. Referring to the Italian tale of
King Arthur's entrance into the innermost caverns of the earth, Herbert
observes: "Valvasone's account of this place is a just description of
the Cor upon Mount Ambri, and goes to identify it with the mystical Ynys
Avallon (Island of Apples). All that he says of it is in wide departure
from the tales which he might have read in Galfridus and Giraldus. But
when we further see that he places within its recesses the cauldron of
deified nature or Keridwen, it truly moves our wonder whence this matter
can have come into his pages."[942] Doubtless Herbert would have puzzled
still more in view of what is apparently the same mystic cauldron, bowl,
or tureen carved upon the walls of St. Clement's Caves at Hastings.[943]
Presumably the St. Clement of these caves which have been variously
ascribed to the Romans and the Danes, was a relative of St. Clement Dane
in London by St. Dunstan in the West: the Hastings Caves are situated
over what is marked on the Ordnance map as Torfield, and as this is
immediately adjacent to a St. Andrew it is probable that the Anderida
range, which commences hereby and terminates at the Chislehurst Caves,
was all once dedicated to the ancient and eternal Ida. _Antre_ is a
generic term for cave, and as _trou_ means hole, the word _antrou_ is
also equivalent to _old hole_. When first visiting the famous Merlin's
Cave at Tintagel or Dunechein, where it is said that Art_hur_ or
Ar_tur_, the mystic Mighty Child, was cast up by the ninth wave into the
arms of the Great Magician, my companion's sense of romance received a
nasty jar on learning that Merlin's Cave was known locally as "The Old
Hole": it may be, however, that this term was an exact rendering of the
older Keltic _antrou_, which is literally _old hole_: the Tray Cliff in
Derbyshire, where is situated the Blue John Mine, may well have been the
_trou_ cliff.
The highest point of the highland covering St. Clement's Caves is known
as "The Ladies' Parlour"; at the foot of this is Sandringham Hotel,
whence--in view of the neighbouring St. Andrew and Tor field--it is
possible that "Sandringham"[944] was here, as elsewhere, a _home of the
children of Sander_: immediately adjacent is a Braybrook, and a
Bromsgrove Road. Near Reigate is a Broome Park which we are told "in the
romantic era rejoiced in the name of Tranquil Dale":[945] the
neighbouring Buckland, Boxhill, and Pixhome Lane may be connoted with
Bexhill by Hastings, and there are further traditional connections
between the two localities. Under the dun upon which stand the remains
of Reigate Castle are a series of caves, and besides the series of caves
under the castle there are many others of much greater dimensions to the
east, west, and south sides:[946] my authority continues, "Here many of
the side tunnels are sealed up; one of these is said to go to Reigate
Priory--which is possible--but another which is _reputed to go to
Hastings_, impels one to draw the line somewhere".[947]
We have seen that Brom and Bron were obviously once one and the same,
and there is very little doubt that the Bromme of Broompark or Tranquil
Dale was the same Peri or Power as was presumably connected with Purley,
and as the Bourne or Baron associated with Reigate. In one of the
Reigate caverns is a large pool of clear water which is said to appear
once in seven years, and is still known as Bourne water:[948] under the
castle is a so-called Baron's Cave which is about 150 feet long, with a
vaulted roof and a circular end with a ledge or seat around it. In
popular estimation this is where the Barons met prior to the signing of
Magna Charta: possibly they did, and without doubt many representatives
of _The_ Baron--good, bad, bold, and indifferent--from time to time sat
and conferred upon the same ledge. From the Baron's Cave a long inclined
plane led to a stairway of masonwork which extended to the top of the
mound.
Reigate now consists of a pair of ancient Manors, of which one was
Howleigh; the adjacent _Ag_land Moor, as also _Ox_ted, suggests the
troglodyte King Og of Edrei. Among the Reigate caves is one denominated
"The Dungeon": _Tin_tagel was known alternatively not only as
_Dun_dagel, but also as _Dune_chein, evidently the same word as the
great _Dane_ John tumulus at Canterbury. The meaning of this term
depends like every other word upon its context; a _dungeon_ is a
down-under or dene hole, the keep or _donjon_ of a castle is its main
tower or summit: similarly the word dunhill is identical with dene hole;
_abyss_ now means a yawning depth, but on page 224 Abyss was represented
as a dunhill.
From the cavern at Pentonville, known as Merlin's Cave, used to run a
subterranean passage: modern Pentonville takes its title from a ground
landlord named Penton, a tenant who presumably derived his patronymic
either from that particular _penton_ or from one elsewhere. In
connection with the term _pen_ it is curious to find that at Penselwood
in Somerset there are what were estimated to be 22,000 "pen pits": these
pits are described as being in general of the form which mathematicians
term the frustrum of a cone, not of like size one with another, but from
10 to 50 feet over at top and from 5 to 20 feet in the bottom.[949] I
have already surmised that the various Selwoods, Selgroves, and
Selhursts were so named because they contained the cells of the austere
_selli_: by Penselwood is Wincanton, a place supposed to have derived
its title from "probably a man's name; nasalised form of _Hwicca_, _cf._
Whixley, and see _ton_"; but in view of the innumerable _cone_-shaped
cells hereabout, it would seem more feasible that _canton_ meant _cone
town_. We have already illustrated the marvellous cone tomb said to have
once existed in Etruria: in connection with this it is further recorded
that within the basement King Porsenna made an inextricable labyrinth,
into which if one ventured without a clue, there he must remain for he
never could find the way out again; according to Mrs. Hamilton Gray the
labyrinth of a counterpart of this tomb still exists, "but its locality
is unascertained".
There are said to be pits similar to the Wincanton pen pits in
Berkshire, there known as Coles pits: we have already connoted St.
Nichol of the tub-miracle, likewise King Cole of the Great Bowl with
Yule the Wheel or Whole. The Bowl of Cole was without doubt the same as
the _pair dadeni_, or Magic Cauldron of _Pwyll_ which Arthur "spoiled"
from Hades: with _Paul's_ Cray may be connoted the not-far-distant Pol
Hill overlooking Sevenoaks. Otford, originally Ottanford, underlies Pol
Hill, which was no doubt a dun of the celestial Pol, _alias_ Pluto, or
Aidoneus: in the graveyard at Ottanford may be seen memorials of the
Polhill family, a name evidently analogous to Penton of Pentonville.
The memory of our ancestors dwelling habitually in either pen pits, dene
holes, or cole pits, has been preserved in Layamon's _Brut_, where it is
recorded: "At Totnes, Constantin the fair and all his host came ashore;
thither came the bold man--well was he brave!--and with him 2000 knights
such as no king possessed. Forth they gan march into London, and sent
after knights over all the kingdom, and every brave man, that speedily
he should come anon. The Britons heard that, _where they dwelt in the
pits_, in earth and in stocks they hid them (like) badgers, in wood and
in wilderness, in heath and in fen, so that well nigh no man might find
any Briton, except they were in castle, or in burgh inclosed fast. When
they heard of this word, that Constantin was in the land, _then came
out of the mounts_ many thousand men; they leapt out of the wood as if
it were deer. Many hundred thousand marched toward London, by street and
by weald all it forth pressed; and the brave women put on them men's
clothes, and they forth journeyed toward the army."
It has been assumed that the means of exit from the dene holes, and from
the subterranean city with which they communicated, was a notched pole,
and it is difficult to see how any other method was feasible: in this
connection the Mandan Indians of North America have a curious legend
suggestive of the idea that they must have sprung from some troglodite
race. The whole Mandan nation, it is said, once resided in one large
village underground near a subterranean lake; a grape-vine extended its
roots down to their habitation and gave them a view of the light. Some
of the most adventurous climbed up the vine and were delighted with the
sight of the earth which they found covered with buffalo and rich with
every kind of fruit: men, women, and children ascended by means of the
vine (the notched pole?), but when about half the nation had attained
the surface of the earth a big or buxom woman, who was clambering up the
vine, broke it with her weight and closed upon herself and the rest the
light of the Sun. There is seemingly some like relation between this
legend and the tradition held by certain hill tribes of the old Konkan
kingdom in India, who have a belief that their ancestors came out of a
cave in the earth. In connection with this Konkan tale, and with the
fact that the Concanii of Spain fed on horses, it may here be noted that
not only do traces of the horse occur in the most ancient caves, but
that vast deposits of horse bones point to the probability that horses
were eaten sacrificially in caves.[950] In the Baron's Cave at Reigate,
"There are many bas relief sculptures, Roman soldiers' heads, grotesque
masks of monks, horses' heads and other subjects which can only be
guessed at":[951] these idle scribblings have been assigned to the Roman
soldiery, who are supposed at one time to have garrisoned the castle,
and the explanation is not improbable: the favourite divinity of the
Roman soldiery was Mithra, the Invincible White Horse, and several
admittedly Mithraic Caves have been identified in Britain.[952] It has
always been supposed that these were the work of Roman invaders, and in
this connection it should be noted that deep in the bowels of the
Chislehurst labyrinth there is a clean-cut well about 70 feet deep lined
with Roman cement: but granting that the Romans made use of a ready-made
cave, it is improbable that they were responsible for the vast net-work
of passages which are known to extend under that part of Kent. There
is--I believe--a well in the heart of the Great Pyramid; a deep
subterranean well exists in one of the series of caves at Reigate.
In his article on the Chislehurst Caves Mr. Nichols inquires, "might not
the shafts of these dene holes have lent themselves to the study of the
heavenly bodies?" That the Druids were adepts at astronomy is testified
by various classical writers, and according to Dr. Smith there are sites
in Anglesey still known in Welsh as "the city of the Astronomers," the
Place of Studies, and the Astronomers' Circle.[953] There was a famous
Holy Well in Dean's Yard, Westminster, and it would almost seem that a
well was an integral adjunct of the sacred duns: according to Miss
Gordon "there is a well of unknown antiquity at Pentonville under
Sadlers Wells Theatre (Clerkenwell), lined with masonry of ancient date
throughout its entire depth, similar to the prehistoric wells we have
already mentioned in the Windsor Table Mound, on the Wallingford Mound,
and the Well used by the first Astronomer Royal at Greenwich".[954] But
masonry-lined wells situated in the very bowels of the earth as at
Chislehurst and Reigate cannot have served any astronomic purpose; they
must, one would think, have been constructed principally for ritualistic
reasons. At Sewell, near Dunstable, immediately next to Maiden Bower
there once existed a very remarkable dene hole: this is marked on the
Ordnance Maps as "site of well," but in the opinion of Worthington
Smith, "this dene hole was never meant for a well". It was recently
destroyed by railway constructors who explored it to the depth of 116
feet; but, says Worthington Smith, "amateur excavators afterwards
excavated the hole to a much greater depth and found more bones and
broken pots. The base has never been reached. The work was on the top of
a very steep and high bank."[955] On Mount Pleasant at Dunstable was a
well 350 feet deep,[956] and any people capable of sinking a narrow
shaft to this depth must obviously have been far removed from the
savagery of the prime.
In 1835 at _Tin_well, in Rutlandshire, the singular discovery was made
of a large subterranean cavern supported in the centre by a stone
pillar: this chamber proved on investigation to be "an oblong square
extending in length to between 30 and 40 yards, and in breadth to about
8 feet. The sides are of stone, the ceiling is flat, and at one end are
two doorways bricked up."[957] About forty years ago, at Donseil in
France--or rather in a field belonging to the commune of Saint Sulpice
le _Don_seil[958]--a ploughman's horse sank suddenly into a hole: the
grotto which this accident revealed was found to have been cut out from
soft grey granite in an excellent state of preservation and is thus
described: "After passing through the narrow entrance, you make your way
with some difficulty down a sloping gallery some 15 yards in length, to
a depth beneath the surface of nearly 20 feet; this portion is in the
worst condition. Then you find yourself in a _circular gallery_
measuring about 65 feet in circumference, _with the roof supported by a
huge pillar_, 18 feet in diameter. It is worth noticing that the walls,
which are hewn out of the granite, are not vertical, but convex like an
egg. At 19 feet to the left of the inclined corridor, and at an
elevation of 30 inches above the level of the soil of the circular
gallery, we come upon a small opening, through which it is just possible
for a man to squeeze himself: it gives access to a gallery
_thirty-three_ feet long, at the bottom of which a loftier and more
spacious gallery has been begun, but, apparently, not completed."[959]
[Illustration: FIG. 474. PLAN OF THE GROTTO AT MARGATE.]
I invite the reader to note the significance of these measurements and
to compare the general design of the Donseil _souterrain_ with the form
of Fig. 474: this is the ground plan of a grotto which was accidentally
discovered by some schoolboys in 1835, and exists to-day in the side of
_Dane_ Hill, Margate. Its form is very similar to the apparent design of
the great two-mile Sanctuary at Avebury, see page 351, and its
situation--a dene or valley on the side of a hill--coincides exactly
with that of the small Candian cave-shrines dedicated to the serpent
goddess. In Candia no temples have been discovered but only small and
insignificant household shrines: "It is possible," says Mr. Hall, "that
the worship of the gods on a great scale was only carried out in the
open air, or the palace court, or in a grave or cave not far distant.
Certainly the sacred places to which pilgrimage was made and at which
votive offerings were presented, were such groves, rocky gorges, and
caves."[960]
The sanctity of Cretan caves is indisputably proved by the immense
number of votive offerings therein found, in many cases encrusted and
preserved by stalagmites and stalactites. Among the house shrines of the
Mother Goddess and her Son remain pathetic relics of the adoration paid
by her worshippers: one of these saved almost intact by Sir Arthur Evans
is described as a small room or cell, smaller even than the tiny chapels
that dot the hills of Crete to-day--a place where one or two might pray,
leave an offering and enjoy community with the divinity rudely
represented on the altar ... one-third of the space was for the
worshipper, another third for the gifts, the last third for the
goddess.[961]
There are diminutive _souterrains_ in Cornwall notably at St. Euny in
the parish of Sancreed where the gift niches still remain intact: in
many instances these "Giants Holts" are in serpentine form, and the
serpentine form of the Margate Grotto is unmistakable. The Mother
Goddess of Crete has been found figured with serpents in her hands and
coiling round her shoulders: according to Mr. Mackenzie: "Her mysteries
were performed in caves as were also the Paleolithic mysteries. In the
caves there were sacred serpents, and it may be that the prophetic
priestesses who entered them were serpent charmers: cave worship was of
immense antiquity. The cave was evidently regarded as the door of the
Underworld in which dwelt the snake-form of Mother Earth."[962]
[Illustration: FIG. 475.--Ground plan of _Souterrain_ at St. Euny's,
Sancreed, Cornwall.]
It has been seen that the serpent because of sloughing its skin was the
emblem of rejuvenescence, regeneration, and New Birth; it is likely
that the word _sanctus_ is radically the same as _snag_, meaning a short
branch, and as _snake_, which in Anglo-Saxon was _snaca_: it is certain
that the _snake trou_ or snake cave was one of the most primitive
_sanctuaries_.[963] Not only is the Margate Grotto constructed in
serpentine form, but upon one of the panels of its walls is a Tree of
Life, of which two of the scrolls consist of horned serpents: these are
most skilfully worked in shells, and from the mouth of each serpent is
emerging the triple tongue of Good Thought, Good Deed, Good Word.
The word dean, French _doyen_, is supposed to be the Latin _decanum_ the
accusative of decanus, one set over ten soldiers or ten monks: it is, as
already suggested, more probable that the original deans were the
priests of Diane, and that they worshipped in dene holes, in dens, in
denes, on downs, and at dunhills. The word _grot_ is probably the same
as _kirit_, the Turkish form of Crete, and as the _Keridwen_ or _Kerid
Holy_ of Britain. The ministers of the Cretan Magna Mater were entitled
_curetes_, and the modern curate may in all likelihood claim a verbal
descent from the Keridwen or Sancreed whose name is behind our _great,
crude_, and _cradle_. The Magna Mater of Kirid or Crete was sometimes as
already mentioned depicted with a cat upon her head: I have equated the
word _cat_ with Kate, Kitty, or Ked, and in all probability the
catacombs of Rome anciently Janicula were originally built in her
honour. In Scotland _souterrains_ are termed _weems_, a word which is
undoubtedly affiliated both in form and idea with womb, tomb, and
coombe: the British bards allude frequently to the grave as being the
matrix or womb of Ked; as archæologists are well aware, primitive
burials frequently consisted of contracting the body into the form of
the foetus, depositing it thus in a stone cist, chest, or "coty": and
there is little doubt that the St. Anne who figures so prolifically in
the catacombs of Janicula, was like St. Anne of Brittany the
pre-Christian Anne, Jana, or Diane.
At Caddington by Dunstable there is a Dame Ellen's Wood; Caddington
itself is understood to have meant--"the hill meadow of Cedd or Ceadda,"
and among the prehistoric tombs found in this neighbourhood was the
interment illustrated on page 64. It has been cheerily suggested that
"the child may have been buried alive with its mother": it may, but it
equally may not; the pathetic surround of sea-urchins or
popularly-called fairy loaves points to sentiment of some sort,
particularly in view of the tradition that whoso keeps a specimen of the
fairy loaf in his house shall never lack bread.[964] _Echinus_, the
Latin for sea-urchin, is radically the same word as Janus; in the
Margate grotto an echinus forms the centre of most of the conchological
suns or stars with which the walls are decorated, and a large echinus
appears in each of the four top corners of the oblong chamber.
I have suggested that the Kentish Rye, a town which once stood on a
conical islet and near to which is an earthwork known nowadays as Rhee
wall, was once dedicated to Rhea or Maria, and that Margate owes its
designation to the same Ma Rhea or Mother Queen. According to "Morien"
_Rhi_ was a Celtic title of the Almighty, and is the root of the word
_rhinwedd_ (Virtue): according to Rhys _rhi_ meant _queen_, and was a
poetic term for a lady: according to Thomas _Rhea_ is the feminine noun
of _rhi_, prince or king; it would thence follow that _regina_, like the
French name Rejane, meant originally Queen Gyne, either Queen Woman or
Royal Jeanne. There are numerous Ryhalls, Ryhills, and in Durham is a
Ryton which figured anciently as Ruyton, Rutune, and _Ruginton_: near
Kingston is Raynes Park, and at Hackney, in the neighbourhood of the
Seven Sisters and Kingsland Roads, is Wren's Park.
That the Candians colonised the North of Africa is generally supposed,
whence it becomes likely that the marvellous excavations at _Rua_ were
related to the worship of the serpentine _Rhea_: these are mentioned by
Livingstone who wrote: "Tribes live in underground houses in Rua. Some
excavations are said to be 30 miles long, and have running rills in
them; a whole district can stand a siege in them. The 'writings'
therein, I have been told by some of the people, are drawings of animals
and not letters, otherwise I should have gone to see them."[965]
The word grotesque admittedly originated from the fantastic designs
found so frequently within grottos or grots, and if the natives of Rua
could construct a _souterrain_ 30 miles in extent, I see no reason to
doubt the accuracy of the tradition that the natives of Reigate had run
a tunnel towards Rye which is within a few miles of St. Clement's Caves
at Hastings. The _gate_ of Margate and Reigate means _opening_; _wry_
means awry or twisting, and we may probably find the original name of
Reigate in the neighbouring place-name Wray Common.
The Snake grotto at Margate, which is situated almost below a small
house named "Rosanna Lodge," is decorated throughout with a most
marvellous and beautiful mosaic of shellwork, the like of which
certainly exists nowhere else in Britain: the dominant notes of this
decoration are roses or rosettes, and raisins or grapes; over the small
altar in the oblong chamber, at the extremity, are rising the rays of
the Sun. The shells used as a groundwork for this decorative scheme were
the yellow periwinkle now naturally grey with antiquity but which, when
fresh, must, when illuminated, have produced an effect of golden and
surpassing beauty. In the shrines of Candia large numbers of sea-shells,
artificially tinted in various colours, have come to light:[966] that
the altar at the Cantian Margate grotto was constructed to hold a lamp
or a candle cannot be doubted, in which connection one may connote a
statement by "Morien" that "All shell grottos with a candle in it
(_sic_) were a symbol of the cave of the sun near the margin of the
ocean with the soul of the sun in it".[967] There is indeed little doubt
that the snake trou under Rosanna Lodge was, like the grotto at St.
Sulpice le Donseil, dedicated to le Donseil or _donna sol_. At the mouth
of the shrine is a figurine seated, of which, unfortunately, the head is
missing, but the right hand is still holding a cup: in Fig. 44 _ante_,
page 167, Reason is holding a similar cup into which is distilling _la
rosee_, or the dew of Heaven--doubtless the same goblet as was said to
be offered to mortals by the fairy Idunns; their earthly
representatives, the Aeddons, may be assumed once to have dwelt in the
Dane Park or at Addington Street, now leading to Dane Hill where the
grotto remains.
We have connected the Cup of Reason with the mystic Cauldron of
Keridwen, or "cauldron of four spaces," and have noted among the recipe
"the liquor that bees have collected _and resin_," to be prepared "when
there is a calm dew falling": another Bard alludes to "the
gold-encircled liquor contained in the golden cup," and I have little
doubt that resin, rosin, or rosine was valued and venerated as being,
like amber, the petrified tears of Apollo. I do not suggest that the
Rosanna Lodge in the dene at Margate has any direct relation to the
grotto of Reason beneath, but there is evidently a close connection with
the small figurine holding a cup and the Lady Rosamond of Rosamond's
Well at Woodstock. "There was," says Herbert, "a popular notion of an
infernal maze extending from the bottom of Rosamond's Well": this
labyrinth almost certainly once existed, for as late as 1718 there were
to be seen by the pool at Woodstock the foundations of a very large
building which were believed to be the remains of Rosamond's
Labyrinth.[968]
The story of Fair Rosamond being compelled to swallow poison is
precisely on a par with the monkish legend that St. George was "tortured
by being forced to drink a poisoned cup," and how the Rosamond story
originated is fairly obvious from the fact that on her alleged
tombstone, "among other fine sculptures was engraven the figure of a
cup. This, which perhaps at first was an accidental ornament (perhaps
only the chalice), might in aftertimes suggest the notion that she was
poisoned; at least this construction was put upon it when the stone came
to be demolished after the nunnery was dissolved." The above is the
opinion of an archæologist who died in 1632, and it is in all
probability sound: the actual site of Rosamond's Bower at Woodstock
seems to have been known as Godstone, and it was presumably the ancient
Ked Stone that gave birth to the distorted legend. According to the
Ballad of Fair Rosamond, that maiden was a ladye brighte, and most
peerlesse was her beautye founde:--
Her crisped locks like threads of gold
Appeared to each man's sighte,
Her sparkling eyes like Orient pearls
Did cast a heavenlye light.
The blood within her crystal cheekes
Did such a colour drive
As though the lillye and the rose
For mastership did strive.
The ballad continues that the enamoured King--
At Woodstock builded such a bower
The like was never seene,
Most curiously that bower was built
Of stone and timber strong
An hundered and fifty doors[969]
Did to this bower belong,
And they so cunninglye contrived
With turnings round about,
That none but with a clue of thread
Could enter in or out.
According to Drayton, Rosamond's Bower consisted of vaults underground
arched and walled with brick and stone: Stow in his _Annals_ quotes an
obituary stone reading, _Hic jacet in tumba Rosa Mundi; non Rosa Munda,
non redolet sed olet_, which may be Anglicised into, Here lies entombed
a mundane Rosa not the Rose of the World; she is not redolent, but
"foully doth she stinke". I am inclined, however, to believe that the
traditional Rosamond was really and indeed the "cleane flower" and that
the ignorant monks added calumny to their other perversions. History
frigidly but very fortunately relates that "the tombstone of Rosamond
Clifford was taken up at Godstone and broken in pieces, and that upon it
were interchangeable weavings drawn out and decked with roses red and
green and the picture of the cup, out of which she drank the poison
given her by the Queen, carved in stone".[970] At the Cornish village of
Sancreed, _i.e._, San Kerid or St. Ked, engraved upon the famous nine
foot cross is a similar cup or chalice, out of which rises a tapering
fleur de lys: with the word _creed_ may be connoted the fact that the
artist of Kirid or Crete, "with a true instinct for beauty, chose as his
favourite flowers the lovely lily and iris, the wild gladiolus and
crocus, all natives of the Mediterranean basin, and the last three, if
not the lily, of his own soil".[971] Opinions differ as to whether the
Sancreed lily is a spear head or a fleur de lys: they also differ as to
the precise meaning of the cup: in the opinion of Mr. J. Harris Stone,
"the vessel or chalice is roughly heart-shaped--that is the main body of
it--and the head of the so-called spear is distinctly divided and has
cross-pieces which, being recurved, doubtless gave rise to the lily
theory of the origin. Now there was an ancient Egyptian cross of the
Latin variety rising out of a heart like the mediæval emblem of _Cor in
Cruce, Crux in Corde_, and this is irresistibly brought to my mind when
looking at this Sancreed cross. The emblem I am alluding to is that of
Goodness."[972]
[Illustration: FIG. 476.--The famous Sancreed Cross. From _The
Cornish Riviera_ (Stone, J. Harris).
[_To face page 816._]
With this theory I am in sympathy, and it may be reasonably suggested
that the alleged "tombstone" of Rosamond at Godstone was actually a
carved megalith analogous to that at Sancreed: the carving on the latter
may be comparatively modern, but in all probability the rock itself is
the original _crude_ Creed stone, Ked stone, or Good stone, touched up
and partly recut.
The Rose is the familiar emblem of St. George or Oros who, according to
some accounts, was the son of Princess Sophia the Wise: his legs were of
massive silver up to the knees, and his arms were of pure gold from the
elbows to the wrists. According to other traditions George was born at
Coventry, and "is reported to have been marked at his birth (forsooth!)
with a red bloody cross on his right hand".[973] The first adventure of
St. George was the salvation of a fair and precious princess named Sabra
from a foul dragon who venomed the people with his breath and this
adventure is located at Silene: with this Silene may be connoted the
innocent Una, who in some accounts occupies the position of the Lady
Sabra: Sabra is suggestive of Sabrina, the little Goddess of the river
Severn, whose name we have connected with the soft, gentle, pleasing and
propitious Brina: that St. Burinea, the pretty daughter of Angus whose
memory is sanctified as the patron of St Burian's or Eglos_berrie_, was
originally _pure_ Una is more likely than that this alleged Maiden was
an historic personage of the sixth century.
The series of excavations at Reigate, of which the principal is the
Baron's Cave, extends to a Red Cross Inn which marks the vicinity where
stood the chapel of the Holy Cross, belonging to the Priory of the
Virgin and Holy Cross: about a mile from Reigate in a little brook (the
Bourne Water) used to stand a great stone stained red by the victims of
a water Kelpie, who had his lair beneath. The Kelpie was exorcised by a
vicar of Buckland: nevertheless the stone remained an object of awe to
the people, which, says Mr. Ogilvie, "was regarded as a vile
superstition by a late vicar who had the stone removed to demonstrate to
his parishioners that there was nothing under it, but some of the old
folks remember the story yet".[974] Part of Reigate is known as Red
Hill, obviously from the red sandstone which abounds there: at Bristol
or Bristowe, _i.e_., the Stockade of Bri, the most famous church is that
of St. Mary Redcliffe: the Mew stone off Devonshire is red cliff, the
inscriptions at Sinai are always on red stone, and there is little doubt
that red rock was particularly esteemed to be the symbol of gracious
Aine, the Love Mother. In Domesday the Redcliff of St. Mary appears as
Redeclive,[975] and may thus also have meant Rood Cleeve: in London we
have a Ratcliffe Highway, and in Kensington a Redcliffe Square.
In what is now the Green Park, Mayfair, used to be a Rosamond's Pool:
with Rosamond, the Rose of the World, and Rosanna--whose name may be
connoted with the inscription RU NHO or QUEEN NEW,[976] which occurs on
one of the Sancreed crosses may also be connoted St. Rosalie of Sicily
or Hypereia, whose grotto and fete still excite "an almost incredible
enthusiasm". The legend of St. Rosalie represents her as--
Something much too fair and good
For human nature's daily food,
and her mysterious evanishment is accounted for by the tradition that,
disgusted by the frivolous life and empty gaiety of courts, she
voluntarily retired herself into an obscure cavern, where her remains
are now supposed to be buried under wreaths of imperishable roses which
are deposited by angels.[977]
[Illustration: FIG. 477.--Iberian. From Akerman]
[Illustration: FIG. 478.--Kerris Roundago. From _Antiquities of
Cornwall_.]
According to ecclesiastical legend the beloved St. Rosalie--whose fete
is celebrated in Sicily on the day of St. Januarius--was the daughter of
a certain Tancred, the first King of Sicily: it is not unlikely that
this Tancred was Don Cred or Lord Cred, a relation of the Cornish
Sancreed.[978] Sancreed is supposed to derive its name as being "an
abstract dedication to the Holy Creed": but it is alternatively known as
San_cris_: the Cretans, or Kiridians, or Eteocretes claimed Cres the Son
of Jupiter by the nymph Idea as their first King, and they traced their
descent from Cres. In a subsequent volume we shall consider this Cres at
greater length, and shall track him to India in the form of Kristna, to
whose grace the subterranean cross at Madura seems to have been
dedicated. In Celtic _cris_ meant pure, holy; _crios_ meant the
Sun:[979] the principal site of Apollo-worship was the island of Crissa;
in England Christy[980] is a familiar surname, and I am convinced that
the Christ tradition in Britain owed little to the Roman mission of
Augustine, but was of far older origin. We may perhaps trace the
original transit of Cris to Sancris at Carissa, now Carixa, in Spain:
among the numerous coins of this district some as figured herewith bear
the legend Caris, some bear the head of the young Hercules, others a
female head.[981] As in classic Latin _C_ was invariably pronounced
hard, it is probable that the maiden Caris was Ceres, and that the
Cretan pair are responsible for Kerris Roundago, an egg-like monument
near Sancreed; also for Cresswell in Durham where is the famous Robin
Hood Cave:[982] one may further trace Caris at Carisbrook near Ryde, at
the diminutive Criss Brook near Maidstone, and at the streamlet Crise in
Santerre.
[Illustration: FIG. 479.--Christ, with a Nimbus Resembling a Flat
Cap, or Casquette. From a Carving on Wood in the
Stalls of Notre Dame d'Amiens. XVI. Cent. From
Didron.]
The town of Carissa, now Carixa, may be connoted with the synonymous
_cross_ or _crux_: the Cornish for _cross_ was _crows_, and at
Crows-an-Rha, near St. Buryans, there is a celebrated wayside cross or
crouch.[983] That Caris was _carus_ or _dear_, and that he was the
inception of _charis_ or charity will also eventually be seen: I have
elsewhere suggested that _charis_, or _love_, was originally 'k Eros or
Great Eros; in the Christian emblem here illustrated Christ is
associated with a rose cross, which is fabricated from the four hearts,
and thus constitutes the _Rosa mystica_. At Kerris Roundago are four
megaliths.
[Illustration: FIG. 480.]
[Illustration: FIG. 481.]
The Sancris cup or chalice[984] might legitimately be termed a _cruse_:
Christ's first miracle was the conversion of a cruse or can of water
into wine, and the site of this miracle was Cana. The _souterrain_ of
St. Sulpice le Donseil is situated in a district known as La Creuse, and
the solitary pillar in the heart of this grotto, as also that in the
Margate grotto, and that in the _souterrain_ at Tinwell, were probably
symbols of what the British Bard describes as "Christ the concealed
pillar of peace". The Celtic Christs here reproduced from an article in
_The Open Court_ by Dr. Paul Carus are probably developments of ancient
Prestons or Jupiter Stones: the connection between these crude Christs
and Cres, the Son of Jupiter, by the nymph Idea, is probably continuous
and unbroken.
A cruse corresponds symbolically to a cauldron or a cup: according to
Herbert, "The Cauldron of the Bards was connected by them with Mary in
that particular capacity which forms the portentous feature in St.
Brighid (_viz._, her _being Christ's Mother_) to the verge of
identification. The reason was that divine objects considered by them
essentially, and, as it were, sacramentally as being Christ, were
prepared within and produced out of that sacred and womb-like
receptacle." He then quotes two bardic extracts to the following
effect:--
(1) The One Man and our Cauldron,
And our deed, and our word,
With the bright pure Mary daughter of Anne.
(2) Christ, Creator, Emperor and our Mead,
Christ the Concealed, pillar of peace,
Christ, Son of Mary and of my Cauldron, a pure pedigree![985]
The likelihood is that the solitary great Jasper stone in the roof of
the four-columned hall at Edrei, the Capital of King Og, was similarly a
symbol of the ideal Corner Stone or the Concealed Pillar of Peace.
At Mykenae the celebrated titanic gateway is ornamented by two lions
guarding or supporting a solitary pillar or numeral 1: at other times a
figure of the Magna Mater takes the place of this ONE, and it is
probable that the Io of Mykenae was originally My Kene, _i.e._, Mother
Queen or, more radically, Mother Great One. That Io was represented by
the horns or crescent moon is obvious from the innumerable idols in the
form of cows horns found at Mykenae: we have already connected Cain,
Cann, and Kenna with the moon or _choon_, Latin _luna_, French _lune_,
otherwise Cynthia or Diana.
Not only was Crete or Candia essentially an island of caves, but the
district of the British Cantii seems if anything to have been even more
riddled: _canteen_ is a generic term for cellar or cool cave, and the
origin of this word is not known. In Mexico _cun_ meant _pudenda
muliebris_, in London _cunny_ and _cunt_ carry the same meaning, and
with _cenote_, the Mexican for _cistern_, may be connoted our English
rivers Kennet and Kent. Dr. Guest refers to the cauldron of _Cend_wen
(Keridwen): according to Davidson the magic cup of the Cabiri
corresponded to the _Condy_ Cup[986] of the Gnostics which is the same
as that in which _Guion_ (Mercury) made his beverage--the beverage of
knowledge or divine Kenning, the philosophical Mercury of the mediæval
alchemists. Sometimes the Egg or Cup was encircled by two serpents said
to represent the Igneous and Humid principles of Nature in conjunction:
it is not improbable that the spirals found alike at Mykenae and New
Grange represented this dual coil, spire, or maze of Life, and the Coil
Dance or the Snail's Creep, which was until recently executed in
Cornwall, may have borne some relation to this notion.[987]
[Illustration: FIG. 482.--Entry to New Grange.]
In the neighbourhood of Totnes and the river Teign is the world-famous
Kent's Cavern,[988] whence has emanated evidence that man was living in
what is now Devonshire, contemporaneously with the mammoth, the
cave-lion, the woolly rhinoceros, the bison, and other animals which are
now extinct. Kent's Cavern is in a hill, _dun_, _tun_, or what the
Bretons term a _torgen_, and the _torgen_ containing Kent's Cavern is
situated in the Manor of Torwood in the parish of Tor, whence Torbay,
Torquay, etc.: in Cornwall _tor_, or _tur_, meant belly, and _tor_ may
be equated with _door_, Latin _janua_.
The entrance to Kent's Hole is in the face of a cliff, and the people
mentioned in the Old Testament as the _Kenites_ were evidently
cliff-cave dwellers, for it is related that Balaam looked on the Kenites
and said: "Strong is thy dwelling-place, and thou puttest thy nest in a
rock":[989] Kent is the same word as _kind_, meaning _genus_; also as
_kind_, meaning affectionate and well-disposed, and it is worthy of note
that the cave-dwelling Kenites of the Old Testament were evidently a
kindly people for the record reads: "Saul said unto the Kenites 'Go,
depart, get you down from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with
them: for _ye shewed kindness to all the children of Israel when they
came up_ out of Egypt'.[990] So the Kenites departed from among the
Amalekites."[991]
There is evidence that Thor's Cavern in Derbyshire was inhabited by
prehistoric troglodites; the most high summit in the Peak District is
named Kinder Scout, and in the southern side of Kinder Scout is the
celebrated Kinderton Cavern: at Kinver in Staffordshire there are
prehistoric caves still being lived in by modern troglodites, and at
Cantal in France there are similar cave dwellings.
In Derbyshire are the celebrated Canholes and at Cannes, by Maestricht,
is an entrance to the amazing grottos of St. Peter: this subterranean
quarry is described as a succession of long horizontal galleries
supported by an immense number of square pillars whose height is
generally from 10 to 20 feet: the number of these vast subterranean
alleys which cross each other and are prolonged in every direction
cannot be estimated at less than 2000, the direct line from the built up
entrance near Fort St. Peter to the exit on the side of the Meuse
measures one league and a half. That these works were at one time in the
occupation of the Romans, is proved by Latin inscriptions, but evidently
the Romans did not do the building for, "underneath these inscriptions
you can trace some ill-formed characters traditionally attributed to the
Huns; which is ridiculous since the Huns did not build, and therefore
had no need of quarries, and moreover were ignorant of the art of
writing".[992] In view of the fact that the gigantic cavern farther up
the Meuse, is entitled the Han Grotto, this tradition of Hun "writing"
is not necessarily ridiculous: the Huns in question, whoever they were,
probably were the people who built the Hun's beds and were worshippers
of "the One Man and our Cauldron".
The Peter Mount now under consideration does not appear to have been
such a Peter's Purgatory as found on "the island of the tribe of Oin":
on the contrary its galleries, based on pillars about 16 feet high, are
traced on a regular plan. These cross one another at right angles, and
their most noticeable feature is the extreme regularity and perfect
level of the roof which is enriched with a kind of cornice--a cornice of
the severest possible outline, but with a noble simplicity which gives
to the galleries a certain monumental aspect.
Within the criss-cross bowels of the Peter Mount is another very
remarkable curiosity--a small basin filled with water called
Springbronnen ("source of living water") which is incessantly renewed,
thanks to the drops falling from the upper portion of a fossil tree
fixed in the roof.[993] The modern showman does not vaunt among his
attractions a "source of living water," and we may reasonably assume
that this appellation belongs to an older and more poetic age: the
Hebrew for "fountain of living waters" is _ain_, a word to be connoted
with Hun, Han, and St. Anne of the Catacombs: St. Anne is the patron of
all springs and wells; at Sancreed is a St. Eunys Well, and the word
_aune_ or _avon_ was a generic term for any _gentle flowing_ stream.
It is reasonable to equate St. Anne of the Catacombs with "Pope Joan" of
Engelheim, and it is probable that the original Vatican was the
terrestrial seat of the celestial Peter, the Fate Queen or Fate King:
with St. Peter's Mount may be connoted the Arabian City of Petra which
is entirely hewn out of the solid rock. The connection between the Irish
Owen, or Oin, and the Patrick of Patrick's Purgatory has already been
considered, and that Janus or Janicula was the St. Peter of the Vatican
is very generally admitted: we shall subsequently consider Janus in
connection with St. Januarius or January; at Naples there are upwards of
two miles of catacombs, and the Capo di _Chino_, under which these
occur, may probably be identified with the St. Januarius whose name they
bear.
[Illustration: FIG. 483.--Seventeenth Century Printer's Mark.]
That Janus, the janitor of the Gates of Heaven and of all other gates,
was a personification of immortal Time is sufficiently obvious from the
attributes which were assigned to him; that the Patrick of Ireland was
also the Lord of the 365 days is to be implied from the statement of
Nennius that St. Patrick "at the beginning" founded 365 churches and
ordained 365 bishops.[994] I was recently accosted in the street by a
North-Briton who inquired "what _dame_ is it?": on my failure to catch
his meaning his companion pointed to my watch chain and repeated the
inquiry "what _time_, is it"; but even without such vivid evidence it is
clear that _dame_ and _time_ are mere variants of the same word. It is
proverbial that Truth, _alias_ Una, _alias_ Vera, is the daughter of
Time: that Time is also the custodian of Truth is a similar commonplace:
Time is the same word as Tom, and Tom is a contracted form of Thomas
which the dictionaries define as meaning _twin, i.e., twain:_ Thomas is
the same name as Tammuz, a Phrygian title of Adonis, and in Fig. 404
(_ante_, p. 639), Time was emblemised as the Twain or Pair; in Fig. 483,
Father Time is identified with Veritas or Truth, for the legend runs,
"Truth in time brings hidden things to light".[995] The Lady Cynethryth,
who dwells proverbially at the bottom of a well, is, of course, daily
being brought to light; it is, however, unusual to find her thus
depicted clambering from a dene hole or a den. In all probability the
"Sir Thomas" who figures in the ballad as Fair Rosamond's custodian was
originally Sir Tammuz, Tom, or Time--
And you Sir Thomas whom I truste
To bee my loves defence,
Be careful of my gallant Rose
When I am parted hence.
The relentless Queen who appears so prominently in the story may be
connoted with the cruel Stepmother who figures in the Cinderella cycle
of tales--a ruthless lady whom I have considered elsewhere. The silken
thread by which the Queen reached Rosamond--to whose foot, like
Jupiter's chain, it was attached--is paralleled by the thread with which
Ariadne guided the fickle Theseus. In an unhappy hour the Queen
overcomes the trusty Thomas, and guided by the silken thread--
Went where the Ladye Rosamonde
Was like an Angel sette.
But when the Queen with steadfast eye
Beheld her beauteous face
She was amazed in her minde
At her exceeding grace.
The word _grace_ is the same as _cross_, and grace is the interpretation
given by all dictionaries of the name John or Ian: the red cross was
originally termed the Jack, and to the Jack, without doubt, was once
assigned the meaning "Infinite in the East, Infinite in the West,
Infinite in the South. Thus it is said, He who is in the fire, He who is
in the heart, He who is in the Sun, they are _One_ and the same:" in
_China_ the Svastika is known as the _Wan_.
FOOTNOTES:
[905] Walford, E., _Greater London_, ii., 95.
[906] Mottingham, anciently Modingham, is supposed to be from Saxon
_modig_, proud or lofty, and _ham_, a dwelling. Johnstone
derives it as, "Enclosure of Moding," or "of the Sons of Mod
or Mot". We may assume these people were followers of the
Maid, and that Mottingham was equivalent to Maiden's Home.
[907] Mackenzie, D. A., _Myths of Crete_, p. xlvi.
[908] Borlase, Wm., _Antiquities of Cornwall_, p. 296.
[909] _Cliff Castles_, p. 33.
[910] _Cf._ Baring-Gould, _Cliff Castles_.
[911] Chislehurst is supposed to mean the pebble hurst or wood, but
Chislehurst is on chalk and is less pebbly than many places
adjacent: at Chislehurst is White Horse Hill: Nantjizzel or
_jizzle valley_, in Cornwall, is close to Carn Voel, _alias_
the Diamond House, and thus, I am inclined to think that
Chislehurst was a selhurst or selli's wood sacred to Chi the
great Jehu.
[912] Adams, W. H. A., _Famous Caves and Catacombs_, p. 90.
[913] Spence L., _Myths of Mexico and Peru_, p. 293.
[914] In 1867 Mr. Roach Smith published the following description:
"The ground plan of the caves was like a six-leaved flower
diverging from the central cup which is represented by the
shaft. The central cave of each three is about 14 yards long
and about 6 yards high. The side caves are smaller, about 7
yards long and 2 yards wide. The section is rather singular:
taken from end to end the roof line is horizontal: but the
floor rises at the end of the cave so that a sketch of the
section from end to end of the two principal caves is like
the outline of a boat, the shaft being in the position of the
mainmast. The section across the cave is like the outline of
an egg made to stand on its broader end. They are all hewn
out of the chalk, the tool marks, like those which would be
made by a pick, being still visible."--_Archæologia_, i., 32.
Dr. Munro states: "They are usually found on the higher ground
of the lower reaches of the Thames ... in fact, North Kent and
South Essex appear to be studded with them."--_Prehistoric
Britain_, p. 222.
[915] _Nat. Hist._, lib. xvii., cap. viii.
[916] Part I.
[917] One of the most characteristic symbols of the Ægean is St.
Andrew's Cross: I have suggested that the Scotch Hendrie
meant _ancient drie_ or _drew_, and it is not without
significance that tradition closely connects St. Andrews in
Scotland with the Ægean. The legend runs that St. Rule
arrived at St. Andrews bringing with him a precious relic--no
less than Sanct Androwis Arme. "This Reule," continues the
annalist, "was ane monk of Grece born in Achaia and abbot in
the town of Patras"--Simpkins, J. E., _Fife_, Country
Folklore, vol. vli., p. 243.
[918] _The Gnostics and their Remains_, p. 72.
[919] "It is certain that ancient caves do exist in Palestine which
in form and circumstance, and to some extent also in
decoration, approximate so nearly to the Royston Cave that if
any historical connection could be established between them,
it would scarcely seem doubtful that the one is a copy of the
other."--Beldam, J., _The Royston Cave_, p. 24. According to
the same authority there are indications at the Royston Cave
"of an extreme and primeval antiquity," and he adds, "it
bears, indeed, a strong resemblance in form and dimension to
the ancient British habitation; and certain marks and
decorations in its oldest parts such as indentations and
punctures, giving a diapered appearance to the surface, are
very similar to what is seen in confessedly Druidical and
Phoenician structures," p. 22.
[920] Beldam, J., _The Royston Cave_, p. 24.
[921] In Caledonia dovecots or _doocats_ are still superstitiously
maintained: there may be a connection between _doocat_ and
the "Dowgate" Hill which neighbours the present Cathedral of
St. Paul.
[922] Nichols, W. J., _The Chislehurst Caves and Dene Holes_, p. 5.
[923] Walford, E., _Greater London_, ii., 127.
[924] _Ibid._, p. 131.
[925] Goddard, A. R., _Essex Archæological Society's Transactions_,
vol. vii., 1899.
[926] Courtois, _Dictionaire Geographique de l'Arrondissement de
Saint Omer_, p. 156.
[927] Wilson, J. G., _Gazetteer_, i., 1044.
[928] Eckenstein, L., _Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes_, p.
154.
[929] Dan or Don is one of the main European root river names; it
occurs notably in the story of the _Dan_aides who carried
water in broken urns to fill a bottomless vessel, and again
in _Dan_aus who is said to have relieved Argos from drought.
[930] P. 242.
[931] Herbert, A., _Cyclops_, p. 154.
[932] Wright, T., _Patrick's Purgatory_, p. 162.
[933] _Ibid._, p. 231.
[934] _Travels in the East_, p. 2.
[935] "This was the _round_ church of St. Mary, divided into two
stories by slabs of stone; in the upper part are four altars;
on the eastern side below there is another, and to the right
of it an empty tomb of stone, in which the Virgin Mary is
said to have been buried; but who moved her body, or when
this took place, no one can say. On entering this chamber,
you see on the right-hand side a stone inserted in the wall,
on which Christ knelt when He prayed on the night in which He
was betrayed; and the marks of His knees are still seen on
the stone, as if it had been as soft as wax."
[936] Wright comments upon this: "Dr. Clarke is the only modern
traveller who has given any notice of these subterranean
chambers or pits, which he supposes to have been ancient
places of idolatrous worship".
[937] _Cf._ Baring-Gould, _Curious Legends_, p. 238.
[938] _Mysteries of the Cabiri_, ii., 393.
[939] _Cf._ Herbert, A., _Cyclops_, p. 155.
[940] _Ibid._, p. 154.
[941] It is not improbable that the Pied Piper incident was
actually enacted annually at the Koppenburg, and that the
children of Hamelyn were given the treat of being taken
through some brilliantly lit cavern "joining the town and
close at hand". Whether the Koppenburg contains any grottos I
am unable to say.
[942] _Cyclops_, p. 156.
[943] The authorities connect the surnames Kettle and Chettle with
the Kettle or Cauldron of Norse mythology, whence Prof.
Weekley writes: "The renowned Captain Kettle, described by
his creator as a Welshman, must have descended from some
hardy Norse pirate". Why Norse? The word _kettle_, Gaelic
_cadhal_, is supposedly borrowed from the Latin _catillus_, a
small bowl: the Greek for cup is _kotulos_, and it is
probable that _kettle_ and _cotyledon_ are alike radically
Ket, Cot, or Cad. In Scotland _adhan_ meant cauldron, whence
Rust thinks that Edinbro or Dunedin was once a cauldron hill.
[944] Sandringham, near King's Lynn, appeared in Domesday as
Sandersincham: upon this Johnston comments, "Curious
corruption. This is 'Holy Dersingham,' as compared with the
next parish Dersingham. French _saint_, Latin _sanctus_,
Holy."
[945] Ogilvie, J. S., _A Pilgrimage in Surrey_, ii., 183.
[946] _Ibid._, p. 166.
[947] _Ibid._, p. 167. The italics are mine.
[948] "The old Bourne stream, generally known as the 'Surrey Woe
Water,' has already commenced to flow through Caterham
Valley, and at the moment there is quite a strong current of
water rushing through an outlet at Purley.
"There are also pools along its course through Kenley,
Whyteleafe, and Warlingham, which suggest that the stream is
rising at its principal source, in the hills around Woldingham
and Oxted, where it is thought there exists a huge natural
underground reservoir, which, when full, syphons itself out at
certain periods about every seven years.
"Tradition says that when the Bourne flows 'out of season' or
at irregular times it foretells some great calamity. It
certainly made its appearance in a fairly heavy flow in three
of the years of the war, but last year, which will always be
historical for the declaration of the armistice and the prelude
of peace, there was no flow at all."--_The Star_, 15th March,
1919.
[949] "Archæologia" (from _The Gentleman's Magazine_), i., 283.
[950] _Cf._ Johnson, W., _Byeways_, pp. 411, 417.
[951] Ogilvy, J. S., _A Pilgrimage in Surrey_, ii., 164.
[952] That the solar horse was sacred among the Ganganoi of
Hibernia is probable, for: "On that great festival of the
peasantry, St. John's Eve, it is the custom, at sunset on
that evening, to kindle immense fires throughout the country,
built like our bonfires, to a great height, the pile being
composed of turf, bogwood, and such other combustibles as
they can gather. The turf yields a steady, substantial body
of fire, the bogwood a most brilliant flame: and the effect
of these great beacons blazing on every hill, sending up
volumes of smoke from every part of the horizon, is very
remarkable. Early in the evening the peasants began to
assemble, all habited in their best array, glowing with
health, every countenance full of that sparkling animation
and excess of enjoyment that characterise the enthusiastic
people of the land. I had never seen anything resembling it:
and was exceedingly delighted with their handsome,
intelligent, merry faces; the bold bearing of the men, and
the playful, but really modest deportment of the maidens; the
vivacity of the aged people, and the wild glee of the
children. The fire being kindled, a splendid blaze shot up;
and for a while they stood contemplating it, with faces
strangely disfigured by the peculiar light first emitted when
the bogwood is thrown on. After a short pause, the ground was
cleared in front of an old blind piper, the very beau-ideal
of energy, drollery, and shrewdness, who, seated on a low
chair, with a well-plenished jug within his reach, screwed
his pipes to the liveliest tunes and the endless jig began.
"But something was to follow that puzzled me not a little. When
the fire burned for some hours, and got low, an indispensable
part of the ceremony commenced. Every one present of the
peasantry passed through it, and several children were thrown
across the sparkling embers; while a wooden frame of some 8
feet long, with a horse's head fixed to one end, and a large
white sheet thrown over it, concealing the wood and the man on
whose head it was carried, made its appearance. This was
greeted with loud shouts as the '_white horse_'; and having
been safely carried by the skill of its bearer several times
through the fire with a bold leap, it pursued the people, who
ran screaming and laughing in every direction. I asked what the
horse was meant for, and was told it represented all cattle.
"Here was the old pagan worship of Baal, if not of Moloch too,
carried on openly and universally in the heart of a nominally
Christian country, and by millions professing the Christian
name! I was confounded; for I did not then know that Popery is
only a crafty adaptation of pagan idolatries to its own scheme;
and while I looked upon the now wildly excited people, with
their children and, in a figure, all their cattle passing again
and again through the fire, I almost questioned in my own mind
the lawfulness of the spectacle, considered in the light that
the Bible must, even to the natural heart, exhibit it in to
those who confess the true God."--Elizabeth, Charlotte,
_Personal Recollections_, quoted from "S. M." _Sketches of
Irish History_, 1845.
[953] _The Religion of Ancient Britain_, p. 28.
[954] _Prehistoric London_, p. 137.
[955] _Man the Primeval Savage_, p. 328.
[956] _Ibid._, p. 66.
[957] _Archæologia_, i., 29.
[958] _Le donseil_ probably here means _donsol_, or _lord sun_.
Adonis and all the other Sun lords were supposed to have beep
born in a cave on 25th December. We have seen that Michael's
Mount (family name St. Levan), was known alternatively as
_dinsol_.
[959] Adams, W. H. D., _Famous Caves and Catacombs_, p. 183.
[960] _Ægean Archæologia_, p. 156.
[961] Mr. and Mrs. Hawes, _Crete the Forerunner of Greece_, p. 65.
[962] _Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe_, p. 183.
[963] "Herodotus in _Book VIII_. says that the ancients worshipped
the Gods and Genii of any place under the form of serpents.
'Set up,' says some one in Persius' _Satires_ (No. 1), 'some
marks of reverence such as the painting of two serpents to
let boys know that the place is sacred.'"--Seymour, F., _Up
Hill and Down Dale in Ancient Etruria_, p. 237.
[964] Johnson, W., _Byways_, p. 304.
[965] _Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society_, 1869.
[966] MacKenzie, D. A., _Myths of Crete_, p. 138.
[967] _Light of Britannia_, p. 200.
[968]_Cf._ _Percy Reliques_ (Everyman's Library), p. 21.
[969] The Baron's Cave at Reigate is "about 150 feet long" (_ante_,
p. 799).
[970] _Percy Reliques_, p. 20.
[971] Hawes, _Crete the Forerunner of Greece_, p. 125.
[972] _The Cornish Riviera_, p. 265.
[973] H. O. F., _St. George for England_, p. 15.
[974] _A Pilgrimage in Surrey_, ii., 177.
[975] At Bristol is White Lady's Road.
[976] The curious name Newlove occurs as one of the erstwhile
owners of the Margate grotto: the Lovelace family, for whose
name the authorities offer no suggestions except that it is a
corruption of the depressing Loveless, probably either once
worshipped or acted the Lovelass. This conjecture has in its
favour the fact that "many of our surnames are undoubtedly
derived from characters assumed in dramatic performances and
popular festivities".--Weekley, A. B., _The Romance of
Names_, p. 197. "To this class belong many surnames which
have the form of abstract nouns, _e.g._, _charity_, _verity_,
_virtue_, _vice_. Of similar origin are perhaps, _bliss,
chance, luck_, and _goodluck_."--_Ibid._, p. 197.
[977] With the old English custom of burying the dead in roses, and
with the tradition that at times a white lady with a red rose
in her mouth used to appear at Pen_deen_ cave (Courtney, Miss
M. L., _Cornish Feasts and Folklore_, p. 9), in Cornwall may
be connoted the statement of Bunsen: "The Phoenicians had a
grand flower show in which they hung chaplets and bunches of
roses in their temples, and _on the statue of the goddess
Athena_ which is only a feminine form of Then or Thorn"
(_cf._ Theta, _The Thorn Tree_, p. 40). The probability is
that not only was the rose sacred to Athene but that Danes
Elder (_Sambucus ebulus_), and Danes flower (_Anemone
pulsutilla_) had no original reference to the Danes, but to
the far older Dane, or donna, the white Lady. Both _don_ and
_dan_ are used in English, as the equivalent of _dominus_,
whence Shakespeare's reference to Dan Cupid.
[978] Adams, W. H. D., _Famous Caves and Catacombs_, p. 177.
[979] Davidson, P., _The Mistletoe and its Philosophy_, p. 51.
[980] The term Christ is interpreted as "the anointed".
[981] Akerman, J. Y., _Ancient Coins_, p. 25.
[982] We shall consider Robin Hood whom the authorities already
equate with Odin in a subsequent chapter. In Robin Hood's
Cave have been discovered remains of paleolithic Art
representing a horse's head. In Kent the ceremony of the
Hooden Horse used until recently to survive, and the same
Hood or Odin may possibly be responsible for "_Wood_stock".
[983] Crutched Friars in London marks the site of a priory of the
freres of the Crutch or Crouch.
[984] The San_creed_ chalice may be connoted ideally and
philologically with the San_graal_, Provençal _gradal_: the
apparition of a child in connection with the graal or gradal
also permits the equation _gradal_ = _cradle_. At Llandudno
is the stone entitled _cryd Tudno, i.e._, the cradle of
Tudno.
[985] _Cyclops_, p. 137
[986] _The Mistletoe and its Philosophy_, p. 31.
[987] "The young people being all assembled in a large meadow, the
village band strikes up a simple but lively air, and marches
forward, followed by the whole assemblage, leading
hand-in-hand (or more closely linked in case of engaged
couples) the whole keeping time to the tune with a lively
step. The band or head of the serpent keeps marching in an
ever-narrowing circle, whilst its train of dancing followers
becomes coiled around it in circle after circle. It is now
that the most interesting part of the dance commences, for
the band, taking a sharp turn about, begins to retrace the
circle, still followed as before, and a number of young men
with long, leafy branches in their hands as standards, direct
this counter-movement with almost military precision."--_Cf._
Courtney, Miss M. L., _Cornish Feasts and Folklore_, p. 39.
[988] The name Kent here appears to be of immemorial antiquity, and
was apparently first printed in a 1769 map which shows
"Kent's Hole Field".
[989] Num. xxiv. 21.
[990] In modern Egyptian _kunjey_ means _kinship_.
[991] 1 Sam. xv. 6.
[992] Adam, W. H. D., _Famous Caves and Catacombs_, p. 167.
[993] Adams, W. H. D., _Famous Caves and Catacombs_, p. 163.
[994] Usher, Dr. J., _A Discourse on the Religion Anciently
Professed by the Irish and British_, p. 77.
[995] At the foot of this emblem the designer has introduced an
intreccia or Solomon's knot between his initials R. S.
CONCLUSIONS
"I can affirm that I have brought it from an utter darknesse to a
thin mist, and have gonne further than any man before me."--JOHN
AUBREY.
"But for my part I freely declare myself at a loss what to say to
things so much obscured by their distant antiquity; and you, when
you read these conjectures, will plainly perceive that I have only
groped in the dark."--CAMDEN.
[Illustration: FIG. 484.--From _Mythology of the Celtic Races_
(Rolleston, T. W.).]
[Illustration: FIG. 485.--_Ibid._]
One may perhaps get a further sidelight on the marvellous labyrinthic
cave temples of the ancients by a reference to the so-called worm-knots
or cup-and-ring markings on cromlechs and menhirs. With regard to these
sculptures Mr. T. W. Rolleston writes: "Another singular emblem, upon
the meaning of which no light has yet been thrown, occurs frequently in
connection with megalithic monuments. The accompanying illustrations
show examples of it. Cup-shaped hollows are made in the surface of the
stone, these are often surrounded with concentric rings, and from the
cup one or more radial lines are drawn to a point outside the
circumference of the rings. Occasionally a system of cups are joined by
these lines, but more frequently they end a little way outside the
widest of the rings. These strange markings are found in Great Britain
and Ireland, in Brittany, and at various places in India, where they are
called _mahadeos_. I have also found a curious example--for such it
appears to be--in Dupaix' _Monuments of New Spain_. It is reproduced in
Lord Kingsborough's _Antiquities of Mexico_, vol. lv. On the circular
top of a cylindrical stone, known as the Triumphal Stone, is carved a
central cup, with nine concentric circles round it, and a duct or
channel cut straight from the cup through all the circles to the rim.
Except that the design here is richly decorated and accurately drawn, it
closely resembles a typical European cup-and-ring marking. That these
markings mean something, and that wherever they are found they mean the
same thing, can hardly be doubted, but what that meaning is remains yet
a puzzle to antiquarians. The guess may perhaps be hazarded that they
are diagrams or plans of a megalithic sepulchre. The central hollow
represents the actual burial-place. The circles are the standing stones,
fosses, and ramparts which often surrounded it: and the line or duct
drawn from the centre outwards represents the subterranean approach to
the sepulchre. The apparent avenue intention of the duct is clearly
brought out in the varieties given herewith, which I take from Simpson.
As the sepulchre was also a holy place or shrine, the occurrence of a
representation of it among other carvings of a sacred character is
natural enough; it would seem symbolically to indicate that the place
was holy ground. How far this suggestion might apply to the Mexican
example I am unable to say."[996]
Mr. Rolleston is partially right in his idea that the designs are as it
were ground plans of monuments, but that theory merely carries the point
a step backward and the question remains--Why were monuments constructed
in so involved and seemingly absurd a form? I hazard the conjecture that
the Triumphal Stone with its central cup and _nine_ concentric circles
was a symbol of Life, and of the _nine_ months requisite for the
production of Human Life; that the duct or channel straight from the cup
through all the circles to the rim implied the mystery of creation; and
that the seemingly senseless meander of long passages was intended as a
representation of the maw or stomach. That the Druids were practised
physiologists is deducible from the complaint made against one of them,
that he had dissected 600 bodies: the ancient anatomists might quite
reasonably have traced Life to a germ or cell lying within a mazy and
seemingly unending coil of viscera: we know that auguries were drawn
from the condition of the entrails of sacrificial victims, whence
originally the entrails were in all probability regarded as the seat of
Life. _Mahadeo_, the Indian term for a worm-knot or cup-marking,
resolves as it stands into _maha_, great; and _deo_, Goddess: our
English word _maw_, meaning stomach, is evidently allied to the Hebrew
_moi_, meaning bowels; with _moeder_, the Dutch for womb, may be
connoted Mitra or Mithra, and perhaps Madura. It is well known that the
chief Festival celebrated in the Indian cave temples at Madura and
elsewhere is associated with the _lingam_, or emblem of sex, and it may
be assumed that the invariable sixfold form of the Kentish dene holes
was connected in some way with sex worship. The word _six_ is for some
reason, which I am unable to surmise, identical with the word _sex_: the
Chaldees--who were probably not unconnected with the "pure Culdees" of
Caledonia--taught that Man, male and female, was formed upon the _sixth_
day: Orpheus calls the number _six_, "Father of the celestial and mortal
powers," and, says Davidson, "these considerations are derived from the
doctrine of Numbers which was highly venerated by the Druids".[997] Six
columbas centring in the womb of the Virgin Mary were illustrated on
page 790, and it will probably prove that _columba_ meant holy womb,
just as _culver_ seemingly meant holy ovary.
[Illustration: FIGS. 486 to 491.--Paper-marked Mediæval Emblems,
Showing the Combination of Serpent, Circle, and Six
Lobes. From _Les Filigranes_ (Briquet, C. M.).]
[Illustration: FIGS. 492 to 502.--Paper-marked Mediæval Emblems,
Showing Circle and Serpent "like the intestines". From
_Les Filigranes_ (Briquet, C.M.).]
The sixfold marigold or wheel was used not infrequently as an emblem
during the Middle Ages: in Fig. 504--a mediæval paper-mark--this design
is sanctified by a cross, and the centre of Fig. 486 consists of the
circle and Serpent. Figs. 492 to 502 exhibit further varieties of
this circle and Serpent design--the symbol of fructifying Life--and some
of these examples bear a curious resemblance to the twists and
convolutions of the entrails. In Egypt, Apep, the Giant Serpent, was
said to have--"resembled the intestines":[998] the word Apep is
apparently related to _pepsis_, the Greek for _digestion_, as likewise
to our _pipe_, meaning a long tube.
[Illustration: FIG. 503]
Prof. Elliot Smith, who has recently published some lectures entitled
_The Evolution of the Dragon_, sums up his conclusions as follows: "The
dragon was originally a concrete expression of the divine powers of
life-giving; but with the development of a higher conception of
religious ideals it became relegated to a baser rôle, and eventually
became the symbol of the powers of evil".[999] I have elsewhere
illustrated a mediæval dragon-mark which was sanctified by a cross, and
it is a highly remarkable fact that the papermakers of the Middle Ages
were evidently _au fait_ with the ancient meaning of this sign. Several
of their multifarious serpent designs are associated with the small
circle or pearl, in which connection it is noteworthy that not only had
pearls the reputation of being givers of Life, but that _margan_, the
ancient Persian word for pearl, is officially interpreted as meaning
_mar_, "giver," and _gan_, "life". This word, says Prof. Elliot Smith,
has been borrowed in all the Turanian languages ranging from Hungary to
Kamchatka, also in the non-Turanian speech of Western Asia, thence
through Greek and Latin (_margarita_) to European languages.[1000] The
Persian _gan_, in Zend _yan_, seeming corresponds to the European John,
or Ian; and it is evident that Figs. 486 to 491 might justly be termed
marguerites.
One of the most favourite decorations amongst Cretan artists is the
eight-limbed octopus, and it is believed that the Mykenian volute or
spiral is a variant of this emblem. According to Prof. Elliot Smith the
evidence provided by Minoan paintings, and Mykenian decorative art,
demonstrates that the spiral as a symbol of life-giving was definitely
derived from the octopus.[1001] Other authorities believe that the
octopus symbolised "the fertilising watery principle," and that the
svastika is a conventionalised form of this creature. In the light of
these considerations it would thus seem highly probable that the knot,
maze, Troy Town, or trou town, primarily was emblematic of the Maze or
Womb of Life, conceived either physically or etherially in accord with
the spirit of the time and people.
There is a certain amount of testimony to the fact that the Druids
taught and worshipped within caves, and there is some reason to suppose
that the Druids had a knowledge, not only of the lense, telescope, or
Speculum of the Pervading Glance, but also of gunpowder, for Lucan,
writing of a grove near Marseilles, remarks: "There is a report that the
grove is often shaken and strangely moved, and that dreadful sounds are
heard from its caverns; and that it is sometimes in a blaze without
being consumed". That abominations were committed in these eerie places
I do not doubt: that animals were maintained in them there is good
reason to suppose; and in all probability the story of the Cretan
Minotaur, to whom Athenian youths were annually sacrificed, was based on
a certain amount of fact. The Bull being the symbol of life and
fecundity, there would have been peculiar propriety in maintaining a
bull or _toro_, Celtic _tarw_, within the _trou_, labyrinth, or maze of
life: upon two of the British coins here illustrated the Mithraic Bull
appears in combination with an intreccia. The colossal labyrinths built
in Egypt to the honour of the sacred toro are well known: in Europe
remains of the horse are constantly discovered within caves,[1002] and
it is a cognate fact that in Mexico a tapir--the nearest approach Mexico
could seemingly show to a horse--was maintained in the subterranean
temple of the god Votan.
[Illustration: FIGS. 504 to 506.--British. From Akerman.]
This Votan of South America is an interesting personality: according to
the native traditions of the Chiapenese Indians--there was once a man
named Votan, who was the grandson of the man who built the ark to save
himself and family from the Deluge. Votan was ordered by the Lord to
people America and "He came _from the East_" bringing with him seven
families: Votan, we are further told, was of the race of Chan, and built
a city in America named Nachan, after Chan his family name. The name
Votan is seemingly a variant of Wotan, the Scandinavian All Father, and
also of Wootton, which is a common Kentish family name: Wotan of
_Wednesday_ was, it is believed, once widely worshipped in Kent, notably
at _Woodnes_borough, which is particularly associated with the
tradition: on Christmas Eve Thanet used to celebrate a festival called
_Hooden_ing which consisted of decorating either the skull of a horse,
or the wooden figure of a horse's head, which then was perambulated on a
pole by a man hidden beneath a sheet.[1003]
In Central America _chan_ meant serpent, in which connection it is
noteworthy that in Scandinavian mythology Wotan presides over the great
world snake coiled at the roots of the mighty Ash Tree, named Iggdrasil.
This word may, I think, be resolved into _igg dra sil_, or High Tree
Holy, and the Ash of our innumerable Ashdowns, Ashtons, Ashleys,
Ashursts, etc., may in all probability be equated not only with _aes_,
the Welsh for _tree_, but also with _oes_, the Welsh for _life_. That
Janus, whose coin was entitled the _as_, was King As has already been
suggested, and that As or Ash[1004] was Odin is hardly open to doubt.
According to Borlase (W. C.): "There is reason to believe that the Sun
was a principal divinity worshipped under the name of Fal, Phol, Bel,
Beli, Balor, and Balder, all synonymous terms in the comparative
mythology of the Germanic peoples whether Celtic or Teutonic in speech.
A curious passage in Johannes Cornubiensis permits us to equate this
deity with Asch or As, one name of Odin. The more deeply we study this
portion of the subject the more certain becomes the identity of the
members of the pantheon of the two western branches of the
Aryan-speaking peoples."[1005]
The word _Kent_ or Cantium is, I think, connected with Candia, but
whether Votan of the race of Chan came from Candia, Cantium, or
Scandinavia is a discussion which must be reserved for a subsequent
volume: it is sufficient here to note in passing that one-third of the
language of the Mayas is said to be pure Greek, whence the question has
very pertinently been raised, "Who brought the dialect of Homer to
America? or who took to Greece that of the Mayas?"
It is now well known that there was communication between the East and
West long before America was rediscovered by Columbus, and there is
nothing therefore improbable in the Chiapenese tradition that their
Votan, after settling affairs in the West, visited Spain and Rome. The
legend relates that Votan "went by the road which his brethren, the
Culebres, had bored," these Culebres being presumably either the
inhabitants of Calabar in Africa now embraced in the Niger Protectorate,
or of Calabria, the southernmost province of Italy. The allusion to a
road which the Culebres had bored might be dismissed as a fiction were
it not for the curious fact mentioned by Livingstone that tribes lived
underground in Rua: "Some excavations are said to be thirty miles long
and have running rills in them; a whole district can stand a siege in
them. The 'writings' therein I have been told by some of the people are
drawings of animals and not letters, otherwise I should have gone to see
them." The primitive but, in many respects, advanced culture of Mykenae
and of Troy does not seem to have possessed the art of writing, and
contemporary ideas must thus necessarily have been expressed by symbols
akin to the multifarious animal-hieroglyphics of ancient Candia: it
would even seem possible that the writings of underground Rua were
parallel to the records of Egypt alleged in the following passage: "It
is affirmed that the Egyptian priests, versed in all the branches of
religious knowledge, and apprised of the approach of the Deluge, were
fearful lest the divine worship should be effaced from the memory of
man. To preserve the memory of it, therefore, they dug in various parts
of the kingdom subterranean winding passages, on the walls of which they
engraved their knowledge, under different forms of animals and birds,
which they call hieroglyphics, and which are unintelligible to the
Romans."[1006]
The existence of underground ways seems to be not infrequent in Africa,
for Captain Grant, who accompanied Captain Speke in his exploration for
the source of the Nile, tells of a colossal tunnel or subway bored under
the river Kaoma. Grant asked his native guide whether he had ever seen
anything like it elsewhere and the guide replied, "This country reminds
me of what I saw in the country to the south of Lake Tanganyika": he
then described a tunnel or subway under another river named also Kaoma,
a tunnel so lengthy that it took the caravan from sunrise to noon to
pass through. This was said to be so lofty that if mounted upon camels
the top could not be touched: "Tall reeds the thickness of a
walking-stick grew inside; the road was strewed with white pebbles, and
so wide--400 yards--that they could see their way tolerably well while
passing through it. The rocks looked as if they had been planed by
artificial means." The guide added that the people of Wambeh Lake
shelter in this tunnel,[1007] and live there with their families and
cattle.[1008]
In view of these Rider-Haggard-like facts it is unnecessary to discredit
the tradition that the South American Votan of the tribe of Chan visited
his kinsmen the Culebres, by the road which the Culebres had bored. The
journey is said to have taken place in the year 3000 of the world or
1000 B.C., and among the spots alleged to have been visited was the city
of Rome where Votan "saw the house of God building". It is well known
that great cities almost invariably exhibit traces of previous cities on
the same site: Schliemann's excavations at Troy proved the pre-existence
of a succession of cities on the site of Troy, and the same fact has
recently been established at Seville and elsewhere. The city of Rome is
famous for a labyrinth of catacombs, the building of which has always
been a mystery: the catacombs abound in pagan emblems, and it is, I
believe, now generally supposed that they are of pre-Christian origin.
A correspondent of _Notes and Queries_ suggested in 1876 that the Roman
Catacombs were the work of the prehistoric Cimmerii who notoriously
dwelt _in subterraneis domiciliis_. The rocks of the Crimea, notably at
Inkerman, are honeycombed with caverns; in fact the burrowing
proclivities of the Kymbri are proverbialised in the expression
"Cimmerian darkness". The same correspondent of _Notes and
Queries_[1009] further drew attention to the remarkable fact that in the
year 1770 coal mining operations in Ireland, at Fair Head, near The
Giant's Causeway, disclosed prehistoric quarryings together with stone
hammers "of the rudest and most ancient form". It is difficult to
believe that prehistoric man, surrounded by inexhaustible supplies of
fuel in the form of forest and peat, found it necessary to mine, with
his poor implements, for coal fuel, and the description of the
supposedly prehistoric mine--"wrought in the most expert manner, the
chambers regularly dressed and pillars left at proper intervals to
support the roof"--arouses not only a strong suspicion that the
_souterrain_ in question was actually a shrine, but also that the
place-name Antrim--where these quarryings occur--may be connected with
_antre_, a cave. When the Fair Head labyrinth was accidentally disclosed
we are told that two lads were sent forward who soon found themselves in
"numerous apartments in the mazes and windings of which they were
completely bewildered and were finally extricated, not without some
difficulty".
With Joun of Etruria, and Janus of Janicula may be connoted the Ogane of
Africa, whose toe, like that of Peter, was reverently kissed: that
Northern Africa, Etruria, and Dodona were once peopled by a kindred race
is one of the commonplaces of anthropology, and these Iberian people
are, I think, traceable not only in Britain and Hibernia, but in the
actual names _Berat_, _Bri_tain, _Aparica_ (now Africa),
_Barbary_, _Berber_ or _Barabbra_, _Epirus_, _Hebrew_, _Culebre_,
_Calabria_, and _Celtiberia_. Tacitus, who describes the ancient
Britons as being dark complexioned and curly haired, adds: "that portion
of Spain in front of Britain encourages the belief that the ancient
Iberians had come over and colonised this district--the Gauls took
possession of the adjacent coast". According to Huxley and Laing the
aboriginal inhabitants of Caledonia were from--"the great Iberian
family, the same stock as the Berbers of North Africa":[1010] the
prehistoric inhabitants of Wales similarly belonged to the Iberian stock
and--"no other race of men existed in Wales until the neolithic
period".[1011]
In Cornwall the persisting Iberian type is popularly supposed to be the
offspring of Spanish sailors wrecked at the time of the Armada, but this
theory is not countenanced by anthropologists. Speaking of the short
natives of the Hebridean island of Barra--a significant name--Campbell,
in his _West Highland Tales_, observes: "Behind the fire sat a girl with
one of these strange foreign faces which are occasionally to be seen in
the Western Isles, a face which reminded me of the Nineveh sculptures,
and of faces seen in St. Sebastian. Her hair was as black as night, her
clear eyes glittered through the peat smoke. Her complexion was dark and
her features so unlike those who sat about her, that I asked if she were
a native of the island, and learned that she was a Highland girl."
Whether this Barra maiden was a persistent type of Hebrew may be
questioned: she was certainly not Mongolian, the other great family
whose traces still persist here. The Hebrews traditionally came from
Candia, and the Candians or Cretans are universally described as
diminutive and dark-haired: according to Prof. Keith the typical Bronze
Age man was narrow-faced, round-headed, handsome, and about 5 feet 8
inches in height. "It is curious," he says, "that men of this type are
playing leading parts in large proportion to the number living."
The antithesis to the round-headed Gael, and the oval-headed Cynbro is
the square-headed Teuton, Finn, or Mongol. While the Cretan was
essentially creative and artistic, we are told on the other hand that
"it must always be remembered that the Phoenicians were only
intermediaries and created no art of their own".[1012] The same verity
is still curiously true of the modern Jew who almost invariably is an
intermediary, rarely if ever a producer: neither in Caledonia, Cambria,
or Hibernia does one often find a Jewish nose, and the craftsmen-artists
of the primeval world were, I think, not the Jews of Tyre, but the older
Jous of Candia or Crete. In the name Drew, translated to have meant
_skilful_, we have apparently a true tradition of the Jous of Cornwall
and the Jous of Droia, or Troy.
It is presumably the Mongolian influence in Prussia, the home of the
square-headed, that justified Matthew Arnold in writing: "The universal
dead-level of plainness and homeliness, the lack of all beauty and
distinction in form and feature, the slowness and clumsiness of the
language, the eternal beer, sausages, and bad tobacco, the blank
commonness everywhere pressing at last like a weight on the spirits of
the traveller in Northern Germany, and making him impatient to be
gone--this is the weak side, the industry, the well-doing, the patient,
steady elaboration of things, the idea of science governing all
departments of human activity--this is the strong side; and through
this side of her genius, Germany has already obtained excellent
results."
The unimaginative and plodding German is the antithesis to the
impressionable, poetic, and romantic Celt, as probably were the loathed
Magogei to the chic Cretans whose national characteristics are
commemorated in their frescoes and vases. I have already suggested that
the same antipathies existed between the ugsome Mongolians and the
swarthy slim Iberians of Epirus or Albania. Descendants of both
Mongolians and Jous undoubtedly exist to-day in Britain, particularly in
Cornwall, where Dr. Beddoe notes and comments upon the slanting Ugrian
or Mongolian eye. The same authority observes that anthropologists had
long been calling out for the remains of an Iberian, or pre-Celtic,
language in the British Isles before their philological brethren awoke
to the consciousness of their existence. "Mongolian or Ugrian types have
been recognised though less distinctly; and now Ugrian grammatical forms
are being dimly discerned in the Welsh and Irish languages."[1013] In
Ireland only two Iberian words are known to have survived, one of which,
as we have seen, was _fern_, meaning _anything good_. In view of the
fact that the Celtiberians were also known as Virones,[1014] and as the
Berones (these last named neighbouring the Pyrenees), it would seem
possible that the Iberians were the Hibernians, and had originally a
first-class reputation. As already noted our records state of Prydain,
the son of Aedd, that before his advent there was little gentleness in
Britain, and only a superiority in oppression.
It is probable that the Iberians were the original builders of
_barrows_, and the excavators of the stupendous _burrows_, found from
Burmah to Peru, and from Aparica to Barra: in which direction the
Iberian culture flowed it would be premature at present to discuss, but
the question will ultimately be settled by an exercise of the perfectly
sound canon of etymology, that in comparing two words _a_ and _b_
belonging to the same language, of which _a_ contains a lesser number of
syllables, _a_ must be taken to be a more original word unless there be
evidence of contractions or other corruption. The theory of a generation
ago that our innumerable British monosyllables are testimonies of
phonetic decay is probably as false as many similar notions that have
recently been relegated to limbo. In a paroxysm of enthusiasm for the
German-made Science of Language, and for the theory that sound etymology
has nothing to do with sound, one of the disciples of Max Müller has
observed that unless _every letter_ in a modern word can be
scientifically accounted for according to rule the derivation and
definition cannot be accepted. The Dictionaries now prove that spelling
was a whimsical, temporary, shallow thing, and it will, I am confident,
be an accepted axiom in the future that "Language begins with voice,
language ends with voice". If the present book fails to add any weight
to this dictum of Latham the evidence is none the less everywhere, and
is merely awaiting the shaping hand of a stronger, more competent, and
more influential workman than the present writer.
Whether or not the radicals I have used will prove to be chips of
Iberian speech remains to be further tested, but in any case, the
official contention that the language we speak to-day is, "of course, in
no sense native to England but was brought thither by the German tribes
who conquered the island in the fifth and sixth centuries"[1015] may be
confidently impugned: Prof. Smith is, however, doubtless correct in his
statement that when our Anglo-Saxon ancestors came first to ravage
Britain, and finally to settle there, they found the island inhabited by
a people "weaker, indeed, but infinitely more civilised than
themselves".
The present essay will not have been published in vain if to any extent
it discredits the dull contempt in which our traditions and ancient
coinage are now held; still less if it negatives the offensive
supposition that England was "the one purely German nation which arose
out of the wreck of Rome," and that practically all our English
place-names are of German origin.
On re-reading my MSS. in as far as possible a detached and impartial
spirit, there would appear to be much _prima facie_ evidence in favour
of the traditional belief that these islands once possessed a very
ancient culture, and that the Kimbri, or followers of Brute, were
originally pirates or adventurers who reached these shores "over the
hazy sea from the summer country which is called Deffrobani, that is
where Constantinoblys now stands".[1016] Constantinople--originally the
Greek colony of Byzantium--is the city nearest the site of Troy; Ægean
influences have long been recognised in Britain, and the accepted theory
is that these influences penetrated overland via Gaul. This supposition
seems, however, to be strikingly negatived in a fact noted recently by
Prof. Macalister, who, speaking of the spiral decoration found alike at
Mykenae and New Grange, observes: "But spirals cannot travel through the
air; they must be depicted on some portable object in order to find
their way from Orchomenos to the neighbourhood of Drogheda. The lines
of the trade routes connecting these distant places ought to be peppered
with objects of late Minoan Art-bearing spirals. Even a few painted
potsherds would be sufficient. But there is no such thing. The media
through which the spiral patterns were _ex hypothesi_ carried to the
north have totally disappeared."[1017] We have seen a similar lack of
connective evidence in the case of the British spearhead, which
seemingly either evolved independently in this country, or was brought
hither by sea from the Ægean.
With regard to Celtic and Ægean spiral decoration, Prof. Macalister
writes: "People in the cultural stage of the builders of New Grange do
not cultivate Art for Art's sake. Some simple religious or magical
significance must lie hidden in these patterns.... Therefore, if we are
to suppose that the barbarians acquired the spiral patterns from the
Ægean merchants we must once more postulate the enthusiastic trading
missionary who taught them how to draw spirals in the intervals of
business. I, for one, cannot believe in that engaging altruist. I prefer
to believe that the spirals at New Grange are not derived from the Ægean
at all, but that they are an independent growth."[1018]
The Trojans were proverbially a pious race, and personally I should
prefer the theory of enthusiastic (sea) trading missionaries to the
painfully overworked hypothesis of independent growth.
According to Mr. Donald A. Mackenzie the process of developing symbols
from natural objects can be traced even in the Paleolithic Age:[1019]
the earliest town at Troy which was built in the Neolithic Age existed
on a hillock and has been likened to the ubiquitous hill fort of
Caledonia; seemingly Troy was originally a Dunhill and it was not until
about 2500 B.C. that the original hillock, dunhill, or Athene
Hill,[1020] was levelled. It is a most remarkable fact that, according
to Prof. Virchow, "the few skulls which were saved out of the lower
cities have this in common, that without exception they present the
character of a more civilised people: all savage peculiarities in the
stricter sense are entirely wanting in them".[1021] So far, then, as the
testimony of anthropology carries weight, the Trojan fell from a high
state of grace, and neolithic Man was quite as capable of the fair
humanities as any modern Doctor of Divinity.
If, as I now suggest, the Iberians, the Hebrews, and the British or
Kimbry were originally one and the same race, and if, as I further
suggest, fragments of the "British" language are recoverable, it follows
that the same words will unlock doors in every direction where Iberian
or Kimbrian influence permeated: this in a subsequent volume I shall
endeavour to show is actually the case, from Burmah to Peru.[1022]
Schliemann mentions in connection with Mykenae a small stream known
nowadays as the Perseia, and as Mykenae was said to have been founded by
Perseus, the stream Perseia was presumably connected with the ancient
pherepolis. The survival of this fairy name is the more remarkable as
Mykenae itself was utterly destroyed, buried, and lost sight of, yet the
title of this rivulet survived: is there any valid reason to deny a
similar vitality and antiquity to the brook- and river-names of
Britain? Most of these have been complacently ascribed to German
settlers, others to Keltic words, but some are admittedly pre-Keltic.
Amongst the group of "rare insolubles" occurs the river Kennet which
flows past Abury, and may be connoted with the river Kent in the Kendal
district. Apart from the Kentish Cantii Herodotus speaks of a race
called Kynetes or Kynesii, both of which terms, as Sir John Rhys says,
"have a look of Greek words meaning dogmen": according to Herodotus,
"the Celts are outside the Pillars of Hercules and they border on the
Kynetii, who dwell the farthest away towards the west of the inhabitants
of Europe". Ancient writers locate the Kynetes in the west of Spain
which, according to Rhys, "suggests a still more important
inference--namely, that there existed in Herodotus' time a continental
people of the same origin and habits as the non-Celtic aborigines of
these islands".[1023] _Kennet_, as we have seen, was a British word
meaning Greyhound; I think the Kynetes were probably worshippers of
every variety of _chien_, and that dog-headed St. Christopher, the
kindly giant of Canaan, was the jackal-headed "Mercury" of the
track-making merchants of Candia.[1024] In Ireland there figures in the
Pantheon a Caindea, whose name is understood to mean the _gentle
goddess_: the fact of the dove being held in such high estimation in
Candia,[1025] as elsewhere, is presumptive evidence of the Candian
goddess being fundamentally regarded as gentle, and that Candian
adventurers were gentlemen. That Crete or Candia was an Idaeal, Idyllic,
and an Aerial island is implied not only by its titles Idaea, Doliche,
and Aeria, but also by the characteristics of its Art.
Etymology--by which I mean a Science that does not quibble at everything
beyond the view of Mrs. Markham as being out of bounds--permits us to
assume that the faith of the Iberii was belief in the Iberian _peyrou_,
the Parthian _peri_, the British _perry_, _phairy_, or _fairy_.
Anthropologists patronisingly describe the creed of primitive man as
being animism by which they mean that an anima or soul was attributed to
everything on earth: this may be a credulous and degraded faith, or it
may be sublimated into the conception of the Egyptian philosophers of
whom it has been said: "In their view the earth was 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."
Speaking of the fairy tales of Ireland W. B. Yeats characterises them as
full of simplicity and musical occurrences: "They are," he adds, "the
literature of a class for whom every incident in the old rut of birth,
love, pain, and death, has cropped up unchanged for centuries; who have
steeped everything in the heart _to whom everything is a symbol_". It is
generally supposed that fairy tales are of a higher antiquity than
cromlechs and stone avenues, and anthropologists have not hesitated to
extract from them incidents of crude character as evidence of the
barbarous and objectionable period in which they originated. With a
curious perversity Anthropology has, however, ignored the fair
humanities of phairie, while eagerly seizing upon its crudities: in view
of the prophet Micah's environment there seems to me to be no
justification for such prejudice, and if fairy-tale is really archaic
its beauties may quite well be coeval with its horrors.
In his booklet on _Folklore_ Mr. Sydney Hartland observes: "Turning from
savage nations to the peasantry of civilised Europe, you will be still
more astonished to learn that up to the present time the very same
conditions of thought are discernible wherever they are untouched by
modern education and the industrial and commercial revolution of the
last hundred years. There can only be one interpretation of this. The
human mind, alike in Europe and in America, in Africa and in the South
Seas, works in the same way, according to the same laws." This one and
only permissible theory of independent evolution is daily losing ground,
and in any case it can hardly be pushed to such extremes as identity of
words and place-names.
But while I am convinced that Crete was a culture-centre of immense
importance, this bright and particular star, was, one must think, too
small a place to account for the vast influence apparently traceable to
it. Schliemann, whom nobody now ridicules, claimed to have discovered at
Troy a bronze vase inscribed in Phoenicean characters with the words:
"From King Chronos of Atlantis," and in a paper opened after his death
he expressed his belief: "I have come to the conclusion that Atlantis
was not only a great territory between America and the West Coast of
Africa, but the cradle of all our civilisation as well". The anonymous
suggestion which appeared a few years ago in the columns of _The Times_,
that Crete was the reality of the wonderful island "fabled" by Plato,
seems to me to have nothing to support it, and I would commend to the
attention of those interested the facts collected by Ignatius Donnelly
in _Atlantis_, and by others elsewhere. Personally I incline to the
opinion that Plato's story was well founded, and that the identities
found in Peru and Mexico, Britain, the Iberian Peninsula, and Northern
Africa are due to these countries, like the Isles of the Mediterranean,
being situated in the full sweep of Atlantean influence.
According to Plato, the inhabitants of Atlantis ("an island situated in
front of the straits which you call the columns of Hercules: the island
was larger than Libya and Asia put together and was the way to other
islands") were not only highly civilised, but they "despised everything
but virtue not caring for their present state of life and thinking
lightly on the possession of gold and other property". It is thus quite
possible that the Atlanteans and not the pious Trojans were the
enthusiastic and altruistic missionaries who carried the spiral ornament
to Mykenae as to New Grange. Prof. Macalister finds it difficult to
believe in the existence of such a frame of mind, but it seems to accord
very closely to that of the hypothetical peace-loving Aryans or "noble
nations" which etymologists have already been compelled to postulate,
and which my own findings both herein and elsewhere endorse: the
semi-supernaturalness of the Idaens has already been noted, as likewise
has that of the ancient Britons and of the modern Bretons.
In the year 1508 a French vessel met with a boat full of American
Indians not far from the English coast,[1026] and there is thus one
historic warrant for the possibility of very ancient maritime contact
between Europe and America. The Maoris of New Zealand emigrated from
Polynesia in frail canoes during the historic period, and I have little
doubt that the Maoris of to-day, who tattoo themselves with spirals
similar to those found upon the prehistoric monuments of Britain, were
cognate with the woad-tattoed Britons, who opposed their naked bodies to
the invincible legends of Cæsar. One can best account for the many and
close connections between the South Sea islands and elsewhere by the
supposition that some of these islands were colonised by Atlantis,
Lyonesse, or whatever the traditional lost island was entitled: and as
many of the maritime Atlanteans must have been at sea when the alleged
catastrophe occurred, these survivors would have carried the dire news
to many distant lands: whence perhaps the almost universal tradition of
a Flood, and the salvation of only one boat load of people.
It has been said that the chief thing which makes Japan so fascinating a
land to dwell in is the consciousness that you are there living in an
atmosphere of universal kindliness and courtesy. There are still to-day
races in Polynesia who display the same kindly and almost angelic
dispositions,[1027] whence there is nothing ridiculous in the
supposition that Peru, whose natives claimed to be children of the Sun,
was associated with peyrou, the Iberian for phairy, or that the original
Angles were deemed to be angels, and England or Inghilterra their
country.
One of the most noted beliefs of all races, whether civilised or savage,
is the erstwhile existence of a Golden Age when all men were well
happified, and if existence to primitive man was merely the hideous and
protracted nightmare which anthropologists assume, it is difficult to
see at what period of his upward climb this curiously idyllic story came
into existence: it would be simpler to assume that the tradition had
some foundation in fact, and was not merely the frenzied invention of a
dreamer. No race possesses more beautiful traditions of the Adamic Age
than the British, and I have little doubt that the four quarters of the
Holy Rood or Wheel are connected with the four fabulous Cities of
Enchantment which figure in Keltic imagination. According to Irish MSS.
the Tuatha de Danaan, or Tribe of the Children of Don, after suffering a
terrible defeat at the hands of the Fomorians, quitted Ireland, returned
to Thebes, and gave themselves up to the study of Magic: leaving Greece
they next went to Denmark (named after them) where they founded four
great schools of diabolical learning--the Four Cities of Keltic
imagination. It would thus seem possible that the Children of Don were
the fabricators of the Eden, or Adam, tradition, and that they may be
connoted with the Danoi under which name Homer habitually refers to the
Greeks: with these Danoi or Danaia, Dr. Latham connotes the Hebrew
tribe of Dan, supposing that both these peoples traced their origin to
the same culture-hero.[1028] That Gardens of Eden were frequent in these
islands has been evidenced in a preceding chapter, and in Asia the
custom of constructing Edens or Terrestrial Paradises was equally
prevalent: Maundeville and other travellers have left detailed accounts
of these _abris_, all of which seem to have been constructed more or
less to the standard design of the Garden of Eden, watered by four
rivers, with a Tree or Fountain in the midst.
It is supposed that the celebrated Epistle of Prester John was a
malicious antepapal concoction of the Gnostic Troubadours, or Servants
of Love: these were certainly the shuttles that disseminated it over
Europe. I have elsewhere endeavoured to show the role played in mediæval
Europe by the Troubadours and Minnesingers (_Love Singers_), and the
subject might be infinitely extended. The derivation of _trouvere_, or
_troubadour_, from _trouver_ to find, is probably too superficial, and
if the matter were more fully investigated it is probable that, like the
Merry Andrew, these mystic singers and philanderers originated from some
Troy or Ancient Troy. Whether the _drui_ or _druids_ are similarly
traceable to the same root is debatable, but that the bards of Britain
were depositaries and disseminators of the Gnosis I do not doubt: the
evidence on that point is not only the testimony of outsiders, but it is
inherent in the literature itself, and whether this literature was
committed to writing in the sixth, twelfth, or eighteenth century is
immaterial. There are in existence many unquestionably prehistoric tales
and ideas which have been handed down verbally, and committed to writing
for the first time only within the past few years: many more are living
_viva voce_, and are not yet registered. The Welsh bards, like the bards
of other races, were a recognised class, graduates in a particular Art,
and were strictly and definitely trained in the traditional lore of
their profession. This hereditary order which was known to the Romans
certainly as early as 200 B.C., like the bards of other countries,
almost unquestionably transmitted an enormous literature solely by word
of mouth.[1029] If the feats of even the modern human memory were not
well vouched for they would not be credited: in the past, the Zend
Avesta, the Kalevala, the Popul Vuh, Homer, much of the Old Testament,
and in fact all very ancient literature has come down to us simply by
memory alone.
To an inquirer such as myself, incompetent to criticise Welsh
literature, yet hesitating to accept the once current theories of
fabrication, forgery, and deception, it is peculiarly gratifying to find
so distinguished a scholar as Sir John Morris-Jones vindicating at any
rate some portion of the suspect literature. In his study _Taliesin_,
Sir John grinds detractors past and present into as fine and small a
powder as that to which Spedding imperturbably reduced the flashy
superficialities of Macaulay,[1030] and I confess it has caused me most
agreeable emotions to find Sir John alluding to a certain truculent
D.Litt. as "that naïve type of mind which naturally assumes that what it
does not understand is mere silliness":[1031] it is even more
stimulating to witness the iconoclastic and dogmatic Nash rolled in the
dust for his "unparalleled impudence" in laying down the law of
antiquity in language.
Among the fragments of Welsh poetry occurs the claim "Bardism or
Druidism originated in Britain--pure Bardism was never well understood
in other countries--of whatever country they might be, they are entitled
Bards according to the rights and institutes of the Bards of the Island
of Britain."[1032] Before superciliously dismissing the high claims of
British Bardism it would be well to consider not only the recent
findings of Prof. Sir John Morris-Jones, but to bear steadily in mind
the following points: (1) The cultured shape of the extraordinarily
ancient British skull: (2) Avebury, the strangest megalithic monument in
the world: (3) Stonehenge, a unique and most developed form of stone
circle: (4) that England was the principal home of stone circles: (5)
that England not only possessed the greatest earth-pyramid in the world,
but that Britain was peculiarly the home of the barrow, and that there
is no word _barrow_ in either Greek or Latin, thus seeming to have been
essentially British: (6) that in Cæsar's time the youth of the Continent
were sent to Britain to study the Druidic philosophy which was believed
to have originated there: (7) the remarkable character of the English
coinage which dates back admittedly to 200 B.C., and for aught one knows
much earlier: (8) that the art of enamelling on bronze probably
originated in Britain, and the craft of spear-making evolved there.
In _Earthwork of England_ Mr. Allcroft observes: "Of all the many
thousands of earth-works 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."
The prehistoric building here illustrated might be any age: it is
standing to-day in a remote corner of Britain, and, so far as I am able
to trace, has been hitherto uncharted and unrecognised. Whether it were
a temple or the compound of a chieftain, the authorities to whom it has
been referred are unable to say: my brother, to whom its discovery was
due, is of the opinion that it was a temple, and on a subsequent
occasion we hope--after digging--to publish a more detailed account of
it, merely now noting it as an example of the innumerable objects of
interest which exist in this country at present unrecognised,
unconsidered, and unvalued.
[Illustration: FIG. 507.--Ground plan of a hitherto Uncharted English
Edifice.]
Evidence has been forthcoming that a cave in Oban was occupied by human
beings, at an epoch when the sea was 30 feet higher than its present
level, and it is now generally admitted that humanity existed in these
islands prior to the Glacial Period. Archæology of the future will
provide strong wine of astonishment to her followers: she will prove
beyond question that mythology is not merely fossil philosophy, but is
likewise to a large extent fossil history, and that the records may be
pieced together from the traditionary blissful Tertiary Period to that
time and onwards when a perilous torrent-fire struck the earth,
resulting in sequent horrors, and the slow replenishment of the
world.[1033] She will prove, I think, further that the land now called
England possesses a documentary record, and an intellectual ancestry
which is practically beyond computation, and if History shies at her
findings she will instance Brandon as a typical example of continuous
occupation and unbroken sequence from the Stone Age to to-day. Further,
she will in all probability prove that in either Crete or England the
main doctrines of Christianity were practically indigenous. The version
of Christianity which returned to us about 1500 years ago is now
generally attributed to the mystic Therapeuts of Egypt: from the time it
was officially adopted by the temporal powers the materialising process
seems almost steadily to have progressed, notwithstanding the
allegorising teaching of the Troubadours and kindred Gnostics who
claimed really to know.[1034] Happily petrifaction is a preservative,
and it may be doubted whether when Comparative Archæology has finished
her researches any of the prehistoric Christianity preached by the
Celtic Christies will prove actually lost, and whether the supposedly
impassable gulf of ages which separates the earliest literature from the
testimony of the Stones may not practically be bridged. That our popular
customs were the detrita of dramatised mythology, and that many of these
customs evidence an astonishing beauty of imagination and depth of
thought, will not be questioned except by those unfamiliar with English
folklore. In many cases the quaint customs which still linger in the
countryside, and the cults which underlie them are, as Dr. Rendel Harris
has recently observed, those of misunderstood rituals and lost
divinities, and thus embalmed like flies in the amber of unchanging
habit turn out to be the very earliest beliefs and the most primitive
religious acts of the human race: "Every surviving fragment of such a
ritual is as valuable to us as a page of an early Gospel which time has
blurred or whose first hand has been overwritten".[1035]
Few nowadays have any sympathy with the theories which a generation ago
autocratically ascribed Myth to a Disease of Language; still less is it
possible to accept the more modern supposition that Mythology is merely
the gross growth of disgusting savagery! There is more truth in Bacon's
dictum that in the first ages when such inventions and conclusions of
the human reason as are now trite and common were new, and little known,
all things abounded with fables, parables, similes, comparisons, and
illusions which were not intended to conceal, but to inform and teach.
Research tends more and more to justify Bacon in his penetrating
judgment: "And this principally raises my esteem of these fables, which
I receive not as the product of the age or invention of the poets, but
as sacred relics, gentle whispers, and the breath of better times, that
from the traditions of more ancient nations came at length into the
flutes and trumpets of the Greeks". Whence these sacred relics came,
whether from Atlantis, Crete, or Britain,[1036] we are not yet in a
position to assert, but eventually the Comparative Method will decide
this point. Dr. Rendel Harris who has, to quote his own words,
"audaciously affirmed that Apollo was only our _apple_ in
disguise,"[1037] further concludes: "It is tolerably certain that Apollo
in the Greek religion is a migration from the more northerly regions and
his mythical home is somewhere at the back of the north wind".[1038]
While I am in sympathy with many of Dr. Harris' findings, it is,
however, difficult to accept his conclusions that the Olympian
divinities were merely "personifications of, or projections from the
vegetable word": the greater probability seems to me that the Apple was
named after Apollo rather than Apollo from the Apple: similarly the
mandrake was in greater likelihood an emblem of Venus rather than
Aphrodite a projection from the Mandrake. The Venus of the Gael was
Bride or Brigit, "The Presiding Care," who was represented with a brat
in her arms: there is an old Spanish proverb to the effect that "An
ounce of Mother is worth a ton of Priest"; nowhere was Woman more
devoutly idealised than among the Celts, and it is more probable that
the conception of an immaculate Great Mother originated somewhere in
Europe rather than in the sensuous and woman-degrading East. Of the
legends of Ireland Mr. Westropp has recently observed: "When we have
removed the strata of euhemerist fiction and rubbish from the ruin, the
foundations and beautiful fragments of the once noble fane of Irish
mythology will stand clear to the sun":[1039] "Whether," said Squire,
"the great edifice of Celtic mythology will ever be wholly restored one
can at present only speculate. Its colossal fragments are perhaps too
deeply buried and too widely scattered. But even as it stands ruined it
is a mighty quarry from which poets yet unborn will hew spiritual marble
for houses not made with hands."
FINIS
[Illustration: British. From Akerman.]
FOOTNOTES:
[996] _Mythology of the Celtic Races,_ p. 68.
[997] _The Mistletoe_, p. 30.
[998] Budge, W., _Legends of the Gods_, lxxii.
[999] P. 234.
[1000] Smith, Prof. Elliot, _The Evolution of the Dragon_, p. 157.
[1001] _Ibid._, p. 176.
[1002] Notably at Solutre--_the Sol uter_?
[1003] Wright, Miss E. M., _Rustic Speech and Folklore_, p. 303.
[1004] Odin was essentially a _Wind_ God: in Rutlandshire gales are
termed _Ash_ winds. _N. and Q._, 1876, p. 363.
[1005] _The Age of the Saints_, p. xxvii.
[1006] _Cf._ Christmas, H. C., _Universal Mythology_, p. 43.
[1007] In _Wambeh_ we again seem to detect _womb_.
[1008] Quoted from Donnelly, I., _Atlantis_.
[1009] Henry Kilgour, Notes and Queries, 8th January and 19th
February, 1876.
[1010] _The Prehistoric Remains of Caithness_, pp. 70, 71.
[1011] Macnamara, N. C., _Origin and Character of the British
People_, p. 179.
[1012] Read, Sir H., _A Guide to Antiquities of Bronze Age_, p. 17.
[1013] _Races of Britain_, p. 46.
[1014] _Strabo_, III., lv., 5.
[1015] Smith, L. P., _The English Language_, p. 1.
[1016] Triad, 4.
[1017] _Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy_, xxxiv., C. 10, 11, p.
387.
[1018] _Ibid._
[1019] _Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe_, p. 235.
[1020] _Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe_, p. 232.
[1021] _Ilios_, p. xii.
[1022] There were peoples in the Caucasus known as the Britani or
Burtani.
[1023] _Celtic Britain_, p. 268.
[1024] In a subsequent volume I shall trace the Iberian _perro_ or
dog to _Peru_, where the perro or dog was the supreme object
of devotion.
[1025] The capital of old Ceylon was Candy: I am unable to trace the
origin of the port of Colombo.
[1026] Baring-Gould, S., _Curious Myths_, p. 527.
[1027] The inhabitants of Tukopia are described as: "Tall,
light-coloured men with thick manes of long, golden hair ...
wonderful giants, with soft dark eyes, kind smiles, and
child-like countenances". The surroundings of the villages of
this Polynesian island were like well-tended parks, all
brushwood having been carefully removed. "They presented
sights so different in blissful simplicity from what were to
be seen in Melanesia, they all looked so happy, gay, and
alluring, that it hardly needed the invitations of the kind
people, without weapons or suspicion, and with wreaths of
sweet-scented flowers round their heads and bodies, to incline
us to stay." This exquisite morsel of Arcadia was, like other
parts of pure Polynesia, governed by a dynasty of hereditary
chieftains, who were looked up to with the greatest respect,
and to whom honours were paid almost as to demi-gods.--_Cf._
Sir Harry Johnston in _The Westminster Gazette_.
[1028] "I think that the Eponymus of the Argive Danaia was no other
than that of the Israelite Tribe of Dan; only we are so used
to confine ourselves to the soil of Palestine in our
consideration of the Israelites that we treat them as if they
were adscriptigleboe, and ignore the share they may have taken
in the history of the world."--_Ethnology of Europe_, p. 137.
[1029] Cæsar says it took twenty years' study to acquire: other
writers say the Druids taught 20,000 verses.
[1030] _Cf._ _Evenings with a Reviewer_.
[1031] _Y Cymmroder_, xxiii.
[1032] _Cf._ Davies, E., _Celtic Researches_, p. 183.
[1033] In _Ragnarok_ Donnelly argues that the glacial epoch and the
"drift" were due to the earth's collision with one of the many
million comets which are careering through the solar universe.
It would certainly appear probable that such abnormous masses
of ice as are evidenced by the Glacial Period, must have been
the result of abnormous heat first sucking up the lakes and
rivers, and then returning them in the form of clouds, rain,
and snow. Practically all mythologies contain an account of
some unparalleled catastrophe, and in the opinion of Donnelly
the widespread story of man's progenitors emerging from a cave
is based upon the literal probability of man--if he survived
at all--surviving in caverns. Among the numerous myths which
Donnelly cites in support of his ingenious theory is the
following British one: "The profligacy of mankind had provoked
the great Supreme to send a pestilential wind upon the earth.
A pure poison descended, every blast was death. At this time
the patriarch, distinguished for his integrity, was shut up,
together with his select company, in the inclosure with the
strong door (the cave?). Here the just ones were safe from
injury. Presently a tempest of fire arose. It split the earth
asunder to the great deep. The lake Llion burst its bounds,
and the waves of the sea lifted themselves on high around the
borders of Britain, the rain poured down from heaven, and the
waters covered the earth." Donnelly believes that comets were
the origin of the world-wide fiery-dragon myth. In support of
this theory he might have instanced the following Scotch
legend: "There lived once upon a time in Sutherland a great
dragon, very fierce and strong. It was this dragon that burnt
all the fir woods in Ross, Sutherland, and the Reay country,
of which the remains charred, blackened, and half-decayed may
be found in every moss. Magnificent forests they must have
been, but the dragon set fire to them with his fiery breath
and rolled over the whole land. Men fled from before his face
and women fainted when his shadow crossed the sky-line. He
made the whole land desert."--(Henderson, Dr. G. H., Intro. to
_The Celtic Dragon Myth_, p. xxii.) The burnt forests found in
Ireland were noted on p. 21.
[1034] All these "heretics" claimed to be the real possessors of the
true Christian doctrine, and they charged Rome with being
_Mère sotte_, an ignorant and blatant usurper: the incessant
and insidious conflict which was carried on between Gnosticism
and Rome has been considered in _A New Light on the
Renaissance_, also in _The Lost Language of Symbolism_, and
with the exception of a few surface errors there is little in
those volumes which I should now rewrite. The murderous
campaign which was launched against the Albigenses not only
failed seemingly to stamp them out, but if Baring-Gould's
opinion is valid the descendants of the Albigenses are even
to-day not extinct. In _Cliff Castles_ he writes as follows:
"There was a curious statement made in a work by E. Bose and
L. Bonnemere in 1882, which if true would show that a
lingering paganism is to be found among these people. It is to
this effect: 'What is unknown to most is that at the present
day there exist adepts of the worship (of the Celts) as
practised before the Roman invasion, with the sole exception
of human sacrifices, which they have been forcibly obliged to
renounce. They are to be found on the two banks of the Loire,
on the confines of the departments of Allier and
Saone-et-Loire, where they are still tolerably numerous,
especially in the latter department. They are designated in
the country as Les Blancs, because that in their ceremonies
they cover their heads with a white hood, and their priests
are vested like the Druids in a long robe of the same colour.
They surround their proceedings with profound mystery; their
gatherings take place at night in the heart of large forests,
about an old oak, and as they are dispersed through the
country over a great extent of land, they have to start for
the assembly from different points at close of day so as to be
able to reach home again before daybreak. They have four
meetings in the year, but one, the most solemn, is held near
the town of La Clayette under the presidence of the high
priest. Those who come from the greatest distance do not reach
their homes till the second night, and their absence during
the intervening day alone reveals to the neighbours that they
have attended an assembly of the Whites. Their priests are
known, and are vulgarly designated as the bishops or
archbishops of the Whites; they are actually druids or
archdruids.... We have been able to verify these interesting
facts brought to our notice by M. Parent, and our personal
investigations into the matter enable us to affirm the
exactitude of what has been advanced.' If there be any truth
in this strange story we are much more disposed to consider
the Whites as relics of a Manichæan or Albigensian sect than
as a survival of Druidism." P. 46.
[1035] _Origin and Meaning of Apple Cults._
[1036] "Lords and Commons of England--Consider what nation whereof
ye are, and whereof ye are the Governors: a nation not slow
and dull, but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit; acute
to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the
reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar
to. Therefore, the studies of learning in her deepest sciences
have been so ancient and so eminent among us, that writers of
good antiquity and able judgment have been persuaded that the
School of Pythagoras, and the Persian Wisdom, took beginning
from the old philosophy of this Island, Britain."--Milton.
[1037] In _The Lost Language of Symbolism_ I anticipated this
opinion.
[1038] Writing of the Pied Piper story Mr. Ernest Rhys observes:
"There is every reason to believe that Hamelin was as near
home as Newton, Isle of Wight, and that the Weser, deep and
wide, was the Solent".--Preamble to _Fairy Gold_ (Ev.
Library).
[1039] _Proc. of Royal Irish Academy_, xxxiv., C., No. 8, p. 140.
APPENDIX A.
IRELAND AND PHOENICIA.
The following extract is taken from _Britain and the Gael: or Notices of
Old and Successive Races; but with special reference to the Ancient Men
of Britain and its Isles_.--Wm. Beal, London, 1860.
Plautus, a dramatic writer, and one of the great poets of
antiquity, who lived from one to two centuries before the Christian
era; was mentioned in the last section. In his Pænulus, is the tale
of some young persons said to have been stolen from Carthage, by
pirates, taken to Calydonia, and there sold; one of these was
Agorastocles, a young man; the others were two daughters of Hanno,
and Giddeneme, their nurse. Hanno, after long search, discovered
the place where his daughters were concealed, and by the help of
servants who understood the Punic language, rescued his children
from captivity. Plautus gives the supposed appeal of Hanno, to the
gods of the country for help, and his conversations with servants
in the Punic language, are accompanied with a Latin translation.
The Punic, as a language, is lost, and those long noticed, but
strange lines had long defied the skill of learned men. But at
length, by attending to their vocal formation (and all language,
Wills states, is addressed to the ear). It was discovered by
O'Neachtan, or some Irish scholar, that they were resolvable into
words, which exhibited but slight differences from the language of
Keltic Ireland. The words were put into syllables, then translated
by several persons, and these translations not only accorded with
the drama, but also, with the Plautine Latin version. The lines
were put to the test of more rigid examination, placed in the hands
of different persons one of whom was Dr. Percy, bishop of Dromore.
They were also given to different Irish scholars for translation,
to persons who had no correspondence with each other on this
subject, nor knew the principal object in view; and by the whole
the same meaning was given.
Bohn's edition, by H. T. Riley, B.A., is before the writer; but from the
edition used by the late Sir W. Betham, some few lines from Plautus,
with the Gaelic or Irish underneath, are given, and the eye will at once
perceive how closely the one resembles the other. Milphio, the servant
of Agorastocles, addressed Hanno and his servants in Punic, and asked
them "of what country are you, or from what city?"
The following is the reply, and the supposed appeal of Hanno to the god,
or gods of the country:--
_Plautus._ { Hanno Muthumballe bi Chaedreanech.
_Irish._ { Hanno Muthumbal bi Chathar dreannad.
_English._ { I am Hanno Muthumbal dwelling at Carthage.
_Plautus._ { Nyth al O Nim ua-lonuth sicorathissi me com syth.
_Irish._ { N'iaith all O Nimh uath-lonnaithe socruidhse me comsith.
_English._ { Omnipotent much dreaded Deity of this country, assuage my
troubled mind.
_Plautus._ { Chim lach chumyth mum ys tyal mycthi barii im schi.
_Irish._ { Chimi lach chuinigh muini is toil miocht beiridh iar mo
scith.
_English._ { Thou the support of feeble captives, being now exhausted
with fatigue, of thy free will guide me to my children.
_Plautus._ { Lipho can ethyth by mithii ad ædan binuthi.
_Irish._ { Liomtha can ati bi mitche ad eadan beannaithe.
_English._ { O let my prayers be perfectly acceptable in thy sight.
_Plautus._ { Byr nar ob syllo homal O Nim! Ubymis isyrthoho.
_Irish._ { Bior nar ob siladh umhal O Nimh! ibhim A frotha.
_English._ { An inexhaustible fountain to the humble; O Deity! Let me
drink of its streams.
_Plautus._ { Byth lym mo thym noctothii nel ech an ti daise machon.
_Irish._ { Beith liom mo thime noctaithe, neil ach tanti daisic mac
coinne.
_English._ { Forsake me not! my earnest desire is now disclosed, which
is only that of recovering my daughters.
_Plautus._ { Uesptis Aod eanec Lic Tor bo desiughim lim Nim co lus.
_Irish._ { Is bidis Aodh eineac Lic Tor bo desiussum le mo Nimh co
lus.
_English._ { And grateful Fires on Stone Towers will I ordain to blaze
to Heaven.
_Plautus._ { Gau ebel Balsameni ar a san.
_Irish._ { Guna bil Bal-samen ar a san.
_English._ { O that the good Bal-samhen (_i.e._ Beal the sun) may
favour them.
Act v. scene 1 and 2.
This alleged work of Plautus, and these strange lines, have long been
before the world, and under the notice of men of letters. Is there any
reason to doubt whether it is genuine? If not, can it be supposed that
the writer purposely placed some strange jargon before his readers to
bewilder them? and if so, by what singular hazzard should it so closely
resemble the language of the Gael. Plautus avers, that Milphio addressed
the strangers (Hanno and servants), in Punic, and declared to
Agorastocles, his master, that "no Punic or Carthaginian man speaks
Punic better than I". Unless these statements can be proved to be
worthless, will they not as connecting links appear to say, probably the
Gaels of Britain, and the Punic people of Carthage, were branches of the
old and once celebrated race, known as Phenicians?
APPENDIX B.
PERRY-DANCERS AND PERRY STONES.
On page 312 I stated that in Kent the light cloudlets of a summer day
were known as "Perry-dancers": as I am unable to trace any printed
authority for this statement it is possible that it was a
mis-remembrance of the following passage from Ritson's "Dissertation on
Fairies," prefacing _English Folklore and Legends_, London, 1890: "Le
Grand is of opinion that what is called Fairy comes to us from the
Orientals, and that it is their genies which have produced our fairies
... whether this be so or not, it is certain that we call the auroræ
boreales, or active clouds in the night, perry-dancers."
In connection with my suggestion that Stonehengles, now Stonehenge, of
which the outer circle consists of thirty stones, meant _Stone Angels_,
may be considered the repeated statements of Pausanias that the oldest
gods of all were rude stones in the temple, or the temple precincts. In
Achaean _Pharae_ he found some thirty squared stones _named each after a
god_: obviously these were phairy or peri stones, and the chief stone
presumably stood for the _pherepolis_.
That _ange_ or _inge_ varied into _ink_ is implied not only by _Ink_pen
Beacon figuring in old records as _Inge_penne and _Hinge_pene, but also
by Ritson's statement: "In days of yore, when the church at _Ink_berrow
was taken down and rebuilt upon a new site, the fairies, _whose haunt
was near the latter place_, took offence at the change". The following
passage quoted by Keightley from Aubrey's _Natural History of Surrey_ is
of interest apart from the significant names: "In the vestry of Frensham
Church, in Surrey, on the north side of the chancel is an extraordinary
great kettle or cauldron, which the inhabitants say, by tradition, was
brought hither by the fairies, time out of mind, from Borough-hill about
a mile hence. To this place, if anyone went to borrow a yoke of oxen,
money, etc., he might have it for a year or longer, so he kept his word
to return it. There is a cave where some have fancied to hear music. In
this Borough-hill is a great stone lying along of the length of about 6
feet. They went to this stone and knocked at it, and declared what they
would borrow, and when they would repay, and a voice would answer when
they should come, and that they should find what they desired to borrow
at that stone. This cauldron, with the trivet, was borrowed here, after
the manner aforesaid, and not returned according to promise; and though
the cauldron was afterwards carried to the stone, it could not be
received, and ever since that time no borrowing there."
APPENDIX C.
BRITISH SYMBOLS.
In _Wookey Hole_ Mr. H. E. Balch quotes the following important passage
from Gildas: "A blind people [the Britons], they paid divine honour to
the mountains, wells, and streams. Their altars were pillars of stone
inscribed with emblems of the sun and moon, or of a beast or bird _which
symbolised some force of nature_". This passage justifies the
supposition that the inscribed "barnacles," elephants, etc., were
symbolic, and supports the contention that a people using such
subtleties were far from "blind". The Museum at Glastonbury contains a
bronze ring about 3 inches in diameter, in the form of a serpent with
its tail in its mouth. Obviously this object, which was found at Stanton
Drew, _i.e._, _the stone town of the Druids_, was symbolic, probably, of
the Eternal Wisdom.
APPENDIX D.
GLASTONBURY.
In view of the fact that Halifax claimed to possess the Holy Face of St.
John, and that four roads centred there in the form of a cross at the
chapel of St. John, it is interesting to note that the four cross-roads
of Glastonbury are similarly associated with St. John. In the words of a
local guidebook, "From the Tor, a walk will bring you to Weary-All Hill
to view the town, and it is curious to note that from this hill it seems
to be laid out as a perfect cross, St. John's Church being the central
point".
The probability is that there was some connection between the St. John
of modern Glastonbury and the Fairy King Gwyn who was exorcised from the
neighbouring Tor by a certain St. Collen.
APPENDIX E.
THE DRUIDS AND CRETE.
Since the preceding pages were in the press I have come into the
possession of _La Religion des Gaulois_ by Jacques Martin (Paris, 1727).
This standard writer favours the idea that _druid_ is derived from the
Celtic _deru_, meaning an oak, but he also makes a remarkable statement
to the following effect: "If the opinion of P. Pezron was well founded
one should also say that certain people of Crete whom one called
_Druites_, because their country was full of oaks, made a trade of magic
and enchantment, which is far removed from the truth and perhaps also
from good sense" (vol. i., p. 176). In the same volume (pp. 406-7)
Martin illustrates a Gaulish god whose name Dolichenius is curiously
suggestive of Dalgeon, Telchin, Talgean, and Telchinea.
L'ENVOI.
Now if any brother or well-wisher shall conscientiously doubt or be
dissatisfied, touching any particular point contained in this treatise,
because of my speaking to many things in a little room: and if he or
they shall be serious in so doing, and will befriend me so far, and do
me that courtesy, to send to me before they condemn me, and let me know
their scruples in a few words of writing, I shall look upon myself
obliged both in affection and reason, to endeavour to give them full
satisfaction.
H. B.
OVERBYE,
CHURCH COBHAM,
SURREY.
INDEX
_Abar_, 325
Abaris, 325, 330, 377
Abb, St., 617
_Abbey_, 515
Abchurch, 513, 518
Abdera, 296
_Abdy_, 526
_Aber_, 310
_Aber!_ 310, 325
Aber, Loch, 670, 749
Aberdeen, 749
Aberfield, 664
Aberystwyth, 194
Abhras, 325
Abonde, 165, 216
-- La Dame, 557
Abra, 328
Abracadabra, 325
Abraham, 227
_Abraham_, 716
_Abri_, 289
_Abroad_, 369
_Abundance_, 216
Abundia, 165
Abyss, 224
_Ac_, 48
_Ache_, 200
Achil, 280
Achill, 82
Achilles, 82
Acorn, 227
Ada, 455, 742
_Ada_, 753
Adad, 508
Adam, 745, 754
Adam and Eve, 495, 501, 589
Adam Cædmon, 110
Adam's Dances, 589
-- Graves, 746
-- Peak, 546
Addington, 750, 755, 785, 813
_Addy_, 509
_Adelphi_, 365
Adisham, 560
_Adkin_, 509
Adon, 712
Adonai, 712
Adonis, 46, 112, 153, 605, 712
Aedd, K., 309, 749
Aeddon, 749
Aeddons, The, 750
Ægean influences, 850
-- The, 81, 93
Ægeon, 402
Ægina, 399
Aeithon, R., 743
Aeon, 203, 652
Aeons, 204
Aeria, 76
_Africa_, 375
Agatha, 719
-- St., 253
Agland Moor, 799
Agglestone, 280
_Agnes, St._, 591
Agnes, St., Well, 732
-- the Clear, 721
Agni, 591, 719
_Ague_, 200
Aidan, St., 742, 751
Aidon Moor, 732
Aine, 288, 368, 544, 724
Aion, 321
_Aitkin_, 509
Akeman, St., 38, 200
_Alas!_ 412
Alava, 322
_Alban_, 251
Alban, St., 129
Albani! 125
Albania, 84, 86, 112, 261
Albano, 89, 112
Albans, St., 107, 208, 268, 523, 791
Albanus, R., 89
Albany, The, 162
Alberic, 342
Alberich, 510
Albi, 377
Albigenses, 865
Albine, St., 148
Albinia, R., 97
Albinus, 321
_Albion_, 124
Albion, Prince, 162, 317
Albiorix, 301
Albon, 247
Al Borak, 347, 468
Albs, 342
Albury, 342
Alcmena, 140, 200
Alcantara, 290
_Alef_, 240
Alexander, 727
Alf, 559
_Alfred_, 153
_Alibone_, 131
Alipius, St., 321
Allah, 581
Allan apples, 696
-- St., 696
Allantide, 698
Allan Water, 103
_Allen_, 104
Allen, St., 132
All Hallows, 244, 288
All-Heal, 181, 681
Allington, 290
"All is one," 133
_Allistone_, 318
_Alma_, 136
Alma Mater, 258
_Alma Mater Cantabrigia_, 167
Almaquah, 136
Almo, R., 136
Almond, R., 137
Aln, R., 417
Alne, R., 103, 697
Alnwick, 417
_Aloft_, 165
Alone, R., 103, 417
_Alp_, 127
Alpha, 152, 363, 653
Alphabet, 12, 13
-- Bardic, 14
-- Celtiberian, 14
Alphage, St., 154
Alpha Place, 288
Alph, R., 791
Alpheus, 288
Alphey, 154
Alphian Rock, 153, 548
Alphin, 284
Alphington, 548
Aluph, 165
Alva, Lady, 153
_Alvastone_, 318
Alvechurch, 524
Alvescott, 153