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..^ —. •"iin.j England. *$7.50 
942.01- (Eng ed 20-11405)1 
Thi is in thp natur of a séfeuel to ajM^k 
ArMch Mr, Bay' y ISub ishtd some year**!igo 
~ 'The Ojt language of symbolism. ' He 
i»·-bi an enthusiastic and industrious 
^^olisms and emblems and their 
is, and of esoteric doctrines 
—eseht work is copiously il- 
ìrs controversial theories as 
of Britain. Mr Bayley, among 
.„es in the Cretan discoveries a 
tandpoint for the survey of - pre- ' 
Mzation. He believes that the Cre- 
,_ latically visited Britain, and that 
f Trujan race peopled the island."—The 
[τ nndon] Lit Sup . · ' 

SUDI Mr Bayli y has worked hard ani. 
Ijoo him as a quarry and one will 

ti and, may bfc, other things. But how 

ils doctrine .as a whole?" R. R. M. 

Ath p240 F 20 '20 260w 

The Times [London] Lit Sup p22 Ja 8 
20 120w .. 

The Times [London] Lit Sup pl66 Mr 
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Date Due 


THE LIBRARY OF 
THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORQIA 


 D 

e, 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


Ί , 


 ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


AN ESSAY IN DECIPHERING PREHISTORY FROM 

MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS. EARTHWORKS. 

CUSTOMS, COINS. PLACE-NAMES. AND 

FAERIE SUPERSTITIONS 


HAROLD BAYLEY 

AUTHOR OF " THE SHAKESPEARE SYMPHONY," "A NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE/"* 
** THE LOST LANGUAGE OF SYMBOLISM," ETC. 


" One by one tiny fragments of testimony accumulate attesting such 
a survival and continuance of folk memory as few men of to-day bave 
suspected. "—JOHNSON 


LONDON 

CHAPMAN & HALL LTD. 
11 HENRIETTA STREET 


 CONTENTS 


CHAP. 

I. INTRODUCTORY . . 

II. THE MAGIC OF WORDS 

III. A TALE OF TBOÏ 

IV. ALBION . 

V. Goo AND MAGOG . 

VI. PUCK . 

VII. OBERON . . 
VIII. SCOURING THE WHITE HOUSE 
IX. BRIDE'S BAIRNS 
Χ. HAPPÏ ENGLAND . 

XI. THE FAIR MAID 

XII. PETER'S ORCHARDS 

XIII. ENGLISH EDENS . 

XIV. DOWN UNDER 
XV. CONCLUSIONS 
APPENDIX 
INDEX . 


1 

34 

78 

124 

186 

230 

309 

389 

455 

522 

593 

663 

710 

764 

832 

871 

877 


vii 


 " Of all the many thousands of earthworks of various kinds to be found iu 
England, those about which anything is known are very few, those of which there 
remains nothing moie to be known scarcely exist. Each individual example is in it 
self 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 
arcbseology, and of all the manifold branches of archseology none is so practicable, 
so promising, yet so little explored, as that which is concerned with earthworks. 
Within them lie hidden all the secrets of time before history begins, and by their 
means only can that history be put into writing : they are the back numbers of the 
island's story, as yet unread, much less indexed."—A. HADRIAN ALLOROFT. 

" It is a gain to science that it has at last been recognised that we cannot 
penetrate far back into man's history without appealing to more than one element 
in that history. Some day it will be recognised that we must appeal to all elements 
in that history."—GOMME. 

" History bears and requires Authors of all sorts."—CAMDBN. 


viii 


CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTION 

" li a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is be 
cause he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he 
hears, however measured or iar away."—H. D. THOREAU. 

THIS book is an application of the jigsaw system to cer 
tain archaeological problems which under the ordinary 
detached methods of the Specialist have proved insoluble. 
My fragments of evidence are drawn as occasion warrants 
from History, Fairy-tale, Philosophy, Legend, Folklore— 
in fact from any quarter whence the required piece unmis 
takably fulfils the missing space. It is thus a mental 
medley with all the defects, and some, I trust, of the at 
tractions, of a mosaic. 

Ten years ago I published a study on Mediaeval Sym 
bolism, and subsequent investigation of cognate subjects 
has since put me in possession of some curious and un 
common information, which lies off the mainroads of con 
ventional Thought. 

The consensus of opinion upon A New Light on the Be- 
naissance,1 was to the effect that my theories were decidedly 
ingenious and up to a point tenable, yet nevertheless at 
present they could only be regarded as non-proven. In 
1912 2 I therefore endeavoured to substantiate my earlier 

1 Dent, 1909. 

2 The Lost Language of Symbolism : An inquiry into the origin of cer 
tain letters, words, names, fairy-tales, folklore, and mythologies. 2 vols. 
London, 1912 (Williams & Norgate). 


 2 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


propositions, pushing them much further to the point of 
suggesting an innate connection between Symbolism and 
certain words—such, for example, as psyche, which means 
a butterfly, and psyche the anima or soul which was sym 
bolised or represented by a butterfly. Of course I knew 
only too well the tricky character of the ground I was ex 
ploring and how open many of my propositions would be 
to attack, yet it seemed preferable rather to risk the Finger 
of Scorn than by a superfluity of caution ignore clues, which 
under more competent hands might yield some very inter 
esting and perhaps valuable discoveries. 

In the present volume I piece together a mosaic of vis 
ible and tangible evidence which is supplementary to that 
already brought forward, and the results—at any rate in 
many instances—cannot by any possibility be written off 
as due merely to coincidence or chance. That they will be 
adequate to satisfy the exacting requirements of modern 
criticism is, however, not to be supposed. Eeferring to 
The Lost Language, one of my reviewers cheerfully but 
disconcertingly observed : " He must deal as others of his 
school have done with all the possible readings of the his 
tory of the races of men ",1 To sweeping and magnani 
mous advice of this character one can .only counter the 
untoward experiences of the hapless " Charles Templeton," 
as recounted by Mr. Stephen McKenna : " At the age of 
three-and-twenty Charles Templeton, my old tutor at Ox 
ford, set himself to write a history of the Third French 
Eepublic. When I made his acquaintance, some thirty 
years later, he had satisfactorily concluded his introductory 
chapter on the origin of Kingship. At his death, three 
months ago, I understand that his notes on the precursors 
1 Manchester Gmrdian, 23rd December, 1912. 


I.] INTEODÜCTION o 

of Charlemagne were almost as complete as he desired. 
' It is so difficult to know where to start, Mr. Oakleigh,' 
he used to say, as I picked my steps through the litter 
of notebooks that cumbered his tables, chairs, and 
floor." ! 

But Mr. Templeton's embarrassments were trifling in 
comparison with mine. Templeton was obviously a man 
of some leisure, whereas my literary hobbies have neces 
sarily to be indulged more or less furtively in restaurants, 
railway trains, and during such hours and half-hours of 
opportunity as I can snatch from more pressing obligations. 
Moreover, Mr. Templeton could concentrate on one sub 
ject—History—whereas the scope of my studies compels 
me to keep on as good terms as may be with the exacting 
Muses of History, Mythology, Archaeology, Philosophy, 
Religion, Romance, Symbolism, Numismatics, Folklore, 
and Etymology. I mention this not to extenuate any 
muzziness of thought, or sloppiness of diction, but to dis 
arm by confession the charge that my work has been done 
hurriedly and here and there superficially. 

With the facilities at my disposal I have endeavoured to 
the best of my abilities to concentrate a dozen rays on to 
one subject, and to mould into an harmonious and coherent 
whole the pith of a thousand and one items culled during 
the past seven years from day to day and noted from hour 
to hour. Differing as I do in some respects from the ac 
cepted conclusions of the best authorities, it is a further 
handicap to find myself in the position of Nehemiah the 
son of Hachaliah, who was constrained by force of circum 
stance to build with a sword in one hand and a trowel in 
the other. 

1 Sonia. 


 ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


To the heretic and the wayfarer it is, however, a comfort 
able reflection that what Authority maintains to-day it 
generally contradicts to-morrow.1 Less than a century ago 
contemporary scholarship knew the age of the earth with 
such exquisite precision that it pronounced it to a year, 
declaring an exact total of 6000 years, and a few odd days. 

When the discoveries in Kent's Cavern were laid before 
the scientific world, the authorities flatly denied their pos 
sibility, and the proofs that Man in Britain was contem 
porary with the mammoth, the lion, the bear, and the 
rhinoceros 2 were received with rudeness and inattention. 
Similarly the discovery of prehistoric implements in the 
gravel-beds at Abbeville was treated with inconsequence 
and insult, and it was upwards of twenty years before it 
was reluctantly conceded that : " While we have been 
straining our eyes to the East, and eagerly watching exca 
vations in Egypt and Assyria, suddenly a new light has 
arisen in the midst of us ; and the oldesfrrelics of man yet 
discovered have occurred, not among the ruins of Nineveh 
or Heliopolis, not on the sandy plains of the Nile or the 

1 " Topographical comment—I will not say criticism—has been equally 
inefficient. A theory is not retuted by saying ' all the great antiquarians 
are against you,' 'the Psalter ol Tara relûtes that,' or O'Donovan has 
set the question past all donbt'. These remarks only prove that we 
have hardly commenced scientific archaeology in this country."—Westropp, 
Thos. J., Proc. of Royal Irish Acad., vol. xxxiv., C-, No. 8, p. 129. 

2 We found precisely the same things as were found by our predecessors, 
remains of extinct animals in the cave earth, and with them flint imple 
ments in considerable nnmbers. Yon want, of course, to know how the 
scientific world received these latter discoveries. They simply scouted 
them. They told us that our statements were impossible, and we simply 
responded with the remark that we hai not said that they were possible, 
only that they were true.—Pengally, W., Kent's Cavern. Its Testimony to 
the Antigiaty of Man, p. 12. 


I.] INTRODUCTION 5 

Euphrates, but in the pleasant valleys of England and 
France, along the banks of the Seine and the Somme, the 
Thames and the Waveney." 1 

The fact is now generally accepted as proven by both 
anthropologists and archaeologists, that the most ancient 
records of the human race exist not in Asia, but in Europe. 
The oldest documents are not the hieroglyphics of Egypt, 
but the hunting-scenes scratched on bone and ivory by the 
European cave-dwelling contemporaries of the mammoth 
and the woolly rhinoceros. Human implements found on 
the chalk plateaus of Kent have been assigned to a period 
prior to the glacial epoch, which is surmised to have en 
dured for 160,000 years, from, roughly speaking, 240,000 to 
80,000 years ago. 

It is now also an axiom that the races of Europe are 
not colonists from somewhere in Asia, but that, speaking 
generally, they have inhabited their present districts more 
or less continuously from the time when they crept back 
gradually in the wake of the retreating ice. 

"Written history and popular tradition," says Sir E. 
Eay Lankester, " tell us something in regard to the deriva 
tion and history of existing 'peoples,' but we soon come to 
a period—a few thousand years back—concerning which 
both written statement and tradition are dumb. And yet 
we know that this part of the world—Europe—was in 
habited by an abundant population in those remote times. 
We know that for at least 500,000 years human populations 
occupied portions of this territory, and that various races 
with distinguishing peculiarities of feature and frame, and 
each possessed of arts and crafts distinct from those 
characteristic of others, came and went in succession in 

1 Lubbock, J., Prehistoric Times. 


 AfcCHAlC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


those incredibly remote days in Europe. We know this 
from the implements, carvings, and paintings lefiby these 
successive populations, and we know it also by the dis 
covery of their bones." 

Anthropology, however, while admitting this unmeasur- 
able antiquity for mankind, takes no count of the possibility 
of an amiable or cultured race in these islands prior to the 
coming of the Roman legions. It traces with equanimity 
the modern Briton evolving in unbroken sequence from the 
primitive cave-dweller, and it points with self-complacency 
to the fact that even as late as the Battle of Hastings some 
of Harold's followers were armed with stone axes. There 
has, however, recently been unearthed near Maidstone the 
skull of a late palaeolithic or early neolithic man, whose 
brain capacity was rather above the average of the modern 
Londoner. The forehead of this 15,000 year-old skull is 
well formed, there are no traces of a simian or overhanging 
brow, and the individual himself might well, in view of all 
physical evidence, have been a primeval sage rather than 
a primeval savage. 

The high estimation in which the philosophy of pre 
historic Briton was regarded abroad may be estimated from 
the testimony of Caesar who states : "It is believed that 
this institution (Druidism) was founded in Britannia, and 
thence transplanted into Gaul. Even nowadays those who 
wish to become more intimately acquainted with the insti 
tution generally go to Britannia for instruction's sake." 

It has been claimed for the Welsh that they possess the 
oldest literature in the oldest language in Europe. Giraldus 
Cambrensis, speaking of the Welsh Bards, mentions their 
possession of certain ancient and authentic books, but 
whether or not the traditionary poems which were first 


I.] INTRODUCTION 7 

committed to writing in the twelfth century retain any 
traces of the prehistoric Faith is a matter of divided opinion. 
To those who are not experts in archaisms and are not en 
amoured of ink-spilling, the sanest position would appear 
to be that of Matthew Arnold, who observes in Celtic 
Literature : " There is evidently mixed here, with the 
newer legend, a detritus, as the geologists would say, of 
something far older ; and the secret of Wales and its 
genius is not truly reached until this detritus, instead of 
being called recent because it is found in contact with what 
is recent, is disengaged, and is made to tell its own story."1 
The word " founded," as used by Caesar, implies an an 
tiquity for British institutions which is materially con 
firmed by the existence of such monuments as Stonehenge, 
and the more ancient Avebury. Whether these sup 
posed " appendages to Bronze age burials " were merely 

1 In the course of his criticism the same writer pertinently observes :— 
" Why, what a wonderful thing is this ! We have, in the first place, 
the most weighty and explicit testimony—Strabo's, Gœsar's, Lucan's—that 
this race once possessed a special, profound, spiritual discipline, that they 
were, to use Mr. Nash's. words, ' Wiser than their neighbours '. Lucan's 
words are singularly clear and strong, and serve well to stand as a land 
mark in this controversy, in which one is sometimes embarrassed by hear 
ing authorities quoted on this side or that, when one does not feel sure 
precisely what they say, how much or how little. Lucan, addressing those 
hitherto under the pressure of Eome, but now left by the Eoman Civil War 
to their own devices, says :— 

" ' Ye too, ye bards, who by your praises perpetuate the memory of the 
fallen brave, without hindrance poured forth your strains. And ye, ye 
Druids, now that the sword was removed, began once more your barbaric 
rites and weird solemnities. To you only is given the knowledge or ignor 
ance (whichever it be) of the gods and the powers of heaven ; your dwelling 
is in the lone heart of the forest. Prom you we learn that the bourne of 
mau's ghost is not the senseless grave, not the pale realm of the monarch 
below ; in another world his spirit survives still.' " 


 8 


AECHA1C ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


sepulchral monuments, or whether they ever possessed 
any intellectual significance, does not affect the fact that 
Great Britain, and notably England, is richer in this 
class of monument than any other part of the world.1 
Circles being essentially and pre-eminently English it is 
disappointing to find the most modern handbook on Stone- 
henge stating : " In all matters of archseology it is con 
stantly found that certain questions are better left in 
abeyance or bequeathed to a coming generation for solu 
tion ".2 Every one sympathises with that weary feeling, but 
nevertheless the present generation now possesses quite 
sufficient data to enable it to shoulder its own responsi 
bilities and to pass beyond the stereotyped and hackneyed 
formula " sepulchral monument ". I hold no brief on 
behalf of the Druids—indeed one must agree that the 
Celtic Druids were much more modern than the monu 
ments associated with their name — nevertheless the 
theory that these far-famed philosophers were mere wise 
men or witch doctors, with perhaps a spice of the con 
juror, is a modern misapprehension with which I am 
nowise in sympathy. Valerius Maximus (c. A.D. 20) was 
much better informed and therefore more cautious in his 
testimony : "I should be tempted to call these breeches- 

1 " Circles form another group of the monuments we are about to treat 
of. ... In Prance they are hardly known, though in Algeria they are fre 
quent. In Denmark and Sweden they are both numerous and important, 
but it is in the British Islands that circles attained their greatest de 
velopment."—Pergusson, J., Rude Stone Monuments, p. 47. Eeferring to 
Stanton Drew the same authority observes : " Meanwhile it may be well 
to point out that this class of circles is peculiar to England. They do not 
exist in Prance or Algeria. The Scandinavian circles are all very different, 
so too are the Irish."—Aid., p. 153. 

2 Stevens, F., Stonehenge To-day and Yesterday, 1916, p. 14. 


ι·] 


INTBODTJCTION 


9 


wearing gentry fools, were not their doctrine the same as 
that of the mantle-clad Pythagoras ". 

Druids or no Druids there must at some period in our 
past have been interesting and enterprising people in these 
islands. At Avebury, near Marlborough, is Silbury Hill, an 
earth mound, which is admittedly the vastest artificial hill 
in Europe. Avebury itself is said to constitute the greatest 
megalithic monument in Europe, and nowhere in the 
world are tumuli more plentiful than in Great Britain. 
On the banks of the Boyne is a pyramid of stones which, 
had it been situated on the banks of the Nile, would pro 
bably have been pronounced the oldest and most venerable 
of the pyramids. In the Orkneys at Hoy is almost the 
counterpart to an Egyptian marvel which, according to 
Herodotus, was an edifice 21 cubits in length, 14 in breadth, 
and 8 in height, the whole consisting only of one single 
stone, brought thither by sea from a place about '20 days' 
sailing from Sais. The Hoy relic is au obelisk 36 feet long 
by 18 feet broad, by 9 feet deep. " No other stones are near 
it. "Tis all hollowed within or scooped by human art and 
industry, having a door at the east end 2 feet square with a 
stone of the same dimension lying about 2 feet from it, 
which was intended no doubt to close the entrance. With 
in, there is at the south end of it, cut out, the form of a bed 
and pillow capable to hold two persons."l 

Sir John Morris-Jones has noted remarkable identities 
between the syntax of Welsh and that of early Egyptian : 
Gerald Massey, in his Book of the Beginnings, gives a list 
of 3000 close similarities between English and Egyptian 
words; and the astronomical inquiries of Sir Norman 
Lockyer have driven him to conclude: "The people who 

1 Toland, History of the Druids, p. 163. 


 10 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


honoured us with their presence here in Britain some 4000 
years ago, had evidently, some way or other, had communi 
cated to them a very complete Egyptian culture, and they 
determined their time of night just in the same way that 
the Egyptians did ". 

It used to be customary to attribute all the mysterious 
edifices of these islands, including stones inscribed with 
lettering in an unknown script, to hypothetical wanderers 
from the East. Nothing could have been more peremp 
tory than the manner in which this theory was enunciated 
by its supporters, among whom were included all or nearly 
all the great names of the period. To-day there is a com 
plete volte face upon this subject, and the latest opinion is 
that " not a particle of evidence has been adduced in favour 
of any migration from the East "-1 When one remembers 
that only a year or two ago practically the whole of the 
academic world gave an exuberant and unqualified ad 
herence to the theory of Asiatic immigration it is difficult 
to conceive a more chastening commentary upon the value 
of ex cathedra teaching. 

Happily it was an Englishman 2 who, seeing through the 
futility of the Asiatic theory, first pointed out the now 
generally accepted fact that the cradle of Aryan civilisa 
tion, if anywhere at all, was inferentially in Europe. The 
assumption of an Asiatic origin was, however, so firmly 
established and upheld by the dignity of such imposing 
names that the arguments of Dr. Latham were not thought 
worthy of reply, and for sixteen years his work lay un 
heeded before the world. Even twenty years after pub 
lication, when the new view was winning many adherents, 

_* Schrader, 0., cf. Taylor, Isaac, The Origin of the Aryans, p. 48. 
2 Latham, Dr. E. G. 


I·] 


INTBODtTCTION 


11 


it was alluded to by one of the most learned Germans as 
follows : " And so it came to pass that in England, the 
native land of fads, there chanced to enter into the head 
of an eccentric individual the notion of placing the cradle 
of the Aryan race in Europe ". 

The whirligig of Time has now once again shifted the 
focus of archaeological interest at the moment from Scan 
dinavia to Crete, where recent excavations have revealed 
an Eldorado of prehistoric art. It is now considered that 
the civilisation of Hellas was a mere offshoot from that 
of Crete, and that Crete was veritably the fabulous Island 
of Atlantis, a culture-centre which leavened all the shores 
of the Mediterranean. 

According to Sir Arthur Evans : " The high early cul 
ture, the equal rival of that of Egypt and Babylon, which 
began to take its rise in Crete in the fourth millennium 
before our era, flourished for some 2000 years, eventually 
dominating the ^gean and a large part of the Mediter 
ranean basin. The many-storeyed palaces of the Minoan 
Priest-Kings in their great days, by their ingenious plan 
ning, their successful combination of the useful with the 
beautiful and stately, and last but not least, by their 
scientific sanitary arrangements, far outdid the similar 
works, on however vast a scale, of Egyptian or Babylonian 
builders." 

The sensational discoveries at Crete provide a wholly 
new standpoint whence to survey prehistoric civilisation, 
and they place the evolution of human art and appliances 
in the last Quaternary Period on a higher level than had 
ever previously been suspected. 

Not only have the findings in Crete revolutionised all 
previously current ideas upon Art, but they have also 


 12 


ABCHAÏC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


condemned to the melting-pot the cardinal article of belief 
that the alphabet reached us from Phoenicia. Prof. 
Flinders Pétrie has now clearly demonstrated that even in 
this respect, " Beside the great historic perspective of the 
long use of signs in Egypt, other discoveries in Europe 
have opened entirely new ground. These signs are largely 
found used for writing in Crete, as a geometrical signary ; 
and the discovery of the Karian alphabet, and its striking 
relation to the Spanish alphabet, has likewise compelled an 
entire reconsideration of the subject. Thus on all sides— 
Egyptian, Greek, and Barbarian—material appears which 
is far older and far more widespread than the Grseco- 
Phcenician world ; a fresh study of the whole material is 
imperatively needed, now that the old conclusions are seen 
to be quite inadequate." 

The striking connection between the Earian and the 
Spanish alphabet may be connoted with the fact that 
Strabo, mentioning the Turdetani whom he describes as 
the most learned tribe of all Spain, says they had re 
duced their language to grammatical rules, and that for 
6000 years they had possessed metrical poems and even 
laws. Commenting upon this piece of precious informa 
tion, Lardner ironically observed that although the Span 
iards eagerly seized it as a proof of their ancient civilisa 
tion, they are sadly puzzled how to reconcile these 6000 
years with the Mosaic chronology. He adds that discard 
ing fable, we find nothing in their habits and manners to 
distinguish them from other branches of that great race, 
except, perhaps, a superior number of Druidical remains.1 

This " except " is noteworthy in view of the fact that the 
Celtiberian alphabet of Spain is extremely similar to the 

1 Spain and Portugal, vol. i., p. 16. 


I·] 


INTRODUCTION 


13 


Bardic or Druidic alphabet of Britain, and also to the 
hitherto illegible alphabet of Ancient Crete. 

Caesar has recorded that the Druids thought it an un 
hallowed thing to commit their lore to writing, though 
in the other public and private affairs of life they frequently 
made use of the Greek alphabet. That the Celts of Gaul 
possessed the art of writing cannot be questioned, and that 
Britain also practised some method of communication 
seems a probability. There are still extant in Scotland 
inscriptions on stones which are in characters now totally 
unknown. In Ireland, letters were cut on the bark of 
trees prepared for that purpose and called poet's tables. 
The letters of the most ancient Irish alphabet are named 
after individual trees, and there are numerous references 
in Welsh poetry to a certain secret of the twigs which 
lead to the strong inference that "written" communica 
tion was first accomplished by the transmission of tree- 
sprigs. 

The alphabets illustrated oh pages 14 and 15 have every 
appearance of being representations of sprigs, and it is a 
curious fact that not only in Ireland, but also in Arabia, 
alphabets of which every letter was named after trees1 
were once current. 

In The Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe, Dr. 
Mackenzie inquires : " By whom were Egyptian beads 
carried to Britain, between 1500 B.c. and 1400 B.C.? 
Certainly not the Phoenicians. The sea traders of the 
Mediterranean were at the time the Cretans. Whether 

1 Mr. Hammer, a German who has travelled lately in Egypt and Syria, 
has brought, it seems, to England a manuscript written in Arabic. It con 
tains a number of alphabets. Two of these consist entirely of trees. The 
book is of authority.—Davies, E., Celtic Resetvrclies, 1804, p. 305. 


 BRITISH ALPHABET. 


a a e è i ttûy 0- σ 
S 2 S 


ν- 


/ 
7 


// 


/2 


FIG. l,—From Celtic Eesearclies (Davies, E.). 


CELTIBERIAN ALPHABET, 

SHEWING THE DESCRIPTION OF CHARACTERS FOUND ON THE 
COINS OF TARRACONENSIS AND EMETICA. 


TARRACONENSIS. 


A often approach 
ing O 

B and P 
C hard, and K 
C and S strong 
D, resembling T 

E 

E sharp 

I, like Ητ-α 
G soft, like Z 
G hard and aspirated 
land Y 
L 
M 
N 
O 
O open 

R 

S 
T 

U, like Υψιλον 
K aspirated, like the 
Spanish X 


AK 

SAK 

I BO or EBO 

PE 


ΠΛΑ^Λ,Α? 


P I'D 


/A 

ΔΔΑΔ 
) Hl W ψ ψ 


Ν V\ 


NIX?-M? N 
<Γ 

Χ 

t*T«i*r? 

Λ Λ Γ. ΑΙ 

Μ 

f 

α ©ο 


ΧΑ 


to 


p) 


II· UY? 

χ*χ 


ρ 


9 ο 


«1 R 


t* 


Α? 


Fio, 2.—From Ancient Coins (Akerman, J. Y.). 


 16 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


or not their merchants visited England we have no means 
of knowing." l 

The material which I shall produce establishes a pro 
bability that the Cretans systematically visited Britain, 
and further that the tradition of the peopling of this 
island by men of Trojan race are well founded. 

According to the immemorial records of the Welsh 
Bards : " There were three names imposed on the Isle of 
Britain from the beginning. Before it was inhabited its 
denomination was Sea-Girt Green-space ; after being in 
habited it was called the Honey Island, and after it was 
formed into a Commonwealth by Prydain, the Son of Aedd 
Mawr, it was called the Isle of Prydaih. And none have 
any title therein but the nation of the Kymry. For they 
first settled upon it, and before that time no men lived 
therein, but it was full of bears, wolves, beavers, and bisons.2 

In the course of these essays I shall discuss the Kymry, 
and venture a few suggestions as to their cradle and com 
munity of memories and hopes. But behind the Kymry, 
as likewise admittedly behind the Cretans, are the traces 
of an even more primitive and archaic race. The earliest 
folk which reached Crete are described as having come 
with a form of culture which had been developed else 
where, and among these neolithic settlers have been 
found traces of a race 6 feet in height and with skulls 
massive and shapely. Moreover Cretan beliefs and the 

1 The Cretans were rulers of the sea, and according to Thucydides King 
Minos of Crete was " the first person known to us in history as having 
established a navy. He made himself master of what is now called the 
Hellenic Sea, and ruled over the Cyclades, into most of which he sent his 
first colonists, expelling the Carians and appointing his own sons governors ; 
and thus did his best to put down piracy in those waters." 

2 Jones, J. J., Britannia Antiguissima, 1866. 


INTEODUCTION 


17 


myths which are based upon them are admittedly older 
than even the civilisation of the Tigro-Buphrates valley : 
and they belong, it would appear, to a stock of common in 
heritance from an uncertain culture centre of immense 
antiquity.1 

The problem of Crete is indissolubly connected with that 
of Btruria, which was flourishing in Art and civilisation at 
a period when Eome was but a coterie of shepherds' huts. 
Here again are found Cyclopean walls and the traces of some 
most ancient people who had sway in Italy at a period 
even more remote than the national existence of Btruria.2 

We are told that the first-comers in Crete ground their 
meal in stone mortars, and that one of the peculiarities of 
the island was the herring-bone design of their wall build 
ings. In West Cornwall the stone walls or Giants' Hedges 
are Cyclopean ; farther north, in the Boscastle district, 
herring-bone walls are common, and in the neighbourhood 
of St. Just there are numerous British villages wherein the 
stone mortars are still standing. 

The formula of independent evolution, which has re 
cently been much over-worked, is now waning into dis 
favour, and it is difficult to believe otherwise than that 
identity of names, customs, and characteristics imply either 
borrowing or descent from some common, unknown source. 

That the builders of our European tumuli and cromlechs 
were maritime arrivals is a reasonable inference from the 
fact that dolmens and cromlechs were built almost in 
variably near the sea.3 These peculiar and distinctive 

1 Mackenzie, D. A., Myths of Crete, p. xxix. 

a Gray, Mrs. Hamilton, The Sepulchres of Etruria, p. 223. 

3 This might be due to the coasts being less liable to the plough. See, 
however, the map of distribution, published by Fergusson, in Rude 
Stone Monuments. 
2 


 18 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


monuments are found chiefly along the Western coasts of 
Britain, the Northern coast of Africa, in the isles of the. 
Mediterranean, in the isolated, storm-beaten Hebrides, and 
in the remote islands of Asia and Polynesia. 

By whom was the Titanic art of cromlech-building 
brought alike to the British Isles and to the distant islands 
of the Pacific ? By what guidance did frail barques com 
pass such terrifying sea space ? How were these ade 
quately victualled for such voyages, and why were the 
mainlands ever quitted ? How and why were the col 
ossal stones of Stonehenge brought by ship from afar, 
floated down the broad waters of the prehistoric Avon, and 
dragged laboriously over the heights of Oare Hill ? Who 
were the engineers who constructed artificial rocking stones 
and skilfully poised them where they stand to-day ? " To 
suspend a stupendous mass of abnormous shape in such 
an equilibrium that it shall oscillate with the most trivial 
force and not fall without the greatest, is a problem un 
solved so far as Ï know by modern engineers "-1 

Who were the indefatigable people who, prior to all 
record, reclaimed the marshes of the Thames-mouth by an 
embankment which is intact to-day all round the river 
coast of Kent and Essex ? WTho were the horticulturists 
who evolved wheat and other cereals from unknown grasses 
and certain lilies from their unknown wild ? And who 
were the philosophers who spun a -delicate gossamer of 
fairy-tales over the world, and formulated the cosmic ideas 
which are in many extraordinary respects common alike to 
primitive and more advanced peoples ? And why is the 
symbol generally entitled the Swastika cross found not 
only under the ruins of the most ancient Troy but also in 

'Herbert, A., Cyclops Britannica, p. 68. 


I.] INTRODUCTION 19 

the Thames at Battersea, and elsewhere from China to 
Zimbabwe? How is it that Ireland, that remote little 
outpost of Europe, possesses more Celtic MSS. than all 
the rest of Celtic Europe put together? 

The most rational explanation of these and similar 
queries is seemingly a consideration of the almost world 
wide tradition of a lost island, the home of a scientific 
world-wandering race. The legend of submerged Atlantis 
was related to Solon by an Egyptian priest as being his 
toric fact, and the date of the final catastrophe was de 
finitely set down by Plato from information given to Solon 
as having been about 9000 B.c. Solon was neither a fool 
himself nor the man to suffer fools gladly. It is admitted 
by geology that there actually existed a large island in the 
Atlantic during tertiary times, but this we are told is a 
pure coincidence and it is impossible to suppose any tradi 
tion existing of such an island or land. 

Science has very generally denied the credibility of tra 
dition, yet tradition has almost invariably proved truer 
than contemporary scholarship. Scholarship denied the 
possibility of finding Troy, notwithstanding the steady 
evidence of tradition "to the mound at Hissarlik where it 
was eventually disclosed. Even when Schliemann had un 
covered the lost city the scientists of every European 
capital ridiculed his pretensions, and it was only gradu 
ally that they ungraciously yielded to the irresistible evi 
dence of their physical senses. Science similarly denied 
the possibility of buried cities at the foot of Vesuvius, yet 
popular tradition always asserted the existence of Pompeii 
and Herculaneum; indeed, contemporary science has so 
consistently scouted the possibility of every advance in 
discovery that mere airy dismissal is not now sufficient to 


 20 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


INTRODUCTION 


21 


discredit either the Atlantean, or any other theory. From 
China to Peru one finds the persistent tradition of a 
drowned land, a story which is in itself so preposterous as 
unlikely to arise without some solid grounds of reality. 
Thierr-y has observed that legend is living tradition, and 
three times out of four it is truer than what we call his 
tory. Sir John Morris Jones would seemingly endorse 
this proposition, for he has recently contended that tra 
dition is itself a fact not always to be disposed of by 
the hasty assumption that all men are liars.1 

The Irish have their own account of the Flood, accord 
ing to which three ships sailed for Ireland, but two of them 
foundered on the way. The Welsh version runs that the 
first of the perilous mishaps which occurred in Britain was 
" The outburst of the ocean ' Torriad lin lion,' when a 
deluge spread over the face of all lands, so that all mankind 
were drowned with the exception of Duw-van and Duw- 
ach, the divine man and divine woman, who escaped in a 
decked ship without sails ; and from this pair the island of 
Prydain was completely re-peopled ". 

Correlated with this native version is a peculiar and, so 
far as my information goes, a unique tradition that previ 
ous disasters had taken place, causing the destruction of 
animals and vegetables then existing, of which whole races 
were irrevocably lost. This tradition, which is in complete 
harmony with the discoveries of modern geology, is thus 
embodied in the thirteenth Triad : " The second perilous 
mishap was the terror of the torrent-fire, when the earth 
was cloven down to the abyss, and the majority of living 
.things were destroyed ". 

It is a singular coincidence that evidence of a prehistoric 
1 Taliesvn, p. 28. 


torrent-fire exists certainly in Ireland, where bog-buried 
forests have been unearthed exhibiting all the signs of a 
flowing torrent of molten fire or lava. According to the 
author of Bogs and Ancient Forests, when the Bog of Alien 
in Kildare was cut through, oak, fir, yew, and other trees 
were found buried 20 or 30 feet below the surface, and 
these trees generally lie prostrated in a horizontal position, 
and have the appearance of being burned at the bottom of 
their trunks and roots, fire having been found far more 
powerful in prostrating those forests than cutting them 
down with an axe ; and the great depth at which these 
trees are found in bogs, shows that they must have lain 
there for many ages.1 

No ordinary or casual forest fire is capable of prostrating 
an oak or fir tree, and the implement which accomplished 
such terrific devastation must have been something volcanic 
and torrential in its character. 

I am, however, not enamoured of the Atlantean or any 
other theory. My purpose is rather to collate facts, and as 
all theorising ends in an appeal to self-evidence, it is better 
to allow my material, for much of which I have physically 
descended into the deeps of the earth, to speak for itself : 
-we must believe the evidence of our senses rather than 
arguments, and believe arguments if they agree with the 
phenomena.2 

Although my concordance of facts is based upon evidence 
largely visible to the naked eye, in a study of this character 
there must of necessity be a disquieting percentage of 
" probablys " and " possiblys ". This is deplorable, but if 
.license be conceded in one direction it cannot be withheld 

1 Connellan, A. P. M., p. 337. 

2 Aristotle. 


 22 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


INTKODUCTiON 


23 


in another. The extent to which guess-work is still ram 
pant in etymology will be apparent in due course ; the 
extent to which it is allowed license in anthropology may 
be judged from such reveries as the following : " Did any 
early members of the human family commit suicide? 
Probably they did ; the feeble, the dying, the maimed, the 
weak-headed, the starving, the jealous, would be tired of 
life ; these would throw themselves from heights or into 
rivers, or stab themselves or cut their throats with large 
and keen-edged knives of flint." 1 

Although my own inquiries deal intimately with graves 
and names and epitaphs, it still seems to me a possibility 
that the brains which fashioned exquisitely barbed fish 
hooks out of flint, and etched vivid works of art upon 
pebble, may also have been capable of poetic and even 
magnanimous ideas. It is quite certain that the artistic 
sense is superlatively ancient, and it is quite unproven that 
the lives of these early craftsmen were protracted night 
mares. 

Although not primarily written with that end, the present 
work will inter alia raise not a few doubts as to the ac 
curacy of Green's dictum : " What strikes us at once in the 
new England is that it was the one purely German nation 
that rose upon the wreck of Eome ". In the opinion of 
this popular historian the holiest spot in all these islands 
ought in the eyes of Englishmen to be Ebbsfleet, the site 
where in Kent the English visitors first landed, yet incon- 
sequently he adds : " A century after their landing the 
English are still known to their British foes only as ' bar 
barians,' ' wolves,' ' dogs,' ' whelps from the kennel of bar 
barism,' ' hateful to God and man '. Their victories seemed 
1 Smith, Worthington, G., Man the Primeval Savage, p. 58. 


victories for the powers of evil, chastisement of a divine 
justice for natural sin." x 

It is an axiom among anthropologists that race char 
acteristics do not change and that tides of immigration are 
more or less rapidly absorbed by the aboriginal and resident 
stock. Assuredly the characteristics of the German tribes 
have little changed, and it is extraordinary how from the 
time of Tacitus they have continued to display from age 
to age their time-honoured peculiarities. Invited and 
welcomed into this country as friends and allies, " in a 
short time swarms of the aforesaid nations came over into 
the island, and they began to increase so much that they 
became terrible to the natives themselves who had invited 
them ".2 

According to Bede the first symptoms of the frightfulness 
which was to come were demands for larger rations, ac 
companied by the threat that unless more plentiful supplies 
were brought them they would break the confederacy and 
ravage all the island. Nor were they backward in putting 
their threats in execution. Just as the Germans ruined 
Louvain so the Angles razed Cambridge,8 and in the words 
of Layamon " they passed to and fro the country carrying 
off all they found ". Already in the times of Tacitus 
famous for their frantic Hymns of Hate, so again we find 

1 Short History, p. 15. a Bede. 

3 The cities which had been erected in considerable numbers by the 
Epmans were sacked, burnt, and then left as ruins by the Anglo-Saxons, 
who appear to have been afraid or at least unwilling to use them as places 
of habitation. An instance of this may be found in the case of Çamboritum, 
the important Eoman oity which corresponded to our modern Cambridge, 
which was sacked by the invaders and left a ruin at least until the time of 
the Venerable Bede, 673-735.—Windle, B. C. Α., Life in Early Britain, 
p. 14. 


 24 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAF. 


INTBOEUCTION 


25 


Layamon recording "they breathed out threatenings and 
slaughter against the folk of the country ". Indeed Laya 
mon uses far stronger expressions than any of those quoted 
by Green, and the British chronicler almost habitually re 
fers to the alien intruders as " swine," and " the loathest 
of all things ". 

Instead, therefore, of being thrilled into ecstasy by the 
landing of the Germans at Ebbsfleet, one may more reason 
ably regard the episode as untoward and discreditable. 
It is more satisfactory to contemplate the return in the 
train of Duke William of Normandy of those numerous 
Britons who " with sorrowful hearts had fled beyond the 
seas," and to appreciate that by the Battle of Hastings the 
temporary ascendancy of Germanic kultur was finally 
and irrevocably destroyed. 

It is observed by Green that the coins which we dig 
up in our fields are no relics of our English fathers but of 
a Boman world which our fathers' sword swept utterly 
away. This is sufficiently true as regards the Saxon 
sword, but as some of the native coins in question are now 
universally assigned to a period 200 to 100 years earlier 
than the first coming of the Eomans, it is obvious that 
there must have been sufficient civilisation then in the 
country to require a coinage, and that the native Britons 
cannot have been the poor and backward barbarians of 
popular estimation. 

A coin is an excessively hard fact, and should be of just 
as high interest to the historian as a well-formed skull or 
any other document. To Englishmen our prehistoric 
coinage—a national coinage " scarcely if at all inferior to 
that of contemporary Borne "—1 ought to possess peculiar 
1 Hearnshaw, P. J. C., England in the Making, p. 14. 


and special interest, for it is practically in England alone 
that early coins have been discovered, and neither Scotland, 
Wales, nor Ireland can boast of more than very few. It 
is, however, an Englishman's peculiarity that possessing 
perhaps the most interesting history, and some of the 
most fascinating relics in the world, he is either too modest 
or too dull to take account of them. The plate of coins 
illustrated on page 364, represents certain sceattae which, 
according to Hawkins, may have been struck during the 
interval between the departure of the Bomans and the 
arrival of the Saxons. One would at least have thought 
that such undated minor-monuments would have possessed 
per se sufficient interest to ensure their careful preservation. 
Yet, according to Hawkins, these rude and uncouth pieces 
are scarce, "because they are rejected from all cabinets 
and thrown away as soon as discovered".1 

It is the considered opinion of certain British numis 
matists that not only all English but also Gaulish coins are 
barbarous and degraded imitations of a famous Macedonian 
original which at· one time circulated largely in Marseilles. 
This supposititious "3el illustrated on page 394, and 
the reader can io— ra opinion as to whether or 
not the immense ra of bit its -viiich figure on our 
native money could by any ssAility have unconsciously 
evolved from carelessne&o. · John Evans, by whom this 
theory was, I belfeve, first put forward, is himself at times 
hard-driven to defend it ; nevertheless he does not hesitate 
to maintain : " The degeneration of the head of Apollo into 
two boars and a wheel, impossible as it may at first appear, 
is in fact but a comparatively easy transition when once 

1 Hawkins, E., Theßüjtej· Çpins of England, p. 17. 
.·j . · * · * 


 26 


ARCHAIC -ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


INTRODUCTION 


27 


the head has been reduced into a form of regular 
pattern ",1 

My irregularity carries me to the extent of contending 
that our native coins, crude and uncouth as some of them 
may be, are in no case imitations but are native work re 
flecting erstwhile national ideas. The weird designs and 
what-nots which figure on these tokens almost certainly 
were once animated by meanings of some sort : they thus 
constitute a prehistoric literature expressed in hieroglyphics 
for the correct reading of which one must, in the words 
of Carlyle, consider History with the beginnings of it 
stretching dimly into the remote time, emerging darkly out 
of the mysterious eternity, the true epic poem and universal 
divine scripture. 

According to Tacitus the British, under Boudicca, 
brought into the field an incredible multitude ; that 
Caesar was impressed by the density of the inhabitants may 
be gathered from his words : " The population is immense ; 
homesteads closely resembling those of the Gauls are met 
with at every turn, and cattle are very numerous "? That 
the handful of Roman invaders eliminated the customs 
and traditions of a vast population is no more likely than 
the supposition that British occupation has eradicated or 
even greatly interfered with the native faiths of India. 

It is generally admitted that the Romans were most 
tolerant of local sensibilities, and there is no reason to 
assume that existing British characteristics were either 
attacked or suppressed. To assume that some hundreds 
of years later the advent of a few boat-loads of Anglo-Saxon 
adventurers wiped out the Romano-British inhabitants and 

1 Corns of the Ancient Britons, p. 121, 
v., ί·2/§·-3, . 


eradicated all customs, manners, and traditions is an obvious 
fallacy under which the evidence of folklore does not 
permit us to labour. The greater probability is that the 
established culture imposed itself more or less upon the 
new-comers, more particularly in those remote districts 
which it was only after hundreds of years that the Saxons, 
by their conventional policy of "peaceful penetration, 
punctuated by flashes of frightfulness, succeeded in domi 
nating. 

Even after the Norman Conquest there are circum 
stances which point to the probability that the Celtic 
population was much larger and more powerful than is 
usually supposed. Of these the most important is the fact 
that the signatures to very early charters supply us with 
names of persons of Celtic race occupying positions of 
dignity at the courts of Anglo-Saxon kings.1 

The force of custom and the apparently undying con 
tinuance of folk-memory are among the best attested 
phenomena of folklore. It was remarked by the elder 
Disraeli that tradition can neither be made nor de 
stroyed, and if this be true in general it is peculiarly true 
of the etubborn and pig-headed British. Our churches 
stand to-day not only on the primeval inconvenient hill- 
sites, but frequently within the time-honoured earthwork, 
or beside the fairy-well. On Palm Sunday the villagers 
of Avebury still toil to the summit of Silbury Hill, there 
to consume fig cakes and drink sugared water ; and on the 
same festival the people even to-day march in procession 
to the prehistoric earthwork on the top of Martinshell Hill. 
Our country fairs are generally held near or within a pagan 
earthwork, and instance after instance might be adduced 

1 Smith, Dr. Win., Lectures on the English Langiiage, p. 29. 


 28 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


all pointing to the immortality of custom and the persistent 
sanctity of pagan sites. 

In the sixth century of our era the monk Gildas re 
ferred complacently but erroneously to the ancient British 
faith as being dead. "I shall not," he says, "enumerate 
those diabolical idols of my country, which almost sur 
passed in number those of Egypt, and of which we still 
see some mouldering away within or without the deserted 
temples, with stiff and deformed features as was customary. 
Nor will I cry out upon the mountains, fountains, or hills, 
or upon the rivers, which now are subservient to the use 
of men, but once were an abomination and destruction to 
them, and to which the blind people paid divine honour." 

Notwithstanding the jeremiads of poor Gildas1 the folk- 
faith survived ; indeed, as Mr. Johnson says, the heathen 
belief has been present all the time, and need not greatly 
astonish us since the most advanced materialist is fre 
quently a victim of trivial superstitions which are scouted 
by scientific men as baseless and absurd. 

The Augustine of Canterbury, who is recorded to have 
baptised on one day 10,000 persons in the river Swale, re 
commended with pious ingenuity that the heathen temples 
should not be destroyed, but converted to the honour of 
Christ by washing their walls with holy water and substitut 
ing holy relics and symbols for the images of the heathen 
gods. This is an illuminating sidelight on the methods by 
which the images of the heathen idols were gradually 
transformed into the images of Christian saints, and there 
. is little doubt that as the immemorial shrines fell into ruin 
and were rebuilt and again rebuilt, the sacred images were 
scrupulously relimned. 

1 The Americans would describe Gildas as a "Calamity-howler ". 


I·] 


INTRODUCTION 


29 


Even to-day, after 2000 years of Christian discipline, the 
clergy dare not in some districts interfere with the time- 
honoured tenets of their parishioners. In Normandy and 
Brittany the priests, against their inclination, are com 
pelled to take part in pagan ceremonials,1 and in Spain 
quite recently an archbishop has been nearly killed by his 
congregation for interdicting old customs.2 

The earliest British shrines were merely stones, or caves, 
or holy wells, or sacred trees, or tumuli, preferably on a 
hill-top or in a wood. The next type is found in the 
monastery of St. Bride, which was simply a circular 
palisade encircling a sacred fire. This was in all proba 
bility similar to the earliest known form of the Egyptian 
temple, a wicker hut with tall poles forming the sides of 
the door ; in front of this extended an enclosure which had 
two poles with flags on either side of the entrance. In 
the middle of the enclosure or court was a staff bearing 
the emblem of the God. 

Later came stone circles and megalithic monuments in 
various forms, whence the connection is direct to cathe 
drals such as Chartres, which is said to be built largely from 
the remains of the prehistoric megaliths which originally 

1 Le Braz, A., The Night of Fires. 

2 A Cantanzaro, dans la Calabre, la cathédrale fut le théâtre de scènes 
de désordre extraordinaires. Le nouvel archevêque avait dernièrement 
manifesté l'intention de mettre un terme à certaines coutumes qu'il con 
sidérait comme entachées de paganisme. Ses instructions ayant été 
méprisées, il frappa d'interdit pour trois jours un édifice religieux. La . 
population jura de se venger et, lorsque le nouvel archevêque fit son entrée 
dans la cathédrale, le jour de Pâques pour célébrer la grand' messe, la 
foule, furieuse, manifesta bruyamment contre lui. Comme on craignait 
que sa personne fût l'objet de violences, le clergé le fit sortir en 'hâte par 
une porte de derrière. Les troupes durent être réquisitionnées pour faire 
évacuer le cathédrale.—La Dernière Heure, April, 1914. 


 30 


ABCHAIC ENGLAND 


stood there. There are chapels in Brittany and else 
where built over pagan monoliths ; indeed no new faith 
can ever do more than superimpose itself upon an older 
one, and statements about the wise and tender treatment 
of the old nature worship by the Church are euphemisms 
for the bald fact that Christianity, finding it impracticable 


FIG. 8.—Section of the Dolmen Chapel of the Seven Sleepers near 
Plouaret. 

to wean the heathen from their obdurate beliefs, made 
the best of the situation by decreeing its feasts to coin 
cide with pre-existing festivals. 

It has long been generally appreciated that the lives of 
saints are not only for the most part mythical, but that 
even documentary evidence on that subject is equally sus 
pect.1 There is, indeed, no room to doubt that the majority 

1 There is a story told of a certain Gilbert de Stone, a fourteenth century 
legend-monger, who was appealed to by the monks of Holywell in Flintshire 
for a life of their patron saint. On being told that no materials for such a 
work existed the litterateur was quite unconcerned, and undertook without 


I·] 


INTRODUCTION 


31 


of the ancient saint-stories are Christianised versions of 
such scraps and traditions of prehistoric mythology as had 
continued to linger among the folk. To the best of my 
belief I am the first folklorist who has endeavoured to treat 
The Golden Legend in a sympathetic spirit as almost pure 
mythology. 

It is usually assumed that at any rate the Christian 
Church tactfully decanted the old wine of paganism into 
new bottles ; but Christianity, as will be seen, more often 
did not trouble to provide even new bottles, and merely 
altered a stroke here and there on the labels, transforming 
San tan, the Holy Fire, into St. Anne, Sin clair, the Holy 
Light, into St. Clare, and so forth. 

The first written record of Christianity in Britain is ap 
proximately A.D. 200, whence it is claimed that the Chris 
tian religion must have been introduced very near to, if 
not in, apostolic times. In 314 three British bishops, 
each accompanied by a priest and a deacon, were present 
at the Council at Aries, and it is commonly maintained by 
the Anglican Church that only a relatively small part of 
England owes its conversion to the Roman mission of 
the monk Augustine in 597. 

We have it on the notable authority of St. Augustine 
that : " That very thing which is now designated the Chris 
tian religion was in existence among tJie ancients, nor was 
it absent even from the commencement of the human race 
up to the time when Christ entered into the flesh, after 
which true religion, which already existed, began to be 
called Christian ". 

We should undoubtedly possess more specific evidences 

lesitation to compose a most excellent legend after the manner of Thomas 
à Becket. 


 32 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


of the ancient faith but for the edicts of the Church that 
all writings adverse to the claims of the Christian religion, 
in the possession of whomsoever they should be found, 
should be committed to the fire. It is claimed for St. 
Patrick that he caused to be destroyed 180—some say 300 
—volumes relating to the Druidic system. These, said a 
complacent commentator, were stuffed with the fables and 
superstitions of heathen idolatry and unfit to be transmitted 
to posterity. 

Mr. Westropp considers that much of value escaped de 
struction, for Christianity in Ireland was a tactful, warm 
hearted mother, and learned the stories to tell to her chil 
dren. This is true to some extent, but in Britain there 
are extant many bardic laments at- the intolerance with 
which old ideas were eradicated, e.g., " Monks congregate 
like wolves wrangling with their instructors. They know 
not when the darkness and the dawn divide, nor what is 
the course of the wind, or the cause of its agitation ; in 
what place it dies away or on what region it expands." 
And implying that although one may be right it does 
not follow that all others must be wrong the same bard 
exclaims, " For one hour persecute me not ! " and he 
pathetically asks : " Is there but one course to the wind, 
but one to the waters of the sea ? Is there but one spark 
in the fire of boundless energy ? " 

In the same strain another bard, in terms not altogether 
inapplicable to-day, alludes to his opponents as " like little 
children disagreeing on the beach of the sea ". 

Although bigotry and materialism have suppressed facts, 
stifled testimony, misrepresented witnesses, and destroyed 
or perverted documents, the prehistoric fairy faith was 
happily too deeply graven thus to be obliterated, and it is 


ι-] 


INTEODUCTION 


33 


only a matter of time and study to reconstruct it. Most 
of the suggestions I venture to put forward are sufficiently 
documented by hard facts, but some are necessarily based 
upon " hints and equivocal survivals ",1 At the threshold 
of an essay of the present character one can hardly do 
better than appropriate the words of Edmund Spenser :— 
I do gather a likelihood of truth not certainly affirming 
anything, but by conferring of times, language, monuments, 
and such like, I do hunt out a probability of things which 
I leave to your judgment to believe or refuse. 

1 " Ireland being ' the last resort of lost causes,' preserved record of a 
European ' culture ' as primitive as that of the South Seas, and therefore 
invaluable for the history of human advance ; elsewhere its existence is 
only to be established from hints and equivocal survivals. Our early tales 
are no artificial fiction, but fragmentary beliefs of the pagan period equally 
valuable for topography and for mythology."—Westropp, Thos. J., Pro 
ceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xxxiv. sec. C, No. 8, p. 128. 


 CHAPTER II 

THE MAGIO OF WOKDS 

" As the palimpsest of language is held up to the light and looked at 
more closely, it is found to be full of elder forms beneath the later writing. 
Again and again has the most ancient speech conformed to the new gram 
mar, until this becomes the merest surface test ; it supplies only the latest 
likeness. Our mountains and rivers talk in the primeval mother tongue 

•whilst the language of men is remoulded by every passing wave of change. 
The language of mythology and typology is almost as permanent as the 
names of the hills and streams."—GEBALD MASSBY. 

IT is generally admitted that place-names are more or less 
impervious to time and conquests. Instances seemingly 
without limit might be adduced of towns which have been 
sacked, destroyed, rebuilt, and rechristened, yet the original 
names—and these only—have survived. Dr. Taylor has 
observed that the names of five of the oldest cities of 
the world—Damascus, Hebron, Gaza, Sidon, and Hamath 

—are still pronounced in exactly the same manner as was 
the case thirty, or perhaps forty centuries ago, defying 
oftentimes the persistent attempts of rulers to substitute 
some other name.1 

As another instance of the permanency of place-names» 
the city of Palmyra is curiously notable. Though the 
Greek Palmyra is a title of 2000 years' standing, yet to the 
native Arab it is new-fangled, and he knows the place not 
as Palmyra but as Tadmor, its original and infinitely 


1 Words and Places. 
34 


CHAP. II.] 


THE MAGIC OP WOEDS 


35 


older name. Five hundred years B.c. the very ancient city 
of MykensB was destroyed and never rose again to any 
importance : Mykense was fabulously assigned to Perseus, 
and even to-day the stream which runs at the site is known 
as the Perseia.1 

If it be possible for local names thus to live handed down 
humbly from mouth to mouth for thousands of years, for 
aught one knows they may have endured for double or 
treble these periods; there is no seeming limit to their 
vitality, and they may be said to be as imperishable and 
as dateless as the atones of Avebury or Stonehenge. 

History knows nothing of violent and spasmodic jumps ; 
the ideas of one era are impalpably transmitted to the 
next, and the continuity of custom makes it difficult to 
believe that the builders of Cyclopean works such as Ave 
bury and Stonehenge, have left no imprint on our place- 
names, and no memories in our language. Even to-day 
the superstitious veneration for cromlechs and holy stones 
is not defunct, and it is largely due to that ingrained senti 
ment that more of these prehistoric monuments have not 
been converted into horse-troughs and pigsties. 

If, as now generally admitted, there has been an un 
broken and continuous village-occupation, and if, as is also 
now granted, our sacred places mostly occupy aboriginal 
and time-honoured sites, it is difficult to conceive that 
place-names do not preserve some traces of their prehistoric 
meanings. In the case of villages dedicated to some saintly 
man or sweetest of sweet ladies, the connection is almost 
certainly intact ; indeed, in instances the pagan barrows in 
the churchyard are often actually dedicated to some saint.2 

1 Schliemann, Mylcence. 

2 Cf. Johnson, W., Byways in. British Archceology. 


 36 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


That memories of the ancient mythology sometimes 
hang around our British cromlechs is proved by an instance 
in North Wales where there still stands a table stone 
known locally as Llety-y-filiast, or the stone of the grey 
hound bitch. " This name," says Dr. Griffith, " was given 
in allusion to the British Ceres or Keridwen who was sym 
bolised by the greyhound bitch "-1 I shall have much to 
say about Keridwen—" the most generous and beauteous 
of ladies "—meanwhile it is sufficient here to note that her 
symbol, the greyhound bitch, is found unmistakably upon 
our earliest coinage. 


BEITISH. 
FIG. 4.—From Evans. FIG. 5.—From Akencnan. 

All place-names of any real antiquity are generally com 
posed of various languages, and like compound rocks con 
tain fragments in juxtaposition which belong properly to 
different ages. The analysis of these is not difficult, as 
the final -hill, -ton, -ville, -ham, and so forth is usually the 
comparatively modern work of newcomers. Frequently 
the later generations forgot the original meanings of the 
ancient terms ; and thus, for instance, at Brandon Hill in 
Suffolk there is the curious phenomenon of Hill Hill Hill 
—in three languages, -i.e., bran, don, and hill. On this site 
the flint knappers are still at work, using practically the 
same rude tool as their primitive woad-painted ancestors. 
At Brandon not only has the art of flint-making survived, 

1 The Cromlechs of Anglesey and Carnarvonshire. 


CHAP.] 


THE MAGIC OP WOBDS 


37 


but anthropologists have noted the persistence of a swarthy 
and most ancient type—a persistence the more remarkable 
as Suffolk was supposed to be a district out of which the 
Britons had been wholly and irretrievably eradicated. 
Whether there is anything in the world to parallel the 
phenomenon of the Brandon flint knappers I do not know, 
and it may well be questioned. In the words of Dr. Bice 
Holmes :—The industry has been carried on since neolithic 
times, and even then it was ancient : for Brandon was an 
abode of flint makers in the Old Stone Age. Not only the 
pits but even the tools show little change : the picks which 
the modern workers use are made of iron, but here alone 
in Britain the old one-sided form is still retained, only the 
skill of the workers has degenerated : the exquisite even 
ness of chipping which distinguished the neolithic arrow 
heads is beyond the power of the most experienced knapper 
to reproduce.1 

At Brandon is Broomhill ; the words bran and broom will 
be subsequently shown to be radically the same, and I shall 
suggest reasons why this term, even possibly in Old Stone 
times, meant hill. 

During recent years the study of place-names has been 
passing through a period of spade-work, and every avail 
able document from Doomsday Book to a Rent Eoli has 
been scrupulously raked. The inquirer now therefore has 
available a remarkably interesting record of the various 
forms which our place-names have passed through, and he 
can eliminate the essential features from the non-essential. 
Although the subject has thus considerably been elucidated, 
the additional information obtained has, however, done 

1 Ancient Britain, p. 70. 


 38 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


nothing to solve the original riddle and in some cases has 
rendered it more complex. 

The new system which is popularly supposed to have 
eliminated all guesswork has in reality done nothing of 
the kind. In place of the older method, which, in the 
words of Prof. Skeat, "exalted impudent assertions far 
above positive evidence," it has boldly substituted a new 
form of guesswork which is just as reckless and in many 
respects is no less impudent than the old. The present 
fashion is to suppose that the river χ or the town of y 
may have been the property of, or founded by, some purely 
hypothetical Anglo-Saxon. For example : the river Hag- 
bourne of Berkshire is guessed to have been Hacca's burn 
or brook, which possibly it was, but there is not a scintilla 
of real evidence one way or the other. 

If one is going to postulate " Hacca's " here and there, 
there is obviously a space waiting for a member of the 
family on the great main road entitled Akeman Street. 
As this ancient thoroughfare traverses Bath we are, how 
ever, told that it " received in Saxon times the significant 
name of Akeman Street from the condition of the gouty 
sufferers who travelled along it ",1 One would prefer even 
a phantom Hacca to this aching man, nor does the alter 
natively suggested aqua, water, bring us any nearer a 
solution. 

There sometimes appears to be no bottom to the vacuity 
of modern guesswork. It is seriously and not pour rire 
suggested that Horselydown was where horses could lie 
down ; that Honeybrook was so designated because of its 
honey-sweet water, and that the name Isle of Dogs was 
" possibly because so many dogs were drowned in the 

J Windle, Sir B. C. A., Life, in Early Britain, p. 135. 


THE MAGIC OF WOBDS 


89 


Thames here".1 In what respect do these and kindred 
definitions, which I shall cite from standard authors of 
to-day, differ from the " egregious " speculations, the 
" wild guesses," and the " impudent assertions " of earlier 
scholars ? 

There is in Bucks a small town now known as Kimball, 
anciently as Cunebal. Tradition associates this site with 
the British King Cymbeline or Cunobelin, and as the place 
further contains an eminence known as Belinsbury or 
Belinus Castle, the authorities can hardly avoid accepting 
the connection and the etymology. But for Kimbolton, 
which stands on a river named the Kym, the authorities— 
notwithstanding the river Kym—provide the purely sup 
posititious etymology " Town of Cynebald ". There were, 
doubtless, thousands of Saxons whose name was Cynebald, 
but why Kimbolton should be assigned to any one of these 
hypothetical persons instead of to Cymbeline is not in any 
way apparent. The river name Kym is sufficient to dis 
credit Cynebald, and the greater probability is that not 
only the Kym but also all our river and mountain names 
are pre-Saxon. 

It will be seen hereafter that the name Cunobelin or 
Cymbeline, which the dictionaries define as meaning 
splendid sun, was probably adopted as a dynastic title of 
British chiefs, and that the effigies of Cymbeline on British 
coins have no more relation to any particular king than the 
mounted figure on our modern sovereign has to his Majesty 
King George V. The prefix Gym or Cuno will subse 
quently be seen to be the forerunner of the modern Konig 
or King. Hence like Kimball or Cunebal, Kimbolton on 

1 Johnston, Rev. James B., Tlie Place-names of England and Wales, 1915, 
p. 821. The Horse-lie-down theory is enunciated by Sir Walter Besant. 


 40 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


the Kym was probably a seat of a Cymbeline, and the ima 
ginary Saxon Cynebald may be dismissed as a usurper. 

~Kiiobolton used at one time to be known as ~Kinnebantum, 
whence it is evident that the essential part of the word is 
Kinne or Kirn, and as another instance of the perplexing 
variations which are sometimes found in place-names the 
spot now known as Iffley may be cited. This name occurs 
at various periods as follows : Gifetelea, Sifetelea, Zyfte- 
leye, Yestley, Iveclay and Iftel. This is a typical instance 
of the extraordinary variations which have perplexed the 
authorities, and is still causing them to cast vainly around 
for some formula or law of sound-change, which shall 
account satisfactorily for the problem. "We are at 
present," says Prof. Wyld, "quite unable to formulate the 
laws of the interchange of stress in place-names, or of the 
effects of these in retaining, modifying, or eliminating 
syllables. . . . Until these laws are properly formulated, 
it cannot be said that we have a scientific account of the 
development of place-names. The whole thing is often 
little better than a conjuring trick." * 

No amount of brainwork has conjured any sense from 
Iffley, and the etymology has been placed on the sbelf as 
" unknown ". I shall venture to suggest that the initial 
G, S, Z, or Y, of this name, and of many others being 
adjectival, the radical Ive or Iff, as being the essential, has 
alone survived. It will be seen that Iffley was in all 
probability a lea or meadow dedicated to " The Ivy Girl " 
or May Queen, and that quite likely it was one of the 
many sites where, in the language of an old poet— 

Holly and his Merry men they dawnsin and they sing, 
Ivy and her maydons they wepen and they wryng. 

1 Preface to The Place-names of Oxfordshire. 


IT.] 


THE MAGIC OF WOEDS 


41 


I shall connote with Ivy and her maidens, not only Mother 
Eve, but also the clearly fabulous St. Ive. We shall see 
that the Lady Godiva of Coventry fame was known as 
Godgifu, just as Iffley was once G*/etelea, and we shall see 
that St. Ives in Cornwall appears in the registers alterna 
tively as St. Yesses, just as Iffley was alternatively Yestley. 
Finally we shall trace the connection between Eve, the 
Mother of all living, and ^t-ebury, the greatest of all rnega- 
lithic monuments. 

If it be objected that my method is too meticulous, and 
that it is impossible for mere farm- and field-names to 
possess any prehistoric significance, I may refer for support 
to the Sixth Report of the Royal Commission appointed to 
inventory tbe ancient monuments of Wales and Monmouth 
shire.1 In the course of this document the Commissioners 
write as follows :— 

" The Tithe Schedules, unsatisfactory and disappointing 
though many of them are, contain such a collection of 
place-names, principally those of fields, that the Commis 
sioners at tbe outset of their inquiry determined upon a 
careful investigation of them. The undertaking involved 
in the first place the examination of hundreds of docu 
ments, many of them containing several thousands of 
place-names ; secondly, in the case of those names which 
were noted for further inquiry, the necessity of discovering 
the position of the field or site upon the tithe map ; and, 
thirdly, the location of the field or site on the modern six- 
inch ordnance sheet. This prolonged task called for much 
patience and care, as well as ingenuity in comparing the 
boundaries of eighty years ago with those of the present 
time. 


11915. 


 42 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


Π-] 


THE MAGIC OF WOEDS 


43 


" Of the value of this work there can be no doubt. We 
do not venture to express any opinion on the question 
whether, or to what extent, farm and field names are of 
service to the English archaeologist; but with regard to 
their importance to the Welsh archaeologist there can be 
no two opinions. The fact that the Welsh place-names 
are being rapidly replaced by English names, so that the 
local lore which is often enshrined in the former is in 
danger of being lost, was in itself a sufficient reason for the 
undertaking. The results have more than justified our. 
decision. There is hardly a parish, certainly not one of 
the ancient parishes, of the principality, where the schedule 
of field names has not yielded some valuable results. 
Scores of small but in some cases important antiquities 
would have passed unrecorded, had it not been for the clue 
to their presence given by the place-name which was to be 
found only in the schedule to the Tithe Survey." 

In Cornwall almost every parish is named after some 
saintly apostle, and many of these saints are alleged to 
have travelled far and wide in the world founding towns 
and villages. It is almost a physical impossibility that 
this was literally true, and it becomes manifestly incredible 
on consideration of the miracles recorded in the lives of 
the travellers. As already suggested the greater proba 
bility is that the lives of the saints enshrine almost intact 
the traditions of pre-Christian divinities. Of the popular 
and most familiar St. Patrick, Borlase (W. C.), writes : " Of 
the reality of the existence of this Patrick, son of Calporn, 
we feel not the shadow of a doubt. But he was not the 
only Patrick, and as time went on traditions of one other 
Patrick at least came to be commingled with his own. 
We have before us the names of ten other contemporary 


Patricks, all ecclesiastics, and spread over Wales, Ireland, 
France, Spain, and Italy. The name appears to be that of 
a grade or order in the Church rather than a proper name 
in the usual sense. Thus Palladius is called also Patrick 
in the ' Book of Armagh ' and tlie Patrick (whichever he 
may have been) is represented as styling Declan 'the 
Patrick of the Desii/ and Ailbhe ' the Patrick of Munster '. 
When Patrick sojourned in a cave in an island in the 
Tyrrhene Sea he found three other Patricks there." Pre 
cisely : and there is little doubt that our London Battersea 
or Patrixeye was originally an ea or island where the 
Patricks or padres of St. Peter's at Westminster once con 
gregated. 

The arguments applied to St. Patrick apply equally to, 
say, St. Columba, or the Holy Dove, and similarly to St. 
Colman, a name also meaning Dove. In Ireland alone 
there are 200 dedications to St. Colman, and evidence will 
be brought forward that the archetype of all the St. Col- 
mans and all the St. Columbas and all the Patricks was 
Peter the Pater, who was symbolised by petra, the stone 
or rock. 

The so-called Ossianic poems of Gaeldom, although of 
" a remarkably heathenish character," preserve the 
manners of and opinions of what the authorities describe 
as "a semi-barbarous people who were endowed with 
strong imagination, high courage, childlike tenderness, and 
gentle chivalry for women," 1 and that the ancients were 
tinctured through and through with mysticism and ima 
gination, finding tongues in trees, books in the running 
brooks, sermons in stones', and good in everything, is a fact 
which can be denied- When our words were framed and 

1 Cf. BoDwick, J., Irish Druids, p. 278. 


 44 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


our ancient places, hills, and rivers named, I am persuaded 
that the world was in its imaginative childhood, and hence 
that traces of that state of mind may reasonably be antici 
pated. It is remarkable that the skulls found in the first 
or oldest Troy exhibit the most intellectual characteristics,1 
and in many quarters seemingly the remoter the times the 
purer was the theology whether in Phrygia, Egypt, India, 
Persia, or Great Britain. Among the Cretans " religion 
entered at every turn " of their social system ; in Egypt 
even the very games and dances had a religious signific 
ance, and the evidence of folklore testifies to the same 
effect in Britain. It was one among the many grievances 
of the pessimistic Gildas that the British were " slaves to 
the shadows of things to come," and this usually overlooked 
aspect of their character must, I think, be recognised in 
relation to their place-names. To a large degree the 
mystical element still persists in Brittany, where even to 
day, in the words of Baring-Gould :—At a Pardon one sees 
and marvels at the wondrous faces of this remarkable 
people : the pure, sweet, and modest countenances of the 
girls, and those not less striking of the old folk. " It is," 
says Durtal, " the soul which is everything in these people, 
and their physiognomy is modelled by it. There are holy 
brightnesses in their eyes, on their lips, those doors to the 
borders of which the soul alone can come, from which it 
looks forth and all but shows itself. Goodness, kindness, 
as well as a cloistral spirituality, stream from their faces."2 
What is still true of Brittany was once equally true of 
Britain, and although the individuality of the Gael has 
now largely been submerged by prosaic Anglo-Saxondom, 
the poetic temperament of the chivalrous and dreamy Celt 

1 Virchow, intro. to Schliemann, IlioS XII. 2 Cf. Brittany, p. 28. 


II.] 


THE MAGIC OP WOBDS 


45 


was essentially a frame of mind that cared only for the 
heroic, the romantic, and the beautiful. 

The science of etymology as practised to-day is unfor 
tunately blind to this poetic element which was, and to 
some extent still is, an innate characteristic of " uncivi 
lised " and unsophisticated peoples. Archbishop Trench, 
one of the original planners and promoters of The New 
English Dictionary, was not overstating when he wrote : 
" Let us then acknowledge man a born poet. . . . Despite 
his utmost efforts, were he mad enough to employ them, 
he could not succeed in exhausting his language of the 
poetical element which is inherent in it, in stripping it of 
blossom, flower, and fruit, and leaving it nothing but a 
bare and naked stem. He may fancy for a moment that 
he has succeeded in doing this, but it will only need for 
him to become a little better philologer to go a little deeper 
into the study of the words which he is using, and he will 
discover that he is as remote from this consummation as 
ever." 

Nevertheless, current etymology has achieved this in 
anity, and has so completely dismissed the animate or 
poetic element from its considerations that one may seek 
vainly the columns of Skeat and Murray for any hint or 
suggestion that language and imagination ever had any 
thing in common. According to modern teaching language 
is a mere cluster of barbaric yawps : " No mystic bond 
linked word and thought together ; utility and convenience 
alone joined them ",1 

Words, nevertheless, were originally born not from 
grammarians but amid the common people, and pace Mr. 
Clodd they enshrine in many instances the mysticism and 

1 Clodd, Ed., The Story of Primitive Man, 9,18. 


 46 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


the superstitions of the peasantry. How can one account, 
for instance, for the Greek word psyche, meaning butterfly, 
and also soul, except by the knowledge that butterflies were 
regarded by the ancients as creatures into which the soul 
was metamorphosised ? According to Grimm, the German 
name for stork means literally child-, or soul-bringer ; hence 
the belief that the advent of infants was presided over 
by this bird. But why " hence " ? and why put the cart 
before the horse ? If one may judge from innumerable 
parallels of word-equivocation the legends arose not from 
the accident of similar words, nor from "misprision of 
terms," or from any other " disease of language," but the 
creatures were named because of the attendant legend. It 
is common knowledge that in Egypt the animal sacred to 
a divinity was often designated by the name of that deity ; 
similarly in Europe the bee, a symbol of the goddess 
Mylitta, was called a mylitta, and a bull, the symbol of 
the god Thor, was named a thor. We speak to-day of an 
Adonis, because Adonis was a fabulously lovely youth, and 
parallel examples may be found on almost every hand. 
Irish mythology tells of a certain golden-haired hero named 
Bress, which means beautiful, whence we are further told 
that every beautiful thing in Ireland whether plain, for 
tress, or ale, or torch, or woman, or man, was compared 
with him, so that men said of them " That is a Bress ". 
Elsewhere and herein I have endeavoured to prove that 
this principle was of worldwide application, and that it is 
an etymological key which will open the meaning of many 
words still in common use. It is a correlative fact that 
the names of specific deities such as Horus, Hathor, Nina, 
Bel, etc., developed in course of time into generic terms 
for any Lord or God, 


π.] 


THE MAGIC OF WORDS 


47 


Very much the same principles are at work with us to 
day, whence a dreadnought from the prime "Dreadnought," 
and the etymologer of the future, who tries by strictly 
scientific methods to unravel the meaning of such words 
as mackintosh, brougham, Sam Browne, gladstone, boycott, 
etc., will find it necessary to investigate the legends attend 
ant on those names rather than practice a formal permu 
tation of vowels and consonants. 

By common consent the quintessence of the last fifty 
years' philological progress is being distilled into Sir James 
Murray's New English Dictionary, and in a conciser form 
the same data may be found in Prof. Skeat's Concise Ety 
mological Dictionary of the English Language. Both 
these indispensable works are high watermarks of English 
scholarship, and whatever absurdities they contain are 
shortcomings not of their compilers but of the Teutonic 
school of philology which they exemplify. If these two 
standard dictionaries were able to answer even the elemen 
tary questions that are put to them it would be both idle 
and presumptuous to cavil, but one has only to refer to 
their pages to realise the ignorance which prevails as 
to the origin and the meaning of the most simple and 
everyday words. 

It is unfortunately true that "in philology as in all 
branches of knowledge it is the specialist who most strongly 
opposes any attempt to widen the field of his knowledge ",1 
Hence, as was only to be expected, one of the reviewers 
of my Lost Language of Symbolism deemed it quite in 
sufferable that I should throw to the winds the laborious 
work on the science of phonetics built up by generations 
of careful research. 

' Sweet, H., The History of Laiigtutge, p. vi. 


 48 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


But in point of fact I discarded none of the sound work 
of my predecessors ; I only tried to supplement it and fished 
deeper. My soundings do not begin until I am well beyond 
the limits of modern etymology, and they are no more 
affected by the cross-currents of historic languages than 
the activities of a deep-water fisherman are interrupted or 
affected by the tide eddies on the shore. The defect of 
official philology is that it offers no explanation for radicals. 
It does not, for example, attempt to explain why the word 
ap was the Sanscrit for water, why pri was the Sanscrit 
for love, or why pat was the Sanscrit for fly. It refers 
the word oak to the Anglo-Saxon ac, Dr. Murray merely 
describing it as " a consonantal stem, ulterior meaning 
obscure ". Etymology to-day is in fact very much in the 
situation of an insolvent bank which, unable to satisfy 
its creditors with cash on demand, blandly endeavours to 
satisfy them with corresponding cheques of equally uncash- 
able face value. Words can never properly be interpreted 
merely by parallel words : originally they must have ex 
pressed ideas, and it is these underlying ideas that I am in 
search of. My previous work was a pioneer, and in many 
respects bungling attempt to pick up the threads where at 
present philology is content to lose them. Using the same 
keys as hitherto, I shall attempt to explore further the 
darkness which is at present the only achieved goal of 
the much trumpeted Science of Language. 

In a moment of noteworthy frankness Prof. Skeat has 
admitted that " Scientific etymology is usually clumsy and 
frequently wrong ". Similarly, Prof. Sayce issues the 
warning : " Comparative philology has suffered as much 
from its friends as from its opponents ; and now that it 
has at last won its way to general recognition and respect, 


π.] 


THE MAGIC OF WOKDS 


.49 


there is a danger that its popularity may lead to the cessa 
tion of sound and honest work, and to an acquiescence in 
theories which, however plausible, are not yet placed upon 
a footing of scientific certainty. m It is much easier for the 
ordinary man to fill in by patient elaboration what has 
already been sketched for him in outline, than to venture 
upon a new line of discovery, in which the sole clue must 
be the combinative powers of his own imagination, and 
comprehensive learning. And yet, now as much as ever, 
comparative philology has need at once of bold and wide- 
reaching conceptions, of cautious verification, and of a 
mastery of facts. It is true the science is no longer 
struggling for mere life, and the time is gone by for proving 
the possibility of its existence. But it is still young, 
scarcely, indeed, out of its nursery ; a small portion only 
of its province has hitherto been investigated, and much 
that is at present accepted without hesitation will have to 
be subjected to a searching inquiry, and possibly be found 
baseless after all."1 

The value of any system must be measured by its results, 
and the fruits of philology as formulated only a year or so 
ago were unquestionably false. Where now are the " suc- 
3esses " of the Max Müller school which were advertised 
in such shrill and penetrating tones ? Sanscrit is deposed 
from its pride of place, it being now recognised that primi 
tive sounds are preserved more faithfully in Europe than 
elsewhere. Who to-day admits there is any basis for the 
Disease of Language theory, or that all fairy-tales and 
myths are resolvable into the Sun chasing the Dawn?2 

1 The Principles of Comparative Philology. 

2 Even after Troy had been discovered by Schliemaim, Max Müller 
maintained his belief that the Siege of Troy was a Sun and Dawn myth. 

i . 


 50 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


What anthropologist accepts the theory of Aryan overland 
immigration from somewhere in Asia ? The archœologists 
of the last generation were, in the light of modern findings, 
quite justified when, contrary to the then stereotyped idea, 
they maintained that skulls were harder things than con 
sonants. In short, large sections of the card-castle of 
German philology have more or less crumbled, and in the 
cruel words of a modern authority on Crete : " Happily, 
archœology has emerged from the slough into which the 
philologists had led her ". 

For the causes of this fiasco it is unnecessary to seek 
further than the fundamental fallacy upon which the 
" Science of Language " has been erected. According to 
Max Müller, " etymology is indeed a science in which 
identity, or even similarity, whether of sound or meaning, 
is of no importance whatever. Sound etymology has 
nothing to do with sound. t "We know words to be of the 
same origin which have not a single letter in common, 
and which differ in meaning as much as black and white." 

To maintain that " sound etymology has nothing to do 
with sound," is tantamount to the contention that language 
is not sound, which is obviously absurd. In the saner 
view of Dr. Latham : " language begins with voice, lan 
guage ends with voice". The Germans, Poles, and 
Russians had no acquaintance with letters until the ninth 
century, and speech, which" certainly existed for unnum 
bered centuries before either writing or spelling was 
evolved, must, primarily and essentially, have been a sys 
tem of pure and simple phonetics, spreading, as a mother 
teaches her child, syllable by syllable, word upon word, and 
line upon line. To rule sound out of language, is, indeed, 
far more fatal than to purge Hamlet out of Hamlet. One 


II.] THE MAGIC OF WOBDS 51 

may prove by super-ingenious logic and an elaborate code 
of cross references that black is white and white black, 
yet common sense knows all the time that it is not so. 
There are, I am aware, certain races who are unable to 
vocalise certain sounds and accordingly modify them. 
The obscure causes governing these phonetic changes must 
be taken into account, and as far as possible formulated 
into "laws," but the pages of Skeat and Murray demon 
strate beyond refutation two very simple but very certain 
fundamental, universal facts, to which hitherto wholly 
insufficient attention has been given. These elementary 
and seemingly never-varying facts are : (1) That originally 
vowel sounds were of no importance whatever, for in the 
same word they vary to the utmost limits, not only in 
different areas and in different eras, but contemporaneously 
in different grades of society; (2) that heavy and light 
consonants such as b and p, d and t, f and v, g and k, etc., 
are always interchangeable. Whether in place-names, 
words, or proper names, the changes are found always to 
occur, and they are precisely those variations which com 
mon sense would suggest must occur in every case where 
words travel viva voce and not via script or print. A man 
suffering from what Shakespeare would term " a whoreson 
rheum," says, for instance, did vor dad instead of tit for 
tat, and there is, so far as I can discover, not a single word 
or a solitary place-name in which a similar variation of 
thin and thick consonants is not traceable. 

The formidable Grimm's Law, any violation of which in 
volves summary and immediate condemnation, is merely a 
statement of certain phonetic facts which happen invari 
ably—unless they are interfered with by other facts. The 
permutations of sound codified by Grimm are as follows :— 


 52 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


IL] 


THE MAGIC OF WORDS 


53 


Greek p — Gothic /—Old High German b(v) 
b p f 


„ t 


th 
k. 

g 


ih 
t 
d 
(h) 


d 

t 

0(A) 
ch 


„ kh , g . k 
It is said that the causes which brought about the 
changes formulated in Grimm's Law are " obscure " (they 
may have been due to nothing more obscure than a pre 
valence to colds in the head), and that they were probably 
due to the settlement of Low German conquerors in Central 
and Southern Germany. The changes above formulated 
all fall, however, within the wider theory I am now suggest 
ing, with the exception of d and t becoming in High Ger 
man z. This particular syllabic change was, I suggest, due 
to £ at one time being synonymous with d or t, and not to 
any inability of certain tribes to vocalise the sound t. 

Max Müller observes that " at first sight the English 
word fir does not look very like the Latin word quercus, 
yet it is the same word ". Fir certainly does not look like 
quercus, nor, of course, is it any more the " same word " 
than six is the same word as Jialf a dozen. There are a 
thousand ways of proving six to be radically and identically 
the same as half a dozen, and the ingenious system of per 
mutations by which philologists identify ßr with quercus, 
and alpJiana with equus,1 are parallel to some of the 

Alphana vient a'eguus, sans doute, 
Mais il faut avouer aussi 
Qu'en venant.de là jusqu'ici 
II a bien chaugé sur la route. 


methods by which common sense, by cold gradation and 
well-balanced form, would quite correctly equate six with 
lialf a dozen. 

The term " word " I understand not in the loose sense 
used by Max Müller, but as the dictionary defines it—" an 
oral or written sign expressing an idea or notion ". Thus 
I treat John as the same word as Jane or Jean, and it is 
radically the same word as giant, old English jeyantt, 
French géante, Cornish geon. Jean is also the same word 
as chien, a dog, Irish ciioin; Welsh chin or cyn, and all 
these terms by reason of their radical an are cognate with 
the Greek ktion, a dog, whence cynical. The Gaelic for 
John is Jain, the Gaelic for Jean or Jane is Sine, with 
which I equate shine, sJione, and sheen, all of which have 
respect to the sun, as also had the Arabic jinn, genii, and 
" Gian Ben Gian," a title of the fabulous world-ruler of 
the Golden Age. Among the Basques Jaun means Lord 
or Master, and the Basque term for God, Jainko, Jeinko, 
or Jinko, is believed to have meant " Lord or Master on 
High ". The Irish Church attributes its origin to disciples 
of St. John—Irish Shaun, and one may detect the pre- 
Christian Sinjohn in the British divinity Shony, and evolv 
ing from the primeval Shen at Shenstone near Litchfield. 
Here, a little distance from the church, was a well, now 
called St. John's Well, after the saint in whose honour the 
parish church is dedicated. In all probability the present- 
day church of St. John was built on the actual site of the 
original Shen stone or rock ; and that John stones were 
once plentiful in Scotland is probably implied by the com 
mon surname Johnstone. Near the Shannon in Ireland, 
and in close proximity to the church and village of Shana- 
golden, is "castle " Shenet or Shanid, attached to which is 


 54 


ABCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


a rath or earthwork of which the ground-plan, from Mr. 
Westropp's survey, is here reproduced. As it is a matter 
of common knowledge that the worldwide wheel cross was 
an emblem of the sun, I should therefore have no scruples 
in connoting Castle Shenet with the primeval jeyantt or 
the Golden Shine ; and suggesting that it was a sanctuary 
originally constructed by the Ganganoi, a people mentioned 
by Ptolemy as dwelling in the neighbourhood of the 
Shannon. The eponymous hero of the Ganganoi was a 
certain Sengann,1 who is probably the original St. Jean or 
Sinjohn to whom the fires of St. Jean and St. John have 
been diverted. 

We shall see that Giant Christopher was symbolically re 
presented as chien headed, that he was a personification of 
the Shine or SJieen of the Sun, and that he was worshipped 
as the solar dog at the holy city of Cynopolis or dog-town. 
We have already noted English " chien " or cyn coins in 
scribed cun, which is seemingly one of the innumerable 
puns which confront philology. 

Years ago Bryant maintained that " the fable of the 
horse certainly arose from a misprision of terms, though 
the mistake be as old as Homer". There was nothing 
therefore new in the theories of the Max Müller school 
that all mythologies originated from a "disease of lan 
guage ". Dr. Wilder, alluding to symbolism, speaks of 
the punning so common in those days, often making us 
uncertain whether the accident of similar name or sound 
led to adoption as a symbol or was merely a blunder. 
It was, I think, neither, and many instances will be ad 
duced in favour of the supposition, that words originated 
from symbolic ideas, and not vice versa. That symbolism 
1 Westropp, T. 3., Proc. B. Irish Acad., xxxiv., 0., 8, p. 159. 


IL] 


THE MAGIC OF WORDS 


existed before writing is evident from the innumerable 
symbols unearthed at Mykense, Troy, and elsewhere, 
where few traces of script or inscriptions have been found. 


sw 


SHANID 
SECTION OF THE MOTE 

SCALE FOR THE SECTIONS 

50FÉ ET 

SCALE FOR PLAN 


SECTION OF RATH 
PLAN 


1901 


PIG. 6.—Prom Proc. of the Ryyal Irish Acad., xxxiii., 0., No. 2. 


 56 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


By symbolism, primitive man unquestionably communi 
cated ideas, and, as has already been pointed out, the roots 
of language bear traces of the rudimentary symbolism by 
which our savage forefathers named the objects around 
them as well as the conceptions of their primitive religion.1 
Faced by the " curiosity " that the Greek and Latin words 
for archaic, arch, ark, arc, are all apparently connected 
in an intricate symbolism in which there is more than a 
suspicion that there is an etymological as well as a mystical 
interconnection, a writer in The Open Court concludes : 
" it would seem as though the roots of such words derived 
their meaning from the Mysteries rather than that their 
mystical meaning was the result of coincidence ".2 

That the Mysteries—or in other words dramatised myth 
ology—Symbolism, and Etymology, are all closely con 
nected with each other is a certitude beyond question. 
The theory, so pertinaciously put forward by JMax Müller, 
was that myths originated from a subsequent misunder 
standing of words. Using the same data as Max Müller, 
I suggest that words originated from the mysteries and 
not myths from the words. 

In The Holy Wells of Cornwall, Mr. T. Quiller Couch 
observes that Dr. Borlase, learned, diligent, and excellent 
antiquary as he was, to whom we are all indebted in an 
iconoclastic age for having copied for us fair things which 
time had blurred, seems to have had little sympathy with 
the faiths of the simple, silly, country folk (I use these 
adjectives in their older meaning), and to have passed them 
with something like contempt. At present the oral tradi 
tions of a people, their seeming follies even, have become 
of value as indicating kinship between nations shunted off 

1 Dallas, H. A. a Norwood, J. W. 


II.] 


THE MAGIC OP WOEDS 


57 


by circumstances, to use the most modern term, in diver 
gent ways. 

Dr. Johnson would not admit fun into his Dictionary 
as he deemed it a "low word": I turn up my nose at 
nothing, being convinced that it is to low origins that the 
great lexicographers will eventually have to stoop. In 
truth, the innate strength of the English language, which 
is becoming more and more the Master Tongue of the 
world, lies in its homely, trivial, and democratic origin.1 
This origin, as I have elsewhere endeavoured to show, is 
due largely to symbolism, which is merely another term 
for metaphor. We used to be taught that every language 
was a dictionary of faded metaphor, and such an origin is 
undoubtedly more true than the current theory of barbaric 
yawps. The essence of symbolism is'its, simplicity. Who, 
for instance, does not understand that the Lion is the 
symbol of High Courage, and the Bull-dog of Tenacity, or 
holding on ? At the present day the badge of one of His 
Majesty's warships is the picture of a butting goat, accom 
panied by the words " Butt in ". This, as the authorities 
rightly describe it, is "pure symbolism," but to a symbolist 
the legend " Butt in " is superfluous, as the mere butting 
goat adequately carries the idea. As Prof. Pétrie has 
well said : " To understand the position and movement of 
thought in a primitive age, it must be approached on a far 
simpler plane than that of our present familiarity with 
writing. To reach the working of the childhood of our 
races we should look to the minds of children. If the child 
passes through ancestral changes in its bodily formation, 
so certainly it passes through such stages in the growth 


1 Such obvious concoctions of the study as 
caniadine, etc., never strike root or survive. 


exsufflicate, deracinate, in- 


 58 


ABCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


and capacity of ita brain."l I shall push the childish and 
extremely simple theory of symbolism to its logical con 
clusions, and shall show, for instance, that the Boar, because 
it burrowed with its plough-like snout, was the emblem of 
the ploughman, and that thus, boar and boer are the 
same word. Or, to take another instance, I shall show 
that probably because the cat sits washing herself, and is 
a model of cleanliness in sanitary respects, the cat who 
figures on the head of the Magna Mater of Crete was ele 
vated into a symbol of the Immaculate or Pure One, and 
that the word cat, German kater, is identical with the 
name Kate or Caterina which means purity. The Sanscrit 
word for cat means literally the cleanser, whence it is ob 
vious that the cleanly habits of the cat strongly impressed 
the Aryan imagination. 

Whether or not my theories are right, it is undeniable 
that the etymologies of Skeat and Murray are very often 
painfully wrong. The standard explanation, for instance, 
of the word haha, meaning a sunk fence, is that it is from 
the French ha-ha, " an interjection of laughter, hence a 
surprise in the form of an unexpected obstacle that laughs 
at one ". This may be so, but it is a far wilder guess than 
anything to be found in my pages, or that I should ever 
dare to venture. In 19131 suggested in Notes and Queries 
that the word ha-ha or haw-haw was simply a re-duplica 
tion or superlative of the French haie, a fence or hedge, 
old English haw. In the new edition of Skeat I am glad 
to find this suggestion accepted, and that ha-ha ! has been 
expunged. It still figures in Dr. Murray. 

In his Canons of Etymology, Prof. Skeat observes :— 
" The history of a nation accounts for the constituent parts 
1 Pétrie, W. M. F., The Formation of the Alphabet, p. 3. 


II.] 


THE MAGIC OP WOEDS 


59 


of its language. When an early English word is compared 
with Hebrew or Coptic, as used to be done in the old 
editions of Webster's Dictionary, history is set at defiance ; 
and it was a good deed to clear the later editions of all 
such rubbish ". 

This is curiously parochial, yet it seems to have been 
seriously accepted by etymologers. But what would 
Science say nowadays to that geologist or anthropologist 
who committed the foul deed of discarding or suppressing 
a vast body of facts simply because they clashed with, or 
" set at defiance," the " historic " assertions of the Penta 
teuch ? It is true that the history of a nation, if it were 
fully known, must account for the constituent parts of its 
language, but how much British history do we pretend to 
know ? To suggest that philology must limit its conclu 
sions by the Eoman invasion, or bound its findings by the 
pages of Mrs. Markham, is ludicrous, yet, nevertheless, 
these fictitious boundaries are the mediseval and pre- 
Darwinian limits within which the Science of Language 
is now coffined. Prof. Skeat was reluctantly compelled 
to recognise a .Semitic trace in words such as bad and 
target, but was unable to accept the connection owing to 
the absence of any historic point of contact between Syria 
and this country prior to the Crusades ! So, too, M. 
Sebhlani observed numerous close similarities between 
Arabic and English, but was " unable to press them for 
lack of a theory as to how they got into English ! " 

As history must be constructed from facts, and facts 
must not be peremptorily suppressed simply because at 
present they clash with the meagre record of historians, 
I shall have no scruples in noting a word from Timbuctoo 
if it means precisely what it does in English, and proves 


 60 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


reasonably to be a missing piece. As Gerald Massey 
thirty or forty years ago very properly observed : " We 
have to dig and descend mine under mine beneath the 
surface scratched with such complacent twitterings over 
their findings by those who have taken absolute possession 
of this field, and proceeded to fence it in for themselves, 
and put up a warning against everybody else as trespassers. 
We get volume after volume on the ' science of language ' 
which only make us wonder when the ' science ' is going 
to begin. At present it is an opera that is all overture. 
The comparative philologists have not gone deep enough, 
as yet, to see that there is a stage where likeness may 
afford guidance, because there was a common origin for 
the primordial stock of words. They assume that Grimm's 
Law goes all the way back. They cling to their limits, as 
the old Greek sailors hugged the shore, and continually 
insist upon imposing these on all other voyagers, by telling 
terrible tales of the unknown dangers beyond." * 

As soon, as etymologists appreciate the value of the 
comparative method it is undeniable that a marked ad 
vance will be made in the " Science of Language," but 
during the last few decades it must be confessed that that 
science—pace the bombastic language of some of its ad 
herents—has retrogressed rather than moved forward. 

Prof. Skeat was admittedly a high authority on early 
English, and his Dictionary of the English Language is 
thus almost inevitably conspicuous for its Anglo-Saxon 
colouring. Had, however, the influence of the Saxons 
been as marked and immediate as he assumes, the language 
of Anglo-Saxondom would have coincided exactly or very 
closely with the contemporary German. But, according 
1A Book of the Beginnings, 1, p. 136. 


II.] 


THE MAGIC OF WOEDS 


61 


to Dr. Wm. Smith, " There is no proof that Anglo-Saxon 
was ever spoken anywhere but on the soil of Great Britain ; 
for the ' Heliend,' and other remains of old Saxon, are not 
Anglo-Saxon, and I think it must be regarded, not as. a 
language which the colonists, or any of them, brought with 
them from the Continent, but as a new speech resulting 
from the fusion of many separate elements. It is, there 
fore indigenous, if not aboriginal, and as exclusively local 
and national in its character as English itself.1 

That modern English contains innumerable traces of 
pure Celtic words used to be a matter of common accept 
ance, and in the words of Davies, the stoutest assertor 
of a pure Anglo-Saxon or Norman descent is cpnvicted by 
the language of his daily life, of belonging to a race that 
partakes largely of Celtic blood. If he calls for his cuat 
(W. cota, Germ, rock), or tells of the basket of fish he has 
caught (W. basged, Germ, korb), or the cart he employs 
on his land (W. cart, from car, a dray, or sledge, Germ. 
wagen), or of the pranks of his youth, or the prancing of 
his horse (W. prank, a trick, prancio, to frolic), or declares 
that he was happy when a gownsman at Oxford (W. hap, 
fortune, chance, Germ, glück, W. gwn), or that his servant is 
pert (W. pert, spruce, dapper, insolent) ; or if, descending 
to the language of the vulgar, he affirms that such asser 
tions are balderdash, and the claim a sham (W. baldorddus, 
idle prating; siom, shorn, a deceit, a sham), he is uncon 
sciously maintaining the truth he would deny. Like the 
M. Jourdain of Molière, who had been talking prose all his 
life without knowing it, he has been speaking very good 
Celtic without any suspicion of the fact.2 

1 Lectures on the English Laì^g^ιage, 1862, p. 1C. 

2 Quoted from ibid., p. 80. 


 62 


•AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


It is noteworthy that in his determination to ignore the 
Celtic influence, Prof. Skeat concedes only one among the 
above- mentioned words to the British—(gwn). The Welsh 
hap "must," he says, be borrowed from the Anglo-Saxon 
gehoep, and the remainder he ascribes to Middle English 
or to an " origin unknown ". 

Tyndall has observed that imagination, bounded and 
conditioned by co-operant reason, is the mightiest instru 
ment of the physical discoverer. It is to imagination that 
words born in the fantastic and romantic childhood of 
the world were due, and it is only by a certain measure 
of imagination that philology can hope to unravel them. 
The extent to which mythology has impressed place-names 
may be estimated from the fact that to King Arthur alone 
at least 600 localities owe their titles. That Arthur him 
self has not been transmogrified into a Saxon settlerl is 
due no doubt to the still existing "Bed," "Seat," 
" Stables," etc., with which popular imagination connected 
the mystic king. 

" Geographical names," says Eice Holmes, " testify to 
the cult of various gods," and he adds : "it is probable 
that every British town had its eponymous hero. The 
deities, however, from whom towns derived their names, 
were doubtless often worshipped near the site long before 
the first foundations were laid : the goddess Bibracte was 
originally the spirit of a spring reverenced by the peasants 
of the mountain upon which the famous Aeduan town 
was built ".2 

I shall not lead the reader into the intricacies of British 

1 The Edin of the prehistoric British Dun edin, now Edinburgh, has 
been calmly misappropriated to a supposed Edwin. 

2 Ancient Britain, pp. 273, 283. 


II.] 


THE MAGIC OF WOEDS 


63 


mythology deeper than is requisite for an understanding 
of the words and place-names under consideration, nor 
shall I enlarge more than is necessary upon the mystic 
elements in that vast and little known mythology. 

It has been said that the mediaeval story-teller is not 
unlike a peasant building his hut on the site of Ephesus 
or Halicarnassus with the stones of an older and more 
majestical architecture. That Celtic mythology exhibits 
all the indications of a vast ruin is the opinion not only of 
Matthew Arnold, but of every competent student of the 
subject, and it is a matter of discredit that educated Eng 
lishmen know so little about it. 

Among the phenomena of Celtic mythology are numerous 
identities with tales related by Homer. Sir Walter Scott, 
alluding to one of these many instances, expresses his as 
tonishment at a fact which, as he says, seems to argue 
some connection or communication between these remote 
highlands of Scotland, and the readers of Homer of former 
days which one cannot account for.1 His explanation 
that " After all, perhaps, some Churchman, more learned 
than his brethren, may have transferred the legend from 
Sicily to Duncrune, from the shores of the Mediterranean 
to those of Loch Lomond," is not in accord with any of 
the probabilities, and it is more likely that both Greek and 
Highlander drew independently from some common source. 
The astonishing antiquity of these tales may be glimpsed 
by the fact that the Homeric poems themselves speak of 
a store of older legends from an even more brilliant past. 

Somebody once defined symbolism as " silent myth ". To 
what extent it elucidates primeval custom has yet to be 
seen, but there is unquestionably an intimate connection 
1 Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft. 


 64 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


between symbolism and burial customs. Among some 
prehistoric graves disclosed at Dunstable was one contain 
ing the relics of a woman and of a child. The authorities 


; i 


. 
'V „ 

«fc 


··· -*j ·· 
?../·.· · *:;,. 


: 't : 

— >· «'."·, u \ 

*')P 4 

-!-w" 

'^ΐ: 'V 
- -- -" J..·· 


^ 


„s 

".* 


'-,„ -^, ì'jfay 


"2 9. 


3 Ρ 


ρ,0- 7._Prom Λία» Äe Primeval Savage (Smith, G. Woïthington). 


THE MAGIC OF WORDS 


65 


suggest that the latter may have been buried alive with its 
mother, which is a proposition that one cannot absolutely 
deny. But there is just as great a possibility that neither 
the mother nor the child came to so sinister and miserable 
an end. Apart from the pathetic attitude of the two 
bodies, the skulls are as moral and intellectual as any 
modern ones, and in face of the simple facts it would be 
quite justifiable to assume that the mother and the child 
were not buried alive, nor committed suicide, but died in 
the odour of sanctity and were reverently interred. The 
objects surrounding the remains are fossil echinoderms, 
which are even now known popularly among the un 
lettered as fairy loaves, and as there is still a current 
legend that whoso keeps at home a specimen of the fairy 
loaf will never lack bread,1 one is fairly entitled to assume 
that these " fairy loaves " were placed in the grave in 
question as symbols of the spiritual food upon which our 
animistic-minded ancestors supposed the dead would feed. 
It is well known that material food was frequently de 
posited in tombs for a similar purpose, but in the case of 
this Dunstable grave there must have been a spiritual or 
symbolic idea behind the offering, for not even the most 
hopeless savage could have imagined that the soul or fairy 
body would have relished fossils—still less so if the 
material bodies had been buried alive. 

I venture to put forward the suggestion that primeval 
stone-worship, tree-worship, and the veneration paid to 
innumerable birds and beasts was largely based upon sym 
bolism. In symbolism alone can one find any rational 
explanation for the intricacies of those ancient mysteries, 
the debris of which has come down to us degraded into 
1 Johnson, W., Byways in British Archceology, p. 304. 


 66 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


superstitious " custom " and it is probable that in sym 
bolism may also be found the origin of totemism. 

Is symbol the husk, the dry bone, 

Of the dead soul of ages agone ? 

Finger-post of a pilgrimage way 

Untrodden for many a day ? 

A derelict shrine in the fane 

Of an ancient faith, long since profane ? 

A gew-gaw, once amulet ? 

A forgotten creed's alphabet ? 

Or is it ... .l 

Whatever symbolism may or may not be it has certainly 
not that close and exclusive connection with phallicism 
which some writers have been pleased to assign it. On 
the contrary, it more often flushes from unlikely quarters 
totally unexpected coveys of blue birds. Symbolism was 
undeniably a primitive mode of thinging thought or ex 
pressing abstract ideas by things. As Massey says of 
mythology : " There is nothing insane, nothing irrational 
in it, ... the insanity lies in mistaking it for human his 
tory or Divine Revelation. Mythology is the depository 
of man's most ancient science, and what concerns us 
chiefly is this—when truly interpreted once more it is 
destined to be the death of those false theologies to which 
it has unwittingly given birth."2 That the ancients were 
adepts at constructing cunningly-devised fables is unques 
tionable : to account for the identities of these pagan fables 
with certain teachings of the New Testament it was the 
opinion of one of the Early Fathers—Tertullian, I believe 
—that " God was rehearsing Christianity ". 

In the opinion of those best able to judge, Druidism ori 
ginated in neolithic times. Just as the Druid sacrificed 
1 Cloudesley Brereton, in The Quest. " Luniolatry, p. 2. 


II.] 


THE MAGIC OF WORDS 


67 


white bulls before he ascended the sacred oak, so did the 
Latin priest in the grove, which was the holy place of 
Jupiter. " But," says Eice Holmes, " while every ancient 
people had its priests, the Druids alone were a veritable 
clergy "-1 The clergy of to-day would find it profitable to 
study the symbolism which flourished so luxuriously among 
their predecessors, but, unfortunately, with the exception 
of a few time-honoured symbols such as the Dove, the 
Anchor, and the Lamb, symbolism in the ecclesiastical 
and philosophic world is now quite dead. It still, however, 
lingers to a limited extent in Art, and it will always be the 
many-coloured radiancy which colours Poetry. The ancient 
and the at-one-time generally accepted idea that mythology 
veiled Theology, has now been discarded owing to the dis 
concerting discovery that myths were seemingly not taught 
to the common people by the learned, but on the contrary · 
spread upwards from the vulgar to the learned. This 
latter process has usually been the doom of Religion, and 
it is quite unthinkable that fairy-tales could survive its 
blighting effect. As a random instance of the modern 
attitude towards Imagination, one may cite the Eev. Prof. 
Skeat, who, commenting upon the Music of the Spheres, 
gravely informs the world that : " Modern astronomy has 
exploded the singular notion of revolving hollow concentric 
spheres". " These spheres," he adds, " have disappeared 
and their music with them except in poetry."2 

1 Ancient Britain, p. 298. 

2 This dictum would have cheered the heart of Tertullian, who main 
tained that God could never forgive an actor because Christ said : No man 
by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature ; a statement which the 
actor impiously falsified by wearing high heeled boots. Commenting upon 
The Lost Language of Symbolism, The Expository Times very courteously 
observed : " To the reader of the Bible its worth is more than to all others. 


 68 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


Whether or not our predecessors really heard the choir 
ing of the young-eyed cherubim, or whether the music 
was merely in their souls is a point immaterial to the 
present inquiry, which simply concerns itself with the 
physical remains of that poetic once-upon-a-time tempera 
ment which at some period or other was prevalent,1 and 
has left its world-wide imprints on river names, such as 
the Irish " Morning Star ".2 One would have supposed it 
quite superfluous at this time of day to have to claim im 
agination for the anonymous ancients who mapped the 
whole expanse of heaven into constellations, and wove 
fairy-tales around the Pleiades and every other group of 
stars, and it is simply astonishing to find a Doctor of 
Divinity writing to-day in kultured complacency : "It is 

for the Bible is full of symbols and we have lost their language. We are 
very prosaic. The writers of the Old Testament and of the New were very 
imaginative. Between ns there is a gulf fixed of which we are aware only 
in unquiet moments." 

1 " There must have been a time when a simple instinct for poetry was 
possessed by all nations as it still is by uncivilised races and children. 
Among European nations this instinct appears to be dead for ever. We 
can name neither a mountain nor a flower "—Prof. Weekley, Romance of 
Words. "Who did first name the flowers? Who first gave them, not 
their Latin titles, but the old, familar, fanciful, poetic, rustic ones, that 
run so curiously alike in all the vulgar tongues ? Who first called the lilies 
of the valley the Madonna's tears ? the wild blue hyacinth, St. Dorothy's 
flower ? the starry passiflora, the Passion of Christ ; who named them all 
first, in the old days that are forgotten ? All the poets that ever the world 
has known might have been summoned together for the baptism of the 
flowers, and have failed to name them half so well as popular tradition has 
done long ago in the dim lost ages, with names that still make all the 
world akin."—Anon. 

2 " This pretty name (which Fitzgerald, History of Limerick, vol. i., 
p. 320, calls the Kiver Dawn) arose from a change of Samhair or Samer to 
Caimher, ' the daybreak,' or ' Morning Star ' ".—Westropp, T. J., Proc. of 
Royal Irish Acad., xxxiii., C. 2, p. 13. 


IL] 


THE MAGIC OF WOEDS 


69 


to the imagination of us moderns alone that the grandeur 
of the universe appeals,1 and it was relatively late in the 
history of religion—so far as can be reconstructed from the 
scanty data in our possession that the higher nature cults 
were developed." 2 

Is it wonderful that again and again the romantic soul 
of the Celtic peasantry has risen against the grey dogmas 
of official Theology, and has expressed itself in terms such 
as those taken down from the mouth of a Gaelic old 
woman in 1877 : " We would dance there till we were 
seven times tired. The people of those times were full of 

1 The peculiar temperament of " us moderns alone " is, I am afraid, more 
acutely diagnosed by Prof. Weekley, in Surnames, where he observes : 
" The ' practical man,' when his attention is accidentally directed to the 
starry sky, appraises that terrific spectacle with a non-committal grunt ; 
but he would receive with a positive snort any suggestion that the history 
of European civilisation is contained in the names of his friends and ac 
quaintances. Still, even the practical man, if he were miraculously gifted 
with the power of interpreting surnames, could hardly negotiate the length 
of Oxford Street on a motor-bus without occasionally marvelling and fre 
quently chuckling." 

2 Coneybeare, Dr. P. C., The Historical Christ, p. 19. [Italics mine.] 
The views of Dr. Coneybeare may be connoted with those of his fellow- 
cleric, the Rev. H. C. Christmas : " The astrotheology into which Egyptian 
fables are ultimately resolved having taken animals as symbols, soon ele 
vated those symbols in the minds of the people at large into real divinities. 
The signs of the zodiac were worshipped, and the constellations not in that 
important circle did not go without adoration. Various stars became noted 
as rising or setting at particular seasons, aud serving as marks of time ; 
while the physical circumstances of the animal creation gave an easy 
means of naming the stars and constellations, and thus connected natural 
history with the symbolical theology of the times. ... In their [the 
Egyptians'] view the earth was but a mirror of the heavens, and celestial 
intelligences were represented by beasts, birds, fishes, gems, and even by 
rocks, metals, and plants. The harmony of the spheres was answered by 
the music of the temples, and the world beheld nothing that was not a 
type of something divine."—Universal Mythology, 1838, p. 19. 


 70 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


music and dancing stories, and traditions. The clerics 
have extinguished these. May ill befall them ! And what 
have the clerics put in their place ? Beliefs about creeds 
and disputations about denominations and churches ! May 
lateness be their lot ! It is they who have put the cross 
round the heads and the entanglements round the feet of 
the people. The people of the Gaeldom of to-day are anear 
perishing for lack of the famous feats of their fathers. 
The black clerics have suppressed every noble custom 
among the people of the Gaeldom—precious customs that 
will never return, no, never again return."1 

There are -features about the wisdom of the ancients 
which the theologian neither understands nor tries to 
understand,2 and it is like a breath of fresh air to find the 
Bishop of Oxford maintaining, " We have got to get rid of 
everything that makes the sound of religion irrational, and 
which associates it with bygone habits of thought in regard 
to science and history". Sir Gilbert Murray has recently 
expressed the opinion that " it is the scholar's special duty 
to trim the written signs in our old poetry now enshrined 
back into living thought and feeling " ; but at present far 
from forwarding this desideratum scholarship not only dis 
countenances imagination, but even eliminates from con 
sideration any spiritual idea of God. To quote from a 
modern authority : " Track any God right home and you 
will find him lurking in a ritual sheath from which he 

1 Quoted from Wentz, W. D. Y., The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries. 

2 " The current ignorance of those pre-Christian evidences that have been 
preserved by the petrifying past must be wellnigh invincible when a man 
like Prof. Jowett could say, as if with the voice of superstition in its 
dotage : ' To us the preaching of the Gospel is a New Beginning, from which 
we date all things ; beyond which we neither desire, nor are able, to in 
quire.' "—Massey, Or., Tlie Logic of the Lord, 1897. 


IL] 


THE MAGIC OF WORDS 


71 


slowly emerges, first as a dcemon or spirit of the year, then 
as a full-blown divinity. . . . The May King, the leader 
of the choral dance, gave birth not only to the first actor 
of the drama, but also, as we have just seen, to the God, 
be he Dionysus or be he Apollo." 1 

The theory here assumed grossty defies the elementary 
laws of logic, for every act of ritual must essentially have 
been preceded by a thought : Act is the outcome and off 
spring of Thought : Idea was never the idiot-child of Act. 
The assumption that the first idea of God evolved from the 
personation of the Sun God in a mystery play or harvest 
dance is not really or fundamentally a mental tracking of 
that God right home, but rather an inane confession that 
the idea of God cannot be traced further backward than the 
ritual of ancient festivals. 

Speaking of that extremely remote epoch when the 
twilight and mists of morning shed dim-looming shapes 
and flickering half lights about the path of our scarcely 
awakened race, The Athenceum a year or two ago re 
marked : Λ No wonder that to such purblind eyes men 
appear as trees, and trees as men—Balder the Beautiful as 
the mystic oak, and the oak as Balder ". This passage 
forms part of a congratulation that the work of Sir James 
Frazer is now complete, and that The Golden Bough ".has 
at length carried us forward into broad daylight ". 

I have studied the works of Sir James Frazer in the 
hope of finding therein some insight as to the origin and 
why of custom, but I have failed to perceive the broad day 
light of The Athenceum's satisfaction. 

One might lay down The Golden Bough without a 
suspicion that our purblind ancestors ever had a poetic 

3 Harrison, Miss Jane, Ancient Art and Ritual, pp. 192-3. 


 72 


AEOHAIO ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


π,Ι 


THE MAGIO OF WOBDS 


73 


thought or a high and beautiful ideal, and it is probable 
that scholarship will eventually arraign Sir James Frazer 
for this suggestio falsi. In the meanwhile it should hardly 
be necessary to enter a caveat against the popular idea that 
we are now " in broad daylight ". The value of The Golden 
Bough lies largely in the evidence therein adduced of what 
may be termed universal ritual. But all ritual must have 
originated from ideas, and these original ideas do not seem 
to have entered the horizon of Sir James Frazer's specula 
tions. What reason does he suppose lurked necessarily 
behind, say, the sacred fire being kindled from three nests 
in three trees, or by nine men from nine different kinds of 
wood ? And why do the unpleasant Ainos scrupulously 
kill their sacred bear by nine men pressing its head against 
a pole ? 

It is now the vogue to resolve every ancient ceremony 
into a magic charm for producing fire, or food, or rain, or 
what not, and there is very little doubt that magic, or 
sacred ceremonies, verily sank, in many instances, to this 
melancholy level. But, knowing what history has to tell 
us of priestcraft, and judging the past from the present, is 
it not highly likely that the primitive divine who found 
his tithes and emoluments diminishing from a laxity of 
faith would spur the public conscience by the threat that 
unless sacred ceremonies were faithfully and punctually 
performed the corn would not flourish and the rain would 
either overflow or would not fall ?1 

1A bogey of the present Bishop of London is not " no crops " but " no 
foreign monarchs ". The Daily Chronicle of 13th May, 1914, reports his 
Lordship as saying: "It the British Empire was not to be disgraced by 
the heart of London becoming pagan, his fund must be Jcept going." 
[Italics mine.] " Once religion went, everything else went ; it would be 
good-bye to the visits of foreign monarohs to London, because Londoners 


It is now the mode to trace all ceremonial to self-interest, 
principally to the self-interest of fear or food. But on this 
arbitrary, stale, and ancient theory* how is it possible 
to account for the almost universal reverence for stone or 
rock ? Eocks yield neither food, nor firing, nor clothing, 
nor do they ever inflict injuries : why, then, should the art 
less savage trouble to gratify or conciliate such innocuous 
and unprofitable objects ? The same question may be 
raised in other directions, notably that of the oak tree. 
Here the accepted supposition is that the oak was revered 
because it was struck more frequently by lightning than 
any other tree, but if this untoward occurrence really 
proves the oak tree was the favourite of the Fire God surely 
it was an instance of affection very brilliantly dissembled. 

would have disgraced the Empire and themselves before the whole 
world." 

1The "celebrated but infamous " Petronius, surnamed Arbiter, philoso 
phised in the first century to the following up-to-date effect :— 

Fear made the first divinities on earth 

The sweeping flames of heaven ; the ruined tower, 

Scathed by its stroke. The softly setting sun, 

The slow declining of the silver moon, 

And its recovered beauty. Hence the signs 

Known through the world, and the swift changing year, 

Circling divided in its varied months. 

Hence rose the error. Empty folly bade 

The wearied husbandman to Ceres bring 

The first fair honours of his harvest fields 

To gird the brow of Bacchus with the palm, 

And taught how Pales, 'mid the shepherd bands, 

Stood and rejoiced, how Neptune in the flood 

Plunged deep, and ruled the ever-roaring tide ; 

How Vallas reigned o'er earth's stupendous caves 

Mightily. He who vowed and he who reaped 

With eager contest, made their gods themselves. 


Il BL· 


 " 


74 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


IL] 


THE MAGIC OP WORDS 


75 


Sir James Frazer has used his Golden Bough as he 
found it employed by Virgil—as a talisman which led to 
the gloomy and depressing underworld. In Celtic myth 
the Silver Bough played a less sinister part, and figures as 
a fairy talisman to music and delight. 

Whether the appeal of Sir Gilbert Murray meets with 
any sympathy and response, and whether the written 
signs in our old poetry will ever be enshrined back into 
living thought and feeling remains to be seen. I think 
they will, and that the better sense of English intellectual- 
ism will sooner or later recoil from the present mud-and- 
dust theories of protoplasm for, as has been well said, 
" Materialism considered as a system of philosophy, never 
attempts to explain the Why ? of things ". Certainly 
protoplasm has unravelled nothing, nor possibly can. One 
of our standard archœologists lamented a few decades ago : 
" As the Germans have decreed this it is in vain to dispute 
it, and not worth while to attempt it ". But the German, 
an indefatigable plodder, is but a second-rate thinker, 
and the time must inevitably come when English scholars 
will deem it well worth while to unhitch their waggons 
from Germania. With characteristic assurance the Teu 
tonic Etterati are still prattling of The Fatherland as a 
" centre " of civilisation, and are pluming themselves upon 
the "spiritual values" given to mankind by Germany. 
Some of us are not conscious of these " spiritual values," 
but that German scholarship has poison-gassed vast tracts 
of modern thought is evident enough. The theories of 
Mannhardt, elaborated by Sir James Frazer and trans 
muted by him into the pellucid English of The Golden 
Bough, have admittedly blighted the fair humanities of old 


religion into a dull catalogue of common things,1 and no 
one more eloquently deplores the situation than Sir James 
Frazer himself. As he says : "It is indeed a melancholy 
and in some respects thankless task to strike at the 
foundations of beliefs in which as in a strong tower the 
hopes and aspirations of humanity through long ages have 
sought refuge from the storm and stress of life. Yet sooner 
or later it is inevitable that the battery of the Comparative 
Method should breach these venerable walls mantled over 
with ivy and mosses, and wild flowers of a thousand tender 
and sacred associations." 

When the Comparative Method is applied in a wider and 
more catholic spirit than hitherto it will then—but not till 
then—be seen whether the fair humanities are exploded 
superstitions or are sufficiently alive to blossom in the 
dust. 

It is quite proper to designate The Golden Bough a 
puppet-play of corn-gods,2 for the author himself, referring 

1 The intelligible forms of ancient poets 
The fair humanities of old religion 
The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty 
That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain 
Or forest or slow stream, or pebbly spring 
Our chasms and watery depths ; all these have vanished 
They live no longer in the faith of reason. 

—COLERIDGE. 

2 There is, of course, no novelty in these ideas, which are merely a recru 
descence and restatement of the notions to which Plutarch thus alludes :— 
" We shall also get our hands on the dull crowd, who take pleasure in 
associating the ideas about these gods either with changes of the atmos 
phere according to the seasons, or with the generation of corn and sowings 
and ploughings, and iu saying that Osiris is buried when the sown corn is 
hidden by the earth, and comes to life and shows himself again when it 
begins to sprout. . . . They should take very good heed, and be apprehensive 
lest unwittingly they write off the sacred mysteries and dissolve them into 


 76 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


to Balder the Beautiful, writes : " He, too, for all the quaint 
garb he wears, and the gravity with which he stalks across 
the stage, is merely a puppet, and it is time to unmask him 
before laying him up in the box ". 

But to me the divinities of antiquity are not mere dolls 
to be patted superciliously on the head and then remitted 
to the dustbin. Our own ideals of to-day are but the idols 
or dolls of to-morrow, and even a golliwog if it has com 
forted a child is entitled to sympathetic treatment. To 
the understanding of symbolism sympathy is a useful key. 

The words doll, idol, ideal, and idyll, which are all one 
and the same, are probably due to the island of Idea which 
was one of the ancient names of Crete. Not only was 
Crete known as Idsea, but it was also entitled Douche, 
which may be spelled to-day Idyllic. Crete, the Idyllic 
island, the island of Ideas, was also known as Aeria, and I 
think it probably was the centre whence was spun the 
gossamer of aerial and ethereal tales, which have made the 
Isles of Greece a land of immortal romance. We shall 
also see as we proceed that the mystic philosophy known 
to history as the Gnosis 1 was in all probability the philo 
sophy taught in prehistoric times at Gnossus, the far-famed 
capital of Crete. From Gnossus, whence the Greeks drew 
all their laws and science, came probably the Greek word 
gnosis, meaning knowledge. But the mystic Gnosis con 
noted more than is covered by the word knowledge : it 
claimed to be the wisdom of the ancients, and to disclose 

winds and streams and sowings and ploughiiigs and passions of earth and 
changes of seasons." 

1 " The Gnostic movement began long before the Christian era (what its 
original historicali mpulse was we do not know), and only one aspect of it, 
and that from a strictly limited point of view, has been treated by ecclesias 
tical historians."—Lamplugh, Rev. F., The Gnosis of the Light, 1918, p. 10. 


IL] 


THE MAGIC OP WOBDS 


77 


the ideal value lying behind the letter of all mysteries, 
myths, and religious ordinances. 

I am convinced that the Christian Gnostics, with whom 
the Tertullian type were in constant conflict, really did 
know much that they claimed, and that had they not been 
trampled out of the light of day Europe would never 
have sunk into the melancholy, well-designated Dark Ages. 
Gnostic emblems have been found abundantly in Ireland : 
the Pythagorean or Gnostic symbol known as the pentagon 
or Solomon's seal occurs on British coins,1 and the Bardic 
literature of Wales is deeply steeped with a Gnostic mys 
ticism for which historians find it difficult to account. 
The facts which I shall adduce in the following pages are 
sufficiently curious to permit the hope that they may lead 
a few of us to become less self-complacent, and in the words 
of the author of Ancient Britain relative to aboriginal 
Britons, "to.think more of those primitive ancestors. In 
some things we have sunk below their level."2 


1 Holmes, Bice, Ancient Britain, p. 295. 


2Ibid., p. 373. 


 CHAPTEE III 

A TALE OF TROY 

Upon the Syrian sea the people live, 

Who style themselves Phoenicians, 

These were the first great founders of the world— 

Founders of cities and of mighty states— 

Who showed a path through seaa before unknown. 

In the first ages, when the sons of men 

Knew not which way to turn them, they assigned 

To each his first department ; they bestowed 

Of land a portion and of sea a lot, 

And sent each wandering tribe far off to share 

A different soil and climate. Hence arose 

The great diversity, so plainly seen, 

'Mid nations widely severed. 

—DYONYSIUS of Susiana, A.D. 300. 

IT is a modern axiom that the ancient belief expressed in 
the above extract has no foundation in fact, and that the 
Phoenicians, however far-spread may have been their com 
mercial enterprise, never extended their voyages beyond 
the Pillars of Hercules. It is conceded that it would be 
easy to demonstrate in Britain the elaborate machinery of 
sun-worship, if only it could be shown that there were at 
any time intimate and direct relations between Britain 
and Phoenicia. The historical evidence, such as it is, of 
this once-supposed connection, having been weighed and 
found wanting, the present teaching is thus expressed : 
" But what of the Phoenicians, and where do they come 
in ? It is a cruel thing to say to a generation which can 

78 


CHAP. Ill·] 


A TALE OP TEOY 


79 


ill afford to part with any fragment of its diminished ar 
chaeological patrimony ; but it must be said without reserve 
or qualification : the Phoenicians do not come in at all."1 

But before bidding a final and irrevocable adieu to Tyre 
and Tarshish, one is entitled to inquire whence and how 
Phoenician or Hebrew words and place-names reached 
this country, particularly on the western coasts. The cold- 
shouldering of Oriental words has not extinguished their 
existence, and although these changelings may no longer 
find an honoured home in our Dictionaries, the terms 
themselves have survived the ignominy of their expulsion 
and are as virile to-day as hitherto. 

The English language, based upon an older stratum of 
speech and perpetually assimilating new shades of sense, 
has descended in direct ancestry from the Welsh or 
Kymbric, and Kyrnbric, still spoken to-day, has come down 
to us in verbal continuity from immemorial ages prior to 
the Roman invasion. It was at one time supposed that 
of the Celtic sister-tongues the Irish or Gaelic was the 
more ancient, but according to the latest opinion, " In the 
vocabularies of the two languages where strict phonetic 
tests of origin can be applied it is found that the borrowing 
is mainly on the side of the Irish ".2 The identities be 
tween Welsh and Hebrew are so close and pressing that 
from time to time claims have been put forward that the 
old Welsh actually was Hebrew. " It would be difficult," 
said Margoliouth, " to adduce a single article or form of 
construction in the Hebrew Grammar, but the same is to 
be found in Welsh, and there are many whole sentences in 
both languages exactly the same in the very words ".3 

'Taylor, Eev. T., The Celtic Christianity of Cornwall, p. 27. 
* Morris-Jones, Sir J., Γ. Cymmrodor, xxvii., p. 240. 
J Margoliouth, M., The Jews in Great Britain, p. 33. 


 ÌLI Ί: 


ι 


80 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


III.] 


\. TALE Ol·1 TEOY 


81 


Entire sentences of archaic Hebraisms are similarly to be 
found in the now obsolete Cornish language, and there are 
" several thousand words of Hebrew origin " in the Erse 
or Gaelic. According to Vallencey, " the language of the 
early inhabitants of Ireland was a compound of Hebrew 
and Phoenician," 1 and this statement would appear to be 
substantiated by the curious fact that in 1827 the Bible 
Societies presented Hebrew Bibles to the native Irish in 
preference to those printed in English, as it was found 
that the Irish peasants understood Hebrew more readily 
than English.2 

Is it conceivable that these identities of tongue are due 
to chance, or that the terms in point permeated imper 
ceptibly overland to the farthest outposts of the Hebrides? 

It is a traditional belief that the district now known as 
Cornwall had at some period commercial relations with an 
overseas people, referred to indifferently as " Jews," " Sara 
cens," or " Finicians ". That certain of the western tin 
mines were farmed by Jews within the historic period is a 
fact attested by Charters granted by English kings, notably 
by King John ; yet there is a -tradition among Cornish 
tinners that the " Saracens," a term still broadly applied to 
any foreigner, were not allowed to advance farther than 
the coast lest they should discover the districts whence 
the tin was brought. The entire absence of any finds of 
Phoenician coins is an inference that this tradition is well 
founded, for it is hardly credible that had the " Finicians" 
penetrated far inland or settled to any extent in the country, 
some of their familiar coins would not have come to light. 

1 As bearing upon this statement I reprint in the Appendix to the present 
volume a very remarkable extract from Britain and the Gael (Wm. Beai), 
1860. 

z Wilkes, Anna, Ireland : Ur of the Chalclees, p. C. 


The casual or even systematic visits of mere merchants 
will not account for integral deep-seated identities. The 
Greeks had a powerful settlement at Marseilles centuries 
before Caesar's time, yet the vicinity of these Greek traders, 
.although it may have exercised some social influences 
upon arts and habits, did not effect any permanent impres 
sion on the language, religion, or character of the Gaulish 
nation. 

One is thus impelled to the conclusion that the re 
semblances between British and Phoenician are deeper 
seated than hitherto has been supposed, and that it may 
have been due to both peoples having descended from, or 
borrowed from, some common source. 

The Phoenicians, though so great and enterprising a 
people, have left no literature ; and it is thus impossible to 
compare their legends and traditions with our own. With 
Crete the same difficulty exists, as at present her script is 
indecipherable, and no one knows positively the name of a 
single deity of her Pantheon. 

There is no historic record of any intercourse between 
the British and the Greeks, but both Irish and British 
traditions specify the ^Egean as the district whence their 
first settlers arrived. Tyndal, the earliest translator of the 
Greek Testament into English, asserts that " The Greek 
agreeth more with the English than the Latin, and the 
properties of the Hebrew tongue agreeth a thousand times 
more with the English than with the Latin". Happily 
Greece possesses a literature, and one may thus compare 
the legends of Greece with those of our own country. 

An Hellenic author-of the first century is thus rendered 
by Sir John Ehys :1 " Demetrius further said that of the 

1 Introduction to Malory's Morte d'Arthur (Everyman's Library). 
6 


 82 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


islands round Britain many lie scattered about uninhabited, 
of which some are named after deities and heroes. He 
told us also that being sent by the Emperor with the object 
of reconnoitring and inspecting, he went to the island 
which lay nearest to those uninhabited, and found it oc 
cupied by few inhabitants who were, however, sacrosanct 
and inviolable in the eyes of the Britons. . . . There is there, 
they said, an island in which Cronus is imprisoned with 
Briareus, keeping guard over him as he sleeps, for as they 
put it—sleep is the bond forged for Cronus. They add 
that around him are many deities, his henchmen and 

attendants." 1 

It is remarkable that Greek mythology was thus familiar 
to the supposedly blue-painted savages of Britain. Nor is 
the instance solitary, for at Bradford a Septennial festival 
used to be held in honour of Jason and the Golden Fleece,2 
and at Achill in Ireland there is a custom which seemingly 
connects Achill and Achilles. Pausanias tells the tale of 
young Achilles attired in female garb and living among 
maidens, and to this day the .peasantry of Achill Island on 
the north-west coast of Ireland dresses its boys as girls for 
the supposed purpose of deceiving a boy-seeking devil.3 Are 
these and other coincidences which will be adduced due to 
chance, to independent working of the primitive mind, or 
to intercourse with a maritime people who were not re 
stricted by the Pillars of Hercules ? 

The exit of the Phoenicians has created a dilemma which 
impels Mr. Donald A. Mackenzie to inquire : " By whom 
were Egyptian beads carried to Britain between 1500 B.c. 

1 Plutarch, De Defectu Oraculorum, xvil. 

a Eckenstein, L., Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes, p. 70. 

3Clodd, E., Tom.Tit Tot, p. 181. 


III.] 


A TALE OF TROY 


83 


and 1400 B.c. ? Certainly not the Phoenicians. The sea- 
traders of the Mediterranean were at the time the Cretans. 
Whether or not their merchants visited England we have 
no means of knowing." 1 There are, however, sure and 
certain sources of information if one looks into the indelible 
evidence of fairy-tales, monuments, language, traditions, 
and place-names. 

Ammianus Marcellinus records that it was a traditional 
belief among the Gauls that " a few Trojans fleeing from 
the Greeks and dispersed occupied these places then un 
inhabited "? The similar tradition pervading early British 
literature we shall consider in due course and detail. This 
legend runs broadly that Bru or Brutus, after sailing for 
thirty days and thirty nights, landed at Totnes, whence 
after slaying the giant Gogmagog and his followers he 
marched to Troynovant or New Troy now named Lon 
don. 

It was generally believed that this supposed fiction was 
a fabrication by Geoffrey of Monmouth, but it was subse 
quently discovered in the historical poems of Tyssilia, a 
Welsh Bard. According to a poem attributed to Taliesin, 
the semi-mythical " Chief of the Bards of the West," whose 
reputation Sir J. Morris Jones has recently so brilliantly 
resuscitated,3 " A numerous race, fierce, they are said to 
have been, were thy original colonists Britain first of Isles. 
Natives of a country in Asia, and the city of Gafiz. Said 
to have been a skilful people, but the district is unknown 
which was mother to these children, warlike adventurers 
on the sea. Clad in their long dress who could equal 

1 Mackenzie, D. A., Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe, p. 826. 

2 Cf. Poste, B., Britannic Researches, p. 220. 

3 Γ Cymmrodor, xxviii. 


 ΙΠΪ 


84 


AECHAIC 


[CHAI?. 


III.] 


A TALE OF TROY 


85 


.ν _ 


them? Their skill is celebrated, they were the dread of 

Europe." 

According to the Welsh Triads the first-comer to these 
islands was not Bru, but a mysterious and mighty Hu : 
" The first of the three chieftains who established the 
colony was Hu the Mighty, who came with the original 
settlers. They came over the hazy sea from the summer 
country, which is called Deffrobani ; that is where Con 
stantinople now stands." 1 

Although, as will subsequently be seen, Hu and Bru 
were seemingly one and the same, it is not to be supposed 
that Britain can have been populated from one solitary 
shipload of adventurers ; argosy after argosy must have 
reached these shores. The name Albion suggests Albania, 
and in due course I shall connect not only Giant Alban, 
but also the Lady Albion and the fairy Prince Albion with 
Albania, Albany, and " Saint" Alban. 

The Albanian Greek is still characterised by hardihood, 
activity, bodily strength, and simplicity of living ; and 
there is unquestionably some connection between the 
highlanders of Albania and the highlanders of Albany who, 
up to a few hundred years ago, used to rush into battle 
with the war-cry of " Albani ! Albani ! " By the present- 
day Turk the Albanians are termed Arnaouts.2 Whether 
this name has any connection with argonauts is immaterial, 

1 Triad 4. 

2 " The notion that the Albanian is a mere mixture oi Greek and Turkish 
has long been superseded by the conviction that though mixed it is essen 
tially a separate language. The doctrine also that it is of recent intro 
duction into Europe has been similarly abandoned. There is every reason 
for believing that as Thunmann suggested, it was, at dawn of history, spoken 
in the countries \vhere it is spoken at the present moment." — Latham, 
E. G., Varieties of Man, p. 552. 


as the historic existence of argonauts and argosies is a 
matter of fact, not fancy. A typical example of the primi 
tive argosies is recorded in the British Chronicles where 
the arrival of Hengist and Horsa is described. Layamon's 
Brut attributes to Hengist the following statement :— 

" Our race is of a fertile stock, more quick and abounding 
than any other you may know, or whereof you have heard 
speak. Our- folk are marvejlously fruitful, and the tale of 
the children is beyond measure. Women and men are 
more in number than the sand, for the greater sorrow of 
those amongst us who are here. When our people are so 
many that the land may not sustain nor suffice them, then 
the princes who rule the realm assemble before them all 
the young men of the age of fifteen and upwards, for such 
is our use and custom. From out of these they choose 
the most valiant and the most strong, and, casting lots, 
send them forth from the country, so that they may travel 
into divers lands, seeking fiefs and houses of their own. 
Go out they must, since the earth cannot contain them ; 
for the children come more thickly than the beasts which 
pasture in the fields. Because of the lot that fell upon us 
we have bidden farewell to our homes, and putting our 
trust in Mercury, the god has led us to your realm." 

In all probability this is a typical and true picture of the 
perennial argosies which periodically and persistently fared 
forth from Northern Europe and the Mediterranean into 
the Unknown. 

The Saxons came here peaceably ; they were amicably 
received, and it would be quite wrong to imagine the early 
immigrations as invasions involving any abrupt breach in 
place-names, customs, and traditions. Of the Greeks, 
Prof. Bury says : "They did not sweep down in a great 


 86 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


invading host, but crept in, tribe by tribe, seeking not 
political conquest but new lands and homesteads ". 

At the time of Caesar the tribe occupying the neighbour 
hood of modern London were known as the Trinovantes,1 
and as these people can hardly be supposed to have adopted 
their title for the purpose of flattering a poetic fiction in 
far Wales, the name Trinovant lends some support to the 
Bardic tradition that London was once termed Troy Novant 
or New Troy. Argonauts of a later day christened their 
new-found land New York, and this unchangingly charac 
teristic tendency of the emigrant no doubt accounts for the 
perplexing existence of several cities each named " Troy ". 
That many shiploads of young argonauts from one or an 
other Troy reached the coasts of Cornwall is implied by 
the fact that in Cornwall tre's were seemingly so numerous 
that tre became the generic term for home or homestead. 
It is proverbial that by tre, pòi, and pen, one may know 
the Cornish men. 

Borlase, in his glossary of Cornish words, gives both 
tre and are as meaning dwelling ; the Welsh for Troy is 
Droia, the Greek was Troie, and this invariable interchange 
of t and d is again apparent in derry, the Irish equivalent 
for the Cornish tre. The standard definition of true is 
firm or certain ; whence it may appear that the primeval 
" Troys " were, so to speak, the permanent addresses of 
the wandering families and tribes. These Troys or trues 
were maybe caves—whence trou, the French for hole or 
cave ; maybe the foot of a big tree, preferably the sacred 
oak-tree, which was alike sacred in Albion and Albania. 
Tree is the same word as true, and dru, the Sanscrit for 
tree, is the same word as aero or derry, the Irish for oak 

1 Bhys, 3., Celtic Britain. 


 IIL] 


A TALE OF TEOY 


87 


PIG. 8.—Welsh Shepherd's " Troy Town ". 
Prom Prehistoric London (Gordon, E. O.). 


FIG. 9.—Cretan maze-coins and British mazes at Winchester, Alkborougll, and Saffron Waldi 

Prom Prehistoric Landoti (Gordon, E. O.). 

[To face p. i 


tree, as in Londonderry, Kûdare, etc. The Druids have 
been generally supposed to have derived their title of Druid 
from the drus or oak tree under which they Worshipped, 
but it is far more probable that the tree was named after 
the Druids, and that druid (the accusative and dative of 
ami, a magician or sorcerer), is radically the Persian duru, 
meaning a good holy man, the Arabic deri, meaning a 
wise man.1 

But apart from the generic term tre or are there are 
numerous " Troy Towns " and " Draytons " in Britain. 
Part of Rochester is called Troy Town, which may be 
equated with the Duro- of Durolorevis the ancient name of 
Eochester. There is a river Dray in Thanet and the 
ancient name for Canterbury was Durovexn. Seemingly 
all over Britain the term Troy Town was applied to the 
turf-cut mazes of the downs and village greens, and the 
hopscotch of the London urchin is said to be the Troy 
game of the Welsh child. 

In London, tempus Edward IL, a military ride and 
tournament used to be performed by the young men of the 
royal household on every Sunday during .Lent.2 This 
also so-called Troy game had obviously some relation to 
the ancient Trojan custom thus described by Virgil :— 

In equal bands the triple troops divide, 

Then turn, and rallying, with spears bent low, 

Charge at the call. Now back again they ride, 
Wheel round, and weave new courses to and fro, 

In armed similitude of martial show, 
Circling and intercircliug. Now in flight 

They bare their backs, now turning, foe to foe, 
Level their lances to the charge, now plight 
The truce, and side by side in friendly league unite. 

1 The same root may be behind deruish or dervish. 

2 Gordon, E. O., Prehistoric London, p. 127. 


 88 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


E'en as in Crete the Labyrinth of old 
Between blind walls its secret hid from view, 

With wildering ways and many a winding fold, 
Wherein the wanderer, if the tale be true, 

Eoamed unreturning, cheated of the clue : 

Such tangles weave the Teucrians, as they feign 

Fighting, or flying, and the game renew : 
So dolphins, sporting on the watery plane, 
Cleave the Carpathian waves and distant Libya's main. 

These feats Asoanius to his people showed, 

When girdling Alba Longa ; there with joy 
The ancient Latins in the pastime rode, 

Wherein the princely Bardali, as a boy, 
Was wont his Trojan comrades to employ. 

To Alban children from their sires it came, 
And mighty Borne took up the " game of Troy," 

And called the players " Trojans," and the name 

Lives on, as sons renew the hereditary game.1 

In Welsh tru means a twisting or turning, and this root 
is at the base of tourney and tournament. One might 
account for the courtly jousts of the English Court by the 
erudition and enterprise of scholars and courtiers, but when 
we find turf Troy Towns being dug by the illiterate Welsh 
shepherd and a Troy game being played by the uneducated 
peasant, the question naturally arises, " What's Hecuba to 
him, or he to Hecuba ? " In the Scilly Islands there is a 
Troy Town picked out in stones which the natives scrupu 
lously restore and maintain : in the words of Miss Courtney, 
" All intricate places in Cornwall are so denominated, and I 
have even heard nurses say to children, when they were 
surrounded by a litter of toys, that they looked as if they 
were in Troy Town ".2 

In the JEneid Virgil observes that " Tyrians and Trojans 

1 Virgil, JEneid, 79, 80, 81. 

2 Cornish Feasts and Folklore, p. 119. 


III.] 


A TALE OF TEOY 


89 


shall I treat as one ". Apart from Tyrians and Trojans 
the term Tyrrheni or Tyrseni was applied to the Etrurians 
—a people the mystery of whose origin is one of the un 
solved riddles of archaeology. It was Etruria that produced 
not only Dante, but also a galaxy of great men such as no 
other part of Europe has presented. In Etruria woman 
was honoured as nowhere else in Europe except, perhaps, 
in Crete and among the Kelts ; and in Etruria—as in 
Crete—religion was veiled under an " impenetrable cloud of 
mysticism and symbolism ". 

.It is supposed that Etruria derived much from the pre 
historic Greeks who dwelt in Albania and worshipped 
Father Zeus in the sacred derrys or oak-groves of Dodona. 
The Etrurians and Greeks were unquestionably of close 
kindred, and it would seem from their town of Albano and 
their river Albanus that the Etrurians similarly venerated 
St. Alban or Prince Albion. The capital of Etruria was 
Tarchon, so named after the Etruscan Zeus, there known 
as Tarchon. In the Introduction to The Cities and 
Cemeteries of Etruria, Dennis points out that for ages the 
Etruscans were lords of the sea, rivalling the Phoenicians 
in enterprise ; founding colonies in the islands of the 
Tyrrhene Sea " even on the coast of Spain where Tarragona 
(in whose name we recognise that of Tarchon) appears to 
have been-one of their settlements—a tradition confirmed 
by its ancient fortifications. Nay, the Etruscans would fain 
have colonised the far ' islands of the blest ' in the Atlantic 
Ocean, probably Madeira or one of the Canaries, had not 
the Carthaginians opposed them." 

The title Madeira, which is radically deira, might imply 
an origin from either Tyre or Troy, and if place-names 
have any significance it seems probable the Etrurians 


 lì 


90 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP 


πι.] 


A TALE OF TEOY 


91 


reached even our remote Albion. One may recognise 
Targon as at Tarragona in Pentargon, the sonorous, re 
sounding title of a mighty pen or headland near Tintagel, 
and it is not unlikely Tarchon or Tarquin survives in giant 
Tarquin who is popularly associated with Cumberland and 
the North of England. In Arthurian legend it is seemingly 
this same .Tarquin that figures as Sir Tarquin, a false 
knight who was the enemy of the Bound Table and a 
sworn foe to Lancelot : " They hurtled together like two 
wild bulls, rashing and lashing with their shields and 
swords, that sometimes they fell both over their noses. 
Thus they fought still two hours and more and never 
would have rest."l 

It will become increasingly evident as we proceed that 
tur or true served frequently as an adjective, meaning 
firm, constant, durable, and eternal, and that it is thus used 
in the name TiM-chon, Trajan, or Trojan. One may thus 
modernise Tarchon into the Eternal John, Jean, or Giant, 
and it is seemingly this same giant that figured as the 
John, Joan, or Old Joan of Cornish festivals. In the civic 
functions at Salisbury and elsewhere, the elementary 
giant figures simply as " Giant ". Although the Cornish 
for giant was geon, the authorities—I think wrongly— 
translate Inisidgeon, an islet in the Scillies, as having 
meant inis or island of St. John. 

Near Pentargon is the Castle of Bang Arthur, which, 
before being known as Tintagel, was named Dunechein or 
the dun of chein.-· At Durovern (now Canterbury) is a 
large tumulus known as the Dane John, and on the heights 
behind St. Just in Cornwall is Chun Castle.2 This is a 

1 Malory, viii. 

21 question the current supposition that this is a corruption oi chy an 
woon or " house on the hill ". 


noble specimen of Cyclopean architecture, and appears to 
be parallel in style of building with the Cyclopean archi 
tecture of Etruria. Similarly, in the Dune Chein neigh 
bourhood may be seen Cyclopean and "herring-bone" 
walls, which seemingly do not differ from those of Crete 
and Etruria. 

At Winchelsea in Sussex are the foundations and the 
doorway of an ancient building known as " Trojans or 
Jews' Hall," but of the history of these ruins nothing 
whatever is known. There is, however, little if any doubt 
that Trojan or Tarchon was an alternative title of the 
Etrurian Jonn, Jupiter, or Jou, and that to the Cretan 
Jou the Greeks added their piter or father, making there 
by Jupiter or Father Jou. Jou was the title of a kingly 
dynasty in Crete, but the custom of royal dynasties taking 
their title from the All Father likened to the Sun is so 
constant as almost to constitute a rula 

The word Jew, when pronounced yew, will be considered 
subsequently ; it may here be pointed out · that Jay, Gee, 
and Joy are common surnames, query, once tribal names 
in Britain. Near Penzance is Marazion or Market Jew, 
and it may be suggested that the traditional Cornish 
"Jews" were pre-Phcenician followers of the Cretan Jou. 
With Market-Jew one may connote Margate, which, as 
will be shown later, was probably in its origin—like Mara 
zion or Mara San—a port of mer, or mère, the generic terms 
for sea and mother. It is a well-recognised fact that 
Brittany, Cornwall, and Wales spoke more or less the 
same tongue, and according to Csesar in his time there was 
little or no difference between the languages of Gaul and 
Britain. 

As will also be seen later it is probable that the words 
mer and mere, and the names Maria and Marie, are radically 


 92 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


rhi, the Celtic for lady orprincess; that Bhea, the Mother- 
Goddess of Crete,' is simply rhia, the Gaelic and the Welsh 
for queen, and that Maria meant primarily Mother Queen, 
or Mother Lady. The early forms of Marazion figure as 
Marhasyon, Marhasion, etc. 

Among the Basques of Spain jaun meant lord or master ; 
in British chun or cun meant mighty chief,1 whence it is 
probable that the name Tarchon meant Eternal Chief or 
Eternal Lord, and this anonymity would accord with the 
custom which most anciently prevailed at Dodona. " In 
early times," says Herodotus, " the Pelasgi, as I know by 
information which I got at Dodona, offered sacrifices of all 
kinds and prayed to the gods, but had no distinct names 
and appellations for them, since they had never heard of 
any. They called them gods (theoi) because they had dis 
posed and arranged all things in such a beautiful order."2 

The eternal Chon or Jonn of Etruria may be recognised 
Latinised in Janus, the most ancient deity of Rome or 
Janicula, and we may perhaps find him not only in John 
of Cornwall but among the innumerable Jones of Wales. 
The lonians or Greeks of Ionia worshipped lone, the Holy 
Dove, whence they are said to have derived their title. In 
Greek, ione, in ììebrew,juneh, means a dove, and the Scotch 
island of lona is indelibly permeated with stories and tra 
ditions of St. Columba or Columbkille, the Little Dove of 
the Church. The dove was the immemorial symbol of 
Rhea, and it is highly probable that it was originally con 
nected with the place-name Eeculver, of which the root is 
unknown, but " has been influenced by Old English culfre, 
culver, a culver dove or wood pigeon ".3 In Cornwall there 

1 Beai, W., Britain and the Gael, p. 22. z Herodotus, 11, 52. 
3 Johnston, J. B., Place-names of England and Wales, p. 413. 


III.] 


A TALE OF TBOY 


93 


is a St. Columb Major and St. Columb Minor, where the 
dedication is to a virgin of this name, and on the coast of 
Thanet the shoal now called Columbine, considered in 
conjunction with the neighbouring place-names Eoas Bank 
and Eayham, may be assumed to be connected with Ehea's 
sacred Columbine or Little Dove. A neighbouring spit is 
marked Cheney Spit, and close at hand are Cheyney Eocks. 
There is thus some probability that Great Cheyne Court, 
Little Cheyne Court, Old Cheyne Court, New Cheyne 


E 


Pio. 11. — Prom The 
Cities and Cemeteries 
of Etruria (Dennis, 
G.). 
PIG. 10.—Prom Nineveh (Layard). 

Court, and the Kentish surname Joynson have all relation 
to the mysterious ruin " Trojans or Jews Hall ". 

Fig. 11 shows the Goddess of Etruria holding her sym 
bolic columba, in Fig. 10, the same emblem worshipped in 
Assyria is being carried with pomp and circumstance, 
and Fig. 12 shows the columba, turtle, or tortora, being 
similarly honoured in Western Europe. 

" Throughout the Mgean," says Prof. Burrows, "we see 
traces of the Minoan Empire, in one of the most per 
manent of all traditions the survival of a place-name ; the 


ι ι 


 94 


ABCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


word Minoa, wherever it occurs, must mark a fortress or 
trading station of the Great King as surely as the Alex- 
andrias, or Antiochs, or Gsesareas of later days." l 

If a modern place-name be valid evidence in the Medi 
terranean, the place-name Minnis Bay between Margate 


FIG. 12.—From The Everyday Book (Hone, W.). 

and Eeculver has presumably a similar weight, particularly 
as a few miles further round the coast is a so-called Minnis 
Eock. Here is an ancient hermitage consisting of a three- 
mouthed cave measuring precisely 9 feet deep. King 

1 Burrows, R. M., The Discoveries in Crete, p. 11. 


III.] 


A TALE OF TEOY 


95 


Minos of Crete held his kingship on a tenure of nine years, 
and the number nine is peculiarly identified with the idea 
of Troy, true, or permanent. In Hebrew, truth and nine 
are represented by one and the same term, because nine 
is so extraordinarily true or constant to itself, that 
9 χ 9 = 81 = 9, 9 χ 2 = 18 = 9, and so from nine times 
one to nine times nine. 

In Crete there were no temples, but worship was con 
ducted around small caves situated in the side of hills. 
This is precisely the position of Minnis Eock which is 
situated in a valley running up from Hastings to St. 
Helens. " It is," says the local guide-book, " one of the 
few rock cells in the country, and though almost choked 
with earth and rubbish is still worth inspection. The 
three square-headed openings were the entrances to the 
separate chambers of the cave, which went back 9 feet into 
the rock. It is surmised that the Hermitage was used 
as a chapel or oratory, dedicated probably to St. Mary, or 
some other saint beloved of those who go down to the sea 
in ships. Many such chapels existed in olden times within 
sight and sound of the waves, and passing vessels lowered 
their topsails to them in reverence. Torquay, Broadstairs, 
Dover, Eeculver, Whitby, and other places in England 
had similar oratories."1 

The Etruscans or Tyrrhenians believed in a Hierarchy 
of Nine Great Gods. Minos of Crete was not merely one 
of a line of mighty sea-kings, but Greek mythology asserts 
that Minos was the son of Zeus, i.e., Jonn or Tarchon. In 
a subsequent chapter we shall consider him at length, but 
meanwhile it may be noted that it is not unlikely that the 
whole of Eastern Kent was known as Minster, Minosterre, 

1 Hastings (Ward Lock & Co.), p. 63. 


 96 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


or Minos Terra. There are several Minsters in Sheppey, 
and another Minster together with a Mansion near Mar 
gate. The generic terms minster and monastery may be 
assigned to the ministers of Minos originally congregating 
in cells or trous or in groves under and around the oaks 
or other similarly sacred trees. 

Troy, or as Homer terms it, " sacred Troy," was pre 
eminently a city of towers, tourelles, turrets, or tors, and in 
the West of England tor1, as in Torquay, Torbay, etc., is 
ubiquitous. Tory Island, off the coast of Ireland, is said to 
have derived its title from the numerous torrs upon it. 
The same word is prevalent throughout Britain, but there 
are no torrs at Sindry Island in Essex nor at Treport in 
the English Channel. In the Semitic languages tzur, 
meaning rock, is generally supposed to be the root of Tyre, 
and in the Near East tor is a generic term for mountain 
chain. 

Speaking of princely Tyre, Ezekiel says, " Tarshish was 
thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kinds of 
riches ; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy 
fairs "-1 Tarshish is usually considered to have been the 
western coast of the Mediterranean afterwards called Gaul, 
in later times Spain and France, and undoubtedly the 
men of Tarshish, Tyre, Troy, or Etruria, toured, trekked, 
travelled, tramped, traded, and trafficked far and wide. 
Etrurian vases have been disinterred in Tartary and also, 
it is said, from tumuli in Norway, yet as Mrs. Hamilton 
Gray observes : " We believe that they were never made 
in those countries, and that the Tartars and Norwegians 
never worshipped, and possibly never even knew the names 
of the gods and heroes thereon represented ".2 These vases 
1 xxvii. 12. s Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria, p. 9. 


III.] 


A TALE OF TROY 


97 


more often than not depicted incidents of Trojan legend, and 
of that famous Troy whose exploits in the words of Virgil 
"fired the world". 

The Tyrians conceived their chief god Hercules or 
Harokel as a bagman or merchant, and in Phosnician the 
word harokel meant merchant. Our own term merchantl 
is etymologically akin to Mercury, the god of merchants, 
and as mere among other meanings meant pure or true, it 
is not unlikely that merchant was once the intellectual 
equivalent to Tarchon or True John. In the West of 
England the adjective " jonnock " still means true, straight 
forward, generous, unselfish, and companionable.2 The 
adjective chein still used by Jews means very much the 
same as jonnock, with, however, the additional sense of the 
French chic. Jack is the diminutive endearing form of 
John, and the Etruscan Joun is said to have been the 
Hebrew Jack or Iou.s Joun or his consort Jana was in 
all probability the divinity of the Etruscan river Chiana, 
and Giant or Giantess Albion the divinity of the neighbour 
ing river Albinia. 

Close to Market Jew or Marazion is a village called 
Chyandour, where is a well named Gulfwell, meaning, we 
are told, the " Hebrew brook". It is still a matter of dis 
pute whether the Jews shipped their tin from Market Jew 

1 Prom mercari, to trade (Skeat). 

2 Jonnock is probably cognate with yankee, which was in old times used 
m the New England States as an adjective meaning " excellent," " first- 
class ". Thus, a " yankee " horse would be a first-class horse, just as we 
talk of English beef and other things English, meaning that they are the best. 
Another explanation of yankee is that when the Pilgrim Fathers landed 
al Plymouth Rock, near Massachusetts Bay, in 1620, they were met on the 
shore by native Indians who called them " Yangees "—meaning " white 
man "—and the term was finally completed into " Yankees ". 

3 Taylor, Rev, R.; Diegesis, p. 158. 
7 


L l 


 ABCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


III.] 


A TALE OP TBOY 


99 


or overland from Thanet (? Margate1). From the word 
tariff, a Spanish and Arabian term connected with Tarifa, 
the southernmost town in Spain, it would seem that the 
dour and daring traders who carried on their traffic with 
Market Jew and Margate toured with a tarifa or price-list. 
Doubtless the tariff charges were commensurate with the 
risks involved, for only too frequently, as is stated in the 
Psalms, " the ships of Tarshish were broken with an east 
wind ". To try a boat means to-day to bring her head to 
the gale, and in Somersetshire small ships are still entitled 
trows, a word evidently akin to trough. 

The Etruscans or Tyrrhenians represented Hercules the 

Great Merchant in a kilt, 
and this seemingly was 
a tartan or French tire- 
taine. Speaking of cer 
tain figures unearthed 
at Tarchon, Dennis re 
marks : " The drapery of 
the couches is particu 
larly worthy of notice, be 
ing marked with stripes 

of different colours crossing each other as in the Highland 
plaid ; and those who are learned in tartanology might 
possibly pronounce which of the Macs has the strongest 
claim to an Etruscan origin ".2 

Fig. 13 reproduced from Mrs. Murray Aynsley's Symbol 
ism of the East and West, is taken from a fragment of 
pottery found in what is believed to be a pre-Etruscan 
cemetery at Bologna in Italy. It might be a portrait of 

1 The remarkable serpentine, shell-mosaiked shrine, known as Margate 
Grotto, is discussed in chap. xiii. 
a i., 367. 


PIG. 13. 


Hendry or Sander bonneted in his glengarry, armed with 
a target, and trekking off with two terriers. Terre, or terra 
ßrtna, the earth, is the same as true, meaning firm or con 
stant. According to Skeat the present form of the verb 
tarry is due to tarien, terien, " to irritate, provoke, worry, 
vex ; hence to hinder, delay ". Having " tamed " an order 
there was, it may be, still further " tarrying " on presenta 
tion of the tariff, and it may be assumed that the author 
of The Odyssey had been personally " tarried " for he refers 
feelingly to— 

A shrewd Phoenician, in all fraud adept, 
Hungry, and who had num'rous harm'd before, 
By whom I also was cajoled, and lured 
T' attend him to Phoenicia, where his house 
And his possessions lay ; there I abode 
A year complete his inmate ; but (the days 
And months accomplish'd of the rolling year 
And the new seasons ent'ring on their course) 
To Lybia then, on board his bark, by wiles 
He won me with him, partner of the freight 
Profess'd, but destin'd secretly to sale, 
That he might profit largely by my price. 
Not unsuspicious, yet constrain'd to go, 
With this man I embark'd. 

The hero of The Odyssey was, self-confessedly, no tyro, 
but was himself " in artifice well framed and in imposture 
various". Admittedly he "utter'd prompt not truth, but 
figments to truth opposite, for guile in him stood never at 
a pause ",1 Obviously he was a sailor to the bone, and when 
he says, " I boast me sprung from ancestry renowned in 
spacious Crete," with the additional statement that at one 
time he was an Admiral of Crete, it is possible we are in 
face of a fragment of genuine autobiography. 

Doubtless, as our traditions state, the first adventurers on 

', Book IV. 


 100 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


the sea who reached these shores were oft-times terrors and 
" the dread of Europe ". To the Tyrrhenes may probably 
be assigned the generic term tyrranos which, however, 
meant primarily not a tyrant as now understood, but an 
autocrat or lord. " Clad in their long dress who could 
equal them?" wondered a British Bard, and it may be 
that the long robes figured herewith are the very moulds 
of form which created such a powerful impression among 

our predecessors. The 
word attire points to the 
possibility that at one time 
Tyre set the fashions for 
the latest tire, and like 
modern Paris fired the 
contemporary world of 
dress. In connection with 
the word dress, which is 
radically are, it is notice 
able that the Britons were 
conspicuously dressy men ; indeed, Sir John Ehys, discuss 
ing the term Briton, Breton, or Brython, seriously main 
tains that " the only Celtic words which can be of the same 
origin are the Welsh vocables brethyn, ' cloth and its con 
geners,' in which case the Britons may have styled them 
selves ' cloth-clad,' in contradistinction to the skin-wearing 
neolithic nation that preceded them ". 

We know from Homer that the Trojans had a pretty 
taste in tweeds, and that their waistcoats in particular 
were subjects of favourable remark :— 

The enter'd each a bath, and by the hands 
Of maidens laved, and oil'd, and cloath'd again 
With shaggy mantles, and resplendent vests, 
Sat both enthroned at Menelaus' side. 


FIG. 14.—From The Cities and 
Cemeteries of Etniria (Dennis, G.). 


III.] 


A TALE OP TBOY 


101 


Time does not alter the radical characteristics of any 
race, and the outstanding qualities of the Britons—the 
traditional " remnant of Droia," are still very much to 
day what they were in the time of Diodorus the Sicilian. 
" They are," said he, " of much sincerity and integrity far 
from the craft and knavery of men among us."l So great 
was the Trojan reputation for law and order that the 
Greeks who owed their code of laws to Crete paid Miuos 
the supreme compliment of making him the Lord Chief 
Justice of the World of Shades. It will probably prove that 
the droits, laws, rights, or dues of " Dieu et mon Droit " 
are traceable to those of Troy, as also perhaps the Triads 
or triple axioms of the Drui or Druids. To put a man on 
trial was originally perhaps to try or test him at the sacred 
tree : the triadic form of ancient maxims had doubtless 
some relation to the Persian Trinity of Good Thought, 
Good Deed, Good Word, and these three virtues were 
symbolised by the trefoil or shamrock. The Hebrew for 
law is torà or thorah, the Hill of Tara in Ireland (middle- 
Irish, Temair), is popularly associated with the trefoil 
symbol of the IWnity (Welsh, Dràidod) ; that three, trois, 
or drei was associated by the game of Troy is obvious 
from Virgil's reference to the "triple groups dividing," 
and that the trefoil was venerated in Crete would appear 
from Mr. Mackenzie's statement : " Of special interest, too, 
is a clover-leaf ornament—an anticipation of the Irish 
devotion to the shamrock".2 

The primitive trysts were probably at the old Trysting 
Trees ; trust means reliability and credit and truce means 
peace. Among rude nations the men who carried with 
them Peace, Law, and Order must naturally have been 

1 Cf. Smith, G., Religion of Ancient Britain, p. 65. 

2 Myths of Crete and Prehistoric Europe, p. 239. 


 ιοα 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


deemed supermen or gods, hence perhaps why in Scan 
dinavia Tyr meant god. Our Thursday is from Thor— 
a divinity who was sometimes assigned three eyes—and 
our Tuesday from Tyr, who was supposed to be the Scan 
dinavian Joupiter. The plural form of Tyr meant ' ' glorious 
ones," and according to The Edda, not only were the 
Danes and Scandinavians wanderers from Troy or Tyrk- 
land, but Asgard itself—the Scandinavian Paradise—pre 
served the old usages and customs brought from Troy.1 

Homer by sidelights indicates that the Trojans were 
nice in their domestic arrangements, took fastidious care 
of their attire, and were confirmed lovers of fresh air. 
Thus Telemachus— 

Open'd his broad chamber-valves, and sat 
On his couch-side : then putting off his vest 
Of softest texture, placed it in the hands 
Of the attendant dame discrete, who flrat 
Folding it with exactest care, beside 
His bed suspended it, and, going forth, 
Drew by its silver ring the portal close, 
And fasten'd it with bolt and brace secure. 
There lay Telemachus, on finest wool 
Reposed, contemplating all night his course 
Prescribed by Pallas to the Pylian shore.2 

The word " Trojan " was used in Shakespeare's time to 
mean a boon companion, a jonnock tyro, or a plucky 
fellow, and it is worthy of note that the trusty lads of 
Homer's time passed, as does the Briton of to-day, their 
liquor scrupulously from left to right :— 

So spake Jove's daughter ; they obedient heard. 
The heralds, then, pour'd water on their hands, 
And the attendant youths, filling the cups, 
Served them from left to right.8 

1 Kydberg, V., Teutonic Mythology, pp. 22-36. 

2 Odyssey, Book I. 3 Ibid., Book III. 


in.] 


A TALE OF TEOT 


103 


One of the most remarkable marvels of Cretan archaeo 
logy is the up-to-date drainage system, and that the Tyrr 
henians were equally particular is recorded apparently for 
all time by the Titanic evidence of the still-standing Cloaca 
Maxima or great main drain of Borne. 

The word Troy carries inevitable memories of Helen 
whose beauty was such utter perfection that " the Helen 
of one's Troy " has become a phrase. The name Helen 
is philologically allied to Helios the Sun, and is generally 
interpreted to mean torch, shiner, or giver of light. The 
Greeks called themselves Hellenes, after Hellen their 
eponymous divine leader. Oriental nations termed the 
Hellenes, lones, and.there is little doubt that Helen and 
lone were originally synonymous. In Etruria was the 
city of Hellana, and we shall meet St. Helen in Great 
Britain, from Helenium, the old name for Land's End, to 
Great St. Helen's and Little St. Helen's in London. St. 
Helen, the lone daughter of Old King Cole, the merry old 
soul, figures in Wales and Cumberland as Elen the Leader 
of Hosts, whose memory is preserved not only in Elaine the 
Lily Maid, but also in connection with ancient roadways 
such as Elen's Eoad, and Elen's Causeway. These, sug 
gests Squire, " seem to show that the paths on which armies 
marched were ascribed or dedicated to her".1 Helen's 
name was seemingly bestowed not only on our rivers, such 
as the Elen, Alone, or Alne and Allan Water, but it like 
wise seems to have become the generic term Ion meaning 
holy enclosure, entering into innumerable place-names— 
London2 among others—which will be discussed in course. 

1 The Myth of Br. Islands, p. 324. 

8 The current idea that London was Llyn din, the Lake town, has been 
knocked on the head since it has been " proved that the lake which was 
described so picturesquely by J. E. Green did not exist ". Cf. Eice Holmes, 
Ancient Britain, p. 704. 


Ill \ 


 104 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


The character in which Helen was esteemed may be judged 
from the Welsh adjective alain, which means " exceeding 
fair, lovely, bright". Not only in Wales but also in 
Ireland Alien seems to have been synonymous with beauty, 
whence the authorities translate the place-name Derryallen 
to mean oaJcwood beautiful. In Arthurian romance Elaine 
or Elen figures as the sister of Sir Tirre,1 as the builder of 
the highest fortress in Arvon, and as sitting lone or alone 
in a sea-girt castle on a throne of ruddy gold. It is said 
that so transcendent was her beauty that it would be no 
more easy to look into her face than to gaze at the sun 
when his rays were most irresistible. It would thus seem 
that Howel, said to be Elen's brother, may be equated 
with heel, the Celtic for Sun, and that Elen herself, like 
Diana, was the glorious twin-sister of Helios or Apollo. 

The principal relics of St. Helena are possessed by the 
city of Trêves, and at Therapne in Greece there was a special 
sanctuary of Helena the divinely fair daughter of Zeus and a 
swan. " Troy weight," so called, originated, it is supposed, 
from the droits or standards of a famous fair held at Troyes 
in France. 

• From time immemorial Crete seems to have been associ 
ated with the symbol of the cross. This pre-Christian 
Cross of Crete was the equi-limbed Cross of St. John (Irish 
Shane) which form is also the Red Cross of St. George. 
In earlier times this cross was termed the Jack—a familiar 
form of " the John "—and it was also entitled " the Chris 
topher ". In India the cave temple of Madura, where 
1 Londres, the Gaulish form of London, implies that the radical was 
Lon—and perhaps further, that London was a holy enclosure dun or derry 
where luna, the moon, was worshipped. There is a persistent tradition that 
St. Paul's, standing on the summit of Ludgate Hill or dun, occupies the site 
of a more ancient shrine dedicated to Diana, i.e., Luna. 


III.] 


A TALE OF TBOY 


105 


Kristna ^worship is predominant, is cruciform, and the 
svastika or solar cross, a variant of John's Cross, is in one 
of its Indian forms known as the Jaina cross and the talis 
man of the Jaina kings. 

" It must never be forgotten," said a prince of the 
Anglican Church preaching recently at St. Paul's, " that the 
cross was primarily an instrument of torture." Among a 
certain school, who in Apostolic phrase deem themselves of 
all men most miserable, this conception is firmly fixed and 
seemingly it ever has been. It was Calvinistic doctrine 
that all pain and suffering came from the All Father, and 
that all pleasure and joy originated from the Evil One. 
Thus to Christianity the Latin Cross has been the symbol 
of misery and the concrete conception of Christian Ideal is 
the agonised Face of the Old Masters. This dismal verity 
was exemplified afresh by the melancholy poster which 
was recently scattered broadcast over England by the 
National Mission engineered by the Bishop of London. 
Even the Mexican cross, consisting of four hearts vis a vis 
(Fig. D)—a form which occurs sometimes in Europe—has 
been daubed with imaginary gore, and with reference to 
this inoffensive emblem the author of The Cross : Heathen 
and Christian complacently writes : " The lady to whom I 
have just alluded considers (and I think with great pro 
priety) that the circle of crosses formed by groups of four 
hearts represents hearts sacrificed to the gods ; the dot on 
each signifying blood ".2 

But we shall meet with these same dots on prehistoric 
British cross-coins as also on the " spindlle whorls " of the 

1 This name will subsequently be traced to Ores, the son of Jupiter, to 
whom the Cretans assigned their origin, 
p. 21. 


 106 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


III.] 


A TALE OP TEOY 


107 


most ancient Troy, and it will be seen that, apart from 
the word svastika which intrinsically means it is well, 


Ck 

ça 

<a 


. d o 


fit C, 

ft ft 


EARLY CELTIC. 
ISLE oi1 MAN AND IKELAND 


V, 

t* o, 

Î: 


EARLY CELTIC 
BKITTANY 


CALLERHISH, HEBRIDES, restored · 
(380 feet in length.) 


ETBURIA CRETE MEXICO MEXICO 

B. c· ·°· 
FIG. 15.—From The Cross : Heathen and Christian (Brock, M.). 

the svastika or pre-Christian cross was an emblem not of 
Melancholia but Joy. The English word joy and the French 
word jeu have, I think, been derived from Jou, just as jovial 
is traceable from Jove, and jocund to Jock or Jack. Pagans 


were the children of Joy and worshipped with a joyful 
noise before the Lord, and with sacred jeux or games. 
The word cross is in all probability the same as charis 
which means charity, and akin to chrestos which means 
good. Ores, the son of Jou, after whom the Cretans were 
termed Eteocretes, is an elementary form of Christopher, 
and the burning cross with which the legends state Christo 
pher was tortured by being branded on the brow was more 
probably the Christofer or Jack—the Fiery Cross, with 
which irresistible talisman the clansmen of Albany were 
summoned together. Similarly the solar wheel of Katherine 
or The Pure One was supposed by the mediaeval monks— 
whose minds were permanently bent on melancholia and 
torture—to have been some frightful implement of knives 
and spikes by which Kate or Kitt, the Pure Maiden, was 
torn into pieces. It will be seen in due course that almost 
every single " torture " sign of the supposed martyrs was 
in reality the pre-Christian emblem of some pagan divinity 
whence the saintly legends were ignorantly and mistakenly 
evolved. 

When the Saxon monks came into power, in the manner 
characteristic of their race, they "tarried" the old British 
monasteries and sacred mounds, bringing to light many 
curious and extraordinary things. At St. Albans they 
overthrew and filled up all the subterranean crypts of the 
ancient city as well as certain labyrinthine passages which 
extended even under the bed of the river. The most world- 
famous labyrinth was that at Gnossus which has not yet 
been uncovered, but every Etrurian place of any import 
had its accompanying catacombs, and in the chapter on 
" Dene holes " we shall direct attention to corresponding 
labyrinths which remain intact in England even to-day. 


 108 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND. 


[CHAP. 


When pillaging at St. Albans the Saxons found not only 
anchors, oars, and parts of ships, imputing that St. Albans 
was once a port, but they also uncovered the foundations of 
"a vast palace". "Here," says Wright,1 "they found a 
hollow in the wall like a cupboard in which were a number 
of books and rolls, which were written in ancient characters 
and language that could only be read by one learned monk 
named Unwona. He declared that they were written in 
the ancient British language, that they contained ' the in 
vocations and rites of the idolatrous citizens of Waertam- 
ceaster,' with the exception of one which contained the 
authentic life of St. Albans." And as the Abbot before 
mentioned " diligently turned up the earth " where the 
ruins of Verulamium appeared, he found many other inter 
esting things—pots and amphoras elegantly formed of 
pottery turned on the lathe, glass vessels, ruins of temples, 
altars overturned, idols, and various kinds of coins. 

Many of the jewels and idols then uncovered remained 
long in the possession of the Abbey, and are scheduled in 
the Ecclesiastical inventories together with a memorandum 
of the human weaknesses against which each object was 
supposed to possess a talismanic value. Thus Pegasus or 
Bellerophon is noted as food for warriors, giving them 
boldness and swiftness in flight ; Andromeda as affording 
power of conciliating love between man and woman ; 
Hercules slaying a lion, as a singular defence to combatants. 
The figure of Mercury on a gem rendered the possessor 
wise and persuasive ; a dog and a lion on the same stone 
was a sovereign remedy against dropsy and the pestilence ; 
and so on and so forth. 

" I am convinced," says Wright, " that a large portion 

1 Wright, T., Essays on Archeeological Subjects, vol. i., p. 273. 


III.] 


A TALE OP TEOY 


109 


of the reliques of saints shown in the Middle Ages, were 
taken from the barrows or graves of the early population 
of the countries in which they were shown. It was well 
understood that those mounds were of a sepulchral char 
acter, and there were probably few of them which had not 
a legend attached. When the earlier Christian mission 
aries and the later monks of Western Europe wished to 
consecrate a site their imagination easily converted the 
tenant of the lonely mound into a primitive saint—the 
tumulus was ransacked and the bones were found—and 
the monastery or even a cathedral was erected over the 
site which had been consecrated by the mystics rites of 
an earlier age." * After purification by a special form 
of exorcism the pagan pictures were accepted into Christian 
service, the designs being construed into Christian doctrines 
far from the purpose of the things themselves. 

Among the monkish loot at St. Albans was an ancient 
cameo herewith reproduced. This particular jewel was 
supposed to be of great efficacy and was entitled Roadman ; 
"perhaps," suggests Wright, "another mode of spelling 
cadmeus or cameus ". But in view of the fact that Alban 
means all good, it was more probably the picture of a sacred 
figure which the natives recognised as the original Kaad- 
man, i.e., Guidman or the Good Man.2 The jewels found 

1 Wright, T., Essays on Archaological Subjects, vol. i., p. 283. 

s In Albany the memory of " the gudeman " lingered nntil late, and 

according to Scott : " In many parishes of Scotland there was suffered to 

exist a certain portion of land, called the gttdeman's croft, which was never 

ploughed or cultivated, but suffered to remain waste, like the Temenos of a 

pagan temple. Though it was not expressly avowed, no one doubted that 

the goodman's croft ' was set apart for some evil being ; in fact, that it 

was the portion of the arch-fiend himself, whom our ancestors distinguished 

by a name which, while it was generally understood, could not, it was 


 110 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


at St. Albans being unquestionably Gnostic it is quite 
within the bounds of probability that the Kaadman seal 
was an " idol " of what the Gnostics entitled Adam Caedmon 
or Adam Kadman. According to C. W. King the Adam 

Kadman or Primitive Man of 
Gnosticism, was the generative 
and conceptive principle of life 
and heat, Who manifested 
Himself in ten emanations or 
types of all creation.1 In Irish 
cad means holy ; good and cad 
are the same word, whence 
Kaadman and the surnames 
C adman and Goodman were 
probably once one. The word 

Fio. 16.-" Kaadman." From Α1*>οη or ^ion means as it 

Essays on Archœoiogicai Sub- stands all good, or all well, 
jects (Wright, T.). an(j the river Beane, like the 
river Boyne—over whom presided the beneficent goddess 
Boanna—means bien, good, or bene well. The Hereford 
shire Beane was alternatively known as the river Beneficia, 

supposed, be offensive to the stern inhabitant of the regions of despair. 
This was so general a custom that the Church published an ordinance 
against it as an impious and blasphemous usage. 

"This singular custom sunk before the efforts of the clergy in the seven 
teenth century ; but there must still be many alive who, in childhood, have 
been taught to look with wonder on knolls and patches of ground left un 
cultivated, because, whenever a ploughshare entered the soil, the elementary 
spirits were supposed to testify their displeasure by storm and thunder." * 

* Demonology and Witchcraft. 

1 These Sources of Life or vessels of Almighty Power were described as. 
Crown, Wisdom, Prudence, Magnificence, Severity, Beauty, Victory, Glory, 
Foundation, Empire. Cf. King, C. W-, The Gnostics and their Remains, 
p. 34. 


III.] 


A TALE OF TROY 


111 


a name which to the modern etymologer working on 
standard lines confessedly " yields a curious conundrum ",1 

The Anglo-Saxon Abbot of St. Albans after having as 
sured himself that the idolatrous books before-mentioned 
proved that the pagan British worshipped Phoebus, and 
Mercury consigned them to the flames with the same self- 
complacency as the Monk Patrick burnt 180—some say 
300—MSS. relative to the Irish Druids. These being 
deemed " unfit to be transmitted to posterity," posterity is 
proportionately the poorer. 

Phoebus was the British Heol, Howel, or the Sun, and 
Mercury, was, as Csesar said, the Hercules of Britain. 
The snake-encircled club of Kaadman is the equivalent to 
the caduceus or snake-twined rod of Mercury ; the human 
image in the hand of Kaadman implies with some pro 
bability that " Kaadman " was the All Father or the 
Maker of Mankind. We shall see subsequently that the 
Maker of All was personified as Michael or Mickle, and 
that St. Mickle and All Angels or All Saints stood for the 
Great Muckle leading the Mickle—" many a mickel makes 
a muckle ". St. Michael is the patron saint of Gorham- 
bury, a suburb of St. Albans, and in Christian Art St. 
Michsel is almost invariably represented with the scales 
and other attributes of Anubis, the Mercury of Egypt. 
Both Anubis of Egypt and Mercury of Eome were con 
nected with the dog, and Anubis was generally represented 
with the head of a dog or jackal. In The Gnostics and 
their Bemains, King illustrates on plate F a dog or jackal- 
headed man which is subscribed with the name MICHAH, 
and it is probable the word make is closely associated with 
Micah or Mike. 

1 Johnston, Rev. J. B., Place-names of England and Wales. 


 112 


AEOHAIO ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


Eastern tradition states that St. Christopher, or St. 
Kit, was a Canaanitish giant, 12 feet in stature, having the 
head of a dog. The kilted figure repre 
sented in the Gnostic cameo here illustrated, 
is seemingly that same Kitman, or Kaad- 
man, Bandog, or Good Dog, and chien, the 
French for dog, Irish chuyn, may be equated 
with geon, géant, or giant. The worship of 
the chien was carried in the Near East to 
such a pitch that a great city named Cyno- 
polis or Dog-Town existed in its honour. 
The priests of Cynopolis, who maintained 
a golden image of their divine kuon or chien, 
termed themselves Kuons, and these kuons or dog-ministers 
were, according to some authorities, the original Cohen 
family. A beautiful relievo of Adonis and his dog has 


ANUBIS.' 

PIG. 17. 


PIG. 18.—Prom An Essai/on Ancient Coins, Medals, and Gems (Walsh, B.). 

been unearthed at Albano in Etruria ; Fig. 13 is accom 
panied by bandogs (?) ; Albania in Asia Minor is mentioned 


in·] 


A TALE OF TEOY 


113 


by Maundeville as abounding in fierce dogs, and in Albion, 
where we still retain memories of the Dog Days, it will be 
shown to be probable that sacred dogs were maintained 
near London at the mysteriously named Isle of Dogs. 
Until the past fifty years the traditions of this island at 
Barking were so uncanny that the site remained inviolate 
and unbuilt over. Whence, I think, it may originally 
have been a kennel or Gynopolis, where the kuons of the 
Cantians or Candians were religiously maintained.1 

We shall deal more fully with the cult and symbolism 
of the dog in a future chapter entitled " The Hound of 
Heaven ". Not only in England, but also in Ireland, 
place-names having reference to the dog are so persistent 
that Sir J. Ëhys surmised the dog was originally a totem 
in that country. 

In connection with chuyn, the Irish for dog, it may be 
noted that one of the titles of St. Patrick—whence all 
Irishmen are known as Paddies—was Taljean or Talchon, 
and moreover that Crete was alternatively known to the 
ancients as Telchinea. In Cornish and in Welsh tal 
meant high ; in old English it meant valiant, whence 
Shakespeare says, " Thou'rt a tall fellow " ; in the Medi 
terranean the Maltese twil ; Arabic twil meant tall and 
hence we may conclude that the present predominant 
meaning of our tall was once far spread, Talchon mean 
ing either tall geon or tall chein, i.e., dog-headed giant 
Christopher. 

The outer inscription around Fig. 18 is described as 
" altogether barbarous and obscure," but as far as can be 

1 " The origin of the name is quite unknown to history. . . . Possibly 
because so many dogs were drowned in the Thames here."—Johnston, Eev. 
J. B., Place-names of England, p. 321. 
8 


 114 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


deciphered the remaining words—" a corruption of Hebrew 
and Greek—signify 'the sun or star has shone ' "-1 I have 
already suggested a connection between John, geon, chien, 
shine, slione, sheen, and sun. 

It is probable that not only the literature of the saints 
but also many of the national traditions of our own and 
other lands arose from the misinterpretation of the sym 
bolic signs and figures which preceded writing. The 
"diabolical idols" of Britain, as Gildas admitted, far ex 
ceeded those in Egypt ; similarly in Crete, the fantastic 
hieroglyphics not yet read or understood far out-Egypted 
Egypt. The Christian Fathers fell foul with Gnostic 
philosophers for the supposed insult of representing Christ 
oil the Cross with the head of an ass ; but it is quite likely 
that the Gnostic intention—the ass being the symbol of 
meekness—was to portray Christ's meekness, and that no 
insult was intended. A notable instance of the way in 
which ignorant and facetious aliens misconstrued the 
meaning of national or tribal emblems has been preserved 
in the dialogue-of a globe-trotting Greek who lived in the 
second century of the present era. The incident, as self- 
recorded by the chatty but unintelligent Greek, is Englished 
by Sir John Ehys as follows : " The Celts call Heracles in 
the language of their country Ogmios, and they make 
very strange representations of the god. With them he is 
an extremely old man, with a bald forehead and his few 
remaining hairs quite grey ; his skin is wrinkled and em 
browned by the sun to that degree of swarthiness which 
is characteristic of men who have grown old in a seafaring 
life : in fact, you would fancy him rather to be a Charon 


1 Walsh, E., An Essay on Ancient Coins, Medals, mid Gems, p. 58. 


III.] 


A TALE OF TKOY 


115 


or Japetus, one of the dwellers in Tartarus, or anybody 
rather than Heracles. But although he is of this descrip 
tion he is, nevertheless, attired like Heracles, for he has 
on him the lion's skin, and he has a club in his right hand ; 
he is duly equipped with a quiver, and his left hand dis 
plays a bow stretched out : in these respects he is quite 
Heracles. It struck me, then, that the Celts took such 
liberties with the appearance of Heracles in order to insult 
the gods of the Greeks and avenge themselves on him in 
their painting, because he once made a raid on their terri 
tory, when in search of the herds of Geryon he harrassed 
most of the western peoples. I have not, however, 
mentioned the most whimsical part of the picture, for this 
old man Heracles draws after him a great number of men 
bound by their ears, and the bonds are slender cords 
wrought of gold and amber, like necklaces of the most 
beautiful make ; and although they are dragged on by such 
weak ties, they never try to run away, though they could 
easily do it : nor do they at all resist or struggle against 
them, planting their feet in the ground and throwing their 
weight back in the direction contrary to that in which 
they are being led. Quite the reverse : they follow with 
joyful countenance in a merry mood, and praising him 
who leads them pressing on one and all, and slackening 
their chains in their eagerness to proceed : in fact, they 
look like men who would be grieved should they be set 
free. But that which seemed to me the most absurd thing 
of all I will not hesitate also to tell you : the painter, you 
see, had nowhere to fix the ends of the cords, since the 
right hand of the god held the club and his left the bow ; 
so he pierced the tip of his tongue, and represented the 
people as drawn on from it, and the god turns a smiling 


 Il1 

ill 


116 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


III.] 


A TALE OF TROY 


117 


countenance towards those whom he is leading. Now I 
stood a long time looking at these things, and wondered, 
perplexed and indignant. But a certain Celt standing by, 
who knew something about our ways, as he showed by 
speaking good Greek—a man who was quite a philosopher, 
I talee it, in local matters—said to me, ' Stranger, I will tell 
you the secret of the painting, for you seem very much 
troubled about it. We Celts do not consider the power of 
speech to be Hermes, as you Greeks do, but we represent 
it by means of_ Heracles, because he is much stronger than 
Hermes. Nor should you wonder at his being represented 
as an old man, for the power of words is wont to show its 
perfection in the aged ; for your poets are no doubt right 
when they say that the thoughts of young men turn with 
every wind, and that age has something wiser to tell us 
than youth. And so it is that honey pours from the 
tongue of that Nestor of yours, and the Trojan orators 
speak with one voice of the delicacy of the lily, a voice 
well covered, so to say, with bloom ; for the bloom of 
flowers, if my memory does not fail me, has the term lilies 
applied to it. So if this old man Heracles, by the power of 
speech, draws men after him, tied to his tongue by their 
ears, you have no reason to wonder, as you must be aware 
of the close connection between the ears and the tongue. 
Nor is there any injury done him by this latter being 
pierced ; for I remember, said he, learning while among 
you some comic iambics, to the effect that all chattering 
fellows have the tongue bored at the tip. In a word, we 
Celts are of opinion that Heracles himself performed every 
thing by the power of words, as he was a wise fellow, and 
that most of his compulsion was effected by persuasion. 
His weapons, I take it, are his utterances, which are sharp 


and well-aimed, swift to pierce the mind ; and you too say 
that words have wings.' Thus far the Celt." 1 

The moral of this incident may be applied to the 
svastika cross, an ubiquitous symbol or trade-mark which 
Andrew Lang surmised might after all have merely been 
" a bit of natural ornament ". The sign of the cross will be 
more fully considered subsequently, but meanwhile one 
may regard the svastika as the trade-mark of Troy. The 
Cornish for cross was treus, and among the ancients the 
cross was the symbol of truce.2 The Sanscrit name 
svastika is composed of su, meaning soft, gentle, pleasing, 
or propitious, and asti (Greek esto), meaning being. It 
was universally the symbol of the Good Being or St. Albion, 
or St. All Well ; it retains its meaning in its name, and 
was the counterpart to the Dove which symbolisées Inno 
cence, Peace, Simplicity, atìd Goodwill. There is no doubt 
that the two emblems were the insignia of the prehistoric 
Giants, Titans, or followers of the Good Sun or Shine, or 
Sunshine, men who trekked from one or several centres, 
to India, Tartary, China, and Japan. Moreover, these 
trekkers whom we shall trace in America and Polynesia, 
were seafaring and not overland folk, otherwise we should 
not find the Cyclopean buildings with their concomitant 
symbols in Africa, Mexico, Peru, and the islands of the 
Pacific. 

The svastika in its simpler form is the cross of St. 
Andrew, Scotch Hender or Hendrie. In British the 
epithet hen meant old or ancient, so that the cross of 
Hen drie is verbally the cross of old or ancient Drew, Droia, 

1 Rhys, Sir 3., Celtic Heathendom, pp. 14-16. 
British children still cross their forefingers as a sign of treus, pax, or 


 il 


118 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


or Troy. This is also historically true, for the svastika 
has been found under the ruins of the ten or dozen Troys 
which occupy the immemorial site near Smyrna. 

Our legends state that Bru or Brut, after tarrying awhile 
at Alba in Etruria, travelled by sea into Gaul, where he 
founded the city of Tours. Thence after sundry bickers 
with the Gauls he passed onward into Britain which ac 
quired its name from Brute, its first Duke or Leader. We 
shall connote Britannia, whose first official portraits are 
here given, with the Cretan Goddess Britoinart, which 
meant in Greek " sweet maiden ". One of these Britannia 
figures has her finger to her lips, or head, in seemingly the 
same attitude as the consort of the Giant Dog, and the 
interpretation is probably identical with that placed by Dr. 
Walsh upon that gnostic jewel. " Among the Egyptians," 
he says, " it was deemed impossible to worship the deity 
in a manner worthy by words, adopting the sentiments of 
Plato—that it was difficult to find the nature of the Maker 
and Father of the Universe, or to convey an idea of him 
to the people by a verbal description—and they imagined 
therefore the deity Harpocrates who presided over silence 
and was always represented as inculcating it by holding his 
finger on his lips ". We know from Caesar that secrecy 
was a predominant feature of the Drui or Druidic system, 
and for this custom the reasons are thus given in a Bardic 
triad : " The Three necessary but reluctant duties of the 
bards of the Isle of Britain : Secrecy, for the sake of peace 
and the public good ; invective lamentation demanded by 
justice; and the unsheathing of the sword against the 
lawless and the predatory ". 

Britain is in Welsh Prydain, and, according to some 
Welsh scholars, the root of Prydain is discovered in the 


III.] 


A TALE OF TEOY 


119 


epithet pryd, which signifies precious, dear, fair, or beauti 
ful. This, assumed Thomas, " was at a very early date 
accepted as a surname in the British royal family of the 
island ",1 I think this Welsh scholar was right and that not 
only Britomart the " sweet maiden," but also St. Bride, 
" the Mary of the Gael," were the archetypes of Britannia ; 
St. Bride is alternatively St. Brighit, whence, in all pro 
bability, the adjective bright. At Brightlingsea in Essex 
is a Sindry or Sin derry island (?) ; in the West of England 
many villages have a so-called ' sentry field,' and un 
doubtedly these were originally the saintuaries, centres, and 
sanctuaries of the districts. To take sentry meant origin 
ally to seek refuge, and the primary meaning of terrible 
was sacred. Thus we find even in mediaeval times, West 
minster alluded to by monkish writers as a locus terribilis 
or sacred place. The moots or courts at Brightlingsea 
were known as Brodhulls, whence it would appear that the 
Moothill or Toothill of elsewhere was known occasionally 
as a Brod or Brutus Hill. 

Some of the Britannias on page 120 have the aspect of 
young men rather than maidens, and there is no doubt 
that Brut was regarded as androginous or indeterminately 
as youth or maiden. We shall trace him or her at Broad- 
stairs, a corruption of Bridestow, at Bradwell, at Bradport, 
at Bridlington, and in very many more directions. From 
Pryd come probably the words pride, prude, and proud, 
and in the opinion of our neighbours these qualities are 
among our national defects. Claiming a proud descent we 
are admittedly a dour people, and our neighbours deem us 
triste, yet, nevertheless trustworthy, and inclined to truce. 

On the shield of one of the first Britannias is a bull's 

1 Britannia Aiitiquissima, p. 4. 


 . fiate 3. 


JC 


πι.] 


A TALE OF TEOY 


121 


head, whence it may be assumed the bull was anciently as 
nowadays associated with John Bull. At British festivals 
our predecessors used to antic in the guise of a bull, and 
the bull-headed actor was entitled " The Broad ". The 
bull was intimately connected with Crete ; Britomart was 
the Lady of All Creatures, and seemingly the brutes in 
general were named either after her or Brut, The British 
word for bull was tarw, the Spanish is toro ; in Etruria we 
find the City of Turin or Torino using as its cognisance a 
rampant bull ; and I have little doubt that the fabulous 
Minotaur was a physical brute actually maintained in the 
terrible recesses of some yet-to-be-discovered labyrinth. 
The subterranean mausoleums of the Sacred Bulls of 
Egypt are among the greatest of the great monuments of 
that country ; the bull-fights of Spain were almost without 
doubt the direct descendants of sacred festivals, wherein 
the slaying of the Mithraic Bull was dramatically presented, 
but in Crete itself the bull-fights seem to have been "amic- 
able gymnastic games wherein the most marvellous feats 
of agility were displayed. Illustrations of these graceful 
and intrepid performances are still extant on Cretan frieze 
and vase, the colours being as fresh to-day as when laid 
on 3000 years ago. 

In Britain the national sport seems to have been bull- 
baiting, and the dogs associated with that pastime presum 
ably were bull-dogs. Doggedness is one of the ingrained 
qualities of our race ; of recent years the bull-dog has been 
promoted into symbolic evidence of our tenacity and 
doggedness. Our mariners are sea-dogs, and the modern 
bards vouch us to be in general boys of the bull-dog breed. 
The mascot bull-dogs in the shops at this moment serve 
the same end as the mascot emblems and mysterious 


FIG. 19.—From An Essay on Medals (Pinkerton, J.). 


 li ··*!·· 


t·. 


122 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


hieroglyphics of the ancients, and the Egyptian who 
carried a scarabseus or an Eye of Horus, acted without 
doubt from the same simple, homely impulse as drives the 
modern Englishman to hang up the picture of a repulsive 
animal subscribed, " What we have we'll hold ". 

The prehistoric dog or jackal symbolised not tenacity or 
courage, but the maker of tracks, for the well-authenticated 
reason that dogs were considered the best guides to practic 
able courses in the wilderness. Bull-headed men and dog- 
headed men are represented constantly in Cretan Art, and 
these in all likelihood symbolised the primeval bull-dogs 
who trekked into so many of the wild and trackless places of 
the world. 

The Welsh have a saying, " Tra Mor, Tra Brython," 
which means, " as long as there is sea so long will there be 
Britons ". Centuries ago, Diodorus of Sicily mentioned the 
Kelts as " having an immemorial taste for foreign expedi 
tions and adventurous wars, and he goes on to describe 
them as ' irritable, prompt to fight, in other respects simple 
and guileless,' thus, according with Strabo, who sums up 
the Celtic temperament as being simple and spontaneous, 
willingly taking in hand the cause of trie oppressed ",1 

Diodorus also mentions the Kelts as clothed sometimes 
" in tissues of variegated colours," which calls to mind the 
tartans of the Alban McAlpines, 'lans, Jocks, Sanders, 
Hendries, and others of that ilk. 

The dictionaries define the name Andrew as meaning 
a mem, whence androgynous and anthropology ; in Cornish 
antrou meant lord or master, and these early McAndrews 
were doubtless masterly, tyrannical, dour, derring-doers, 
inconceivably daring in der-doing. . To try means make 

1 Cf. Thomas, J. J., Britannia Antiguiss'tma, pp. 84, 85. 


III.] 


A TALE OP TBOY 


123 


an effort, and we speak proverbially of "working like a 
Trojan ". The corollary is that tired feeling which must 
have sorely tried the tyros OB young recruits. After daring 
and trying and tiring, these dour men eventually turned 
adre, which is Cornish for homeward. Whether their 
hearts were turned Troy-ward in the Mgeart or to some 
small unsung British tre or Troynovant, who can tell ? 
"I am now in Jerusalem where Christ was born," wrote a 
modern argonaut to his mother, but, he added, " I wish I 
were in Wigan where I was born." 


 VI 


[CHAP, iv.] 


ALBION 


125 


CHAPTEE IV 

ALBION 

"The Anglo-Saxons, down to a late period, retained the heathenish 
Yule, as all Teutonic Christians did the sanctity of Easter-tide ; and from 
these two, the Yule-boar and Yule-bread, the Easter pancake, Easter sword, 
Easter fire, and Easter dance could not be separated. As faithfully were 
perpetuated the name and, in many cases, the observances of midsummer. 
New Christian feasts, especially of saints, seem purposely as well as ac 
cidentally to have been made to fall on heathen holidays. Churches often 
rose precisely where a heathen god or his sacred tree had been pulled down ; 
and the people trod their old paths to the accustomed site : sometimes the 
very walls of the heathen temple became those of the church ; and cases 
occur in which idol-images still found a place in a wall of the porch, or 
were set up outside the door, as at Bamberg Cathedral where lie Sclavic- 
heathen figures of animals inscribed with runes."—GBIMM. 

OUR Chronicles state that when Brute and his companions 
reached these shores, " at that time the name of the island 
was Albion". According to tradition Alba, Albion, or 
Alban, whence the place-name Albion, was a fairy giant, but 
this, in the eyes of current scholarship, is a fallacy, and alba 
is merely an adjective meaning white, whence wherever 
met with it is so translated. But because there happens 
to be a relatively small tract of white cliffs in the neigh 
bourhood of Dover, it is a barren stretch of imagination 
to suppose that all Britain thence derived its prehistoric 
title, and in any case the question—why did alba mean 
white ?—would remain unanswered. The Highlanders of 
Scotland still speak of their country as Albany or Alban ; 

124 


the national cry of Scotland was evidently at one time 
" Albani," and even as late as 1138, " the army of the 
Scots with one voice vociferated their native distinction, 
and the shout of Albani ! Albani ! ascended even to the 
heavens.".1 

Not only by the Eomans but likewise by the Greeks, 
Britain was known as Albion, and one may therefore con 
jecture that the white-cliff theory is an unsound fancy. 

Strabo alludes to a certain district generally supposed to 
be Land's End, under the name " Kalbion,"2 a word mani 
festly having some radical relation to " Albion ". By an 
application of the comparative method to place-names and 
proper-names, I arrived several years ago at the seemingly 
only logical conclusion that in many directions ok and its 
variants meant great or mighty. On every hand there is 
presumptive evidence of this fact, and I have since found 
that Bryant and also Faber, working by wholly independ 
ent methods, reached a very similar conclusion. My 
modus operandi, with many of its results, having been 
already published,3 it is unnecessary here to restate them, 
and I shall confine myself to new and corroborative evid 
ence. 

In addition to great or mighty it is clear that the radical 
in question meant high. The German trisagion of hoch ! 
hoch ! hoch ! is still equivalent to the English high ! high ! 
high ! the Swedish for high is hog, the Dutch is oog, and 
in Welsh or British high is uch. It is presumably a trace 
of the gutteral ch that remains in our modern spelling of 
high with a gh now mute, but the primordial Welsh uch 

1 Toland, History of the Druids, p. 428. 

2 Cf. Poste, B., Britannic Besearches, p. 110. 

3 The Lost Language of Symbolism, 1912. 


 liti» 
li 


126 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


IV.] 


ALBION 


127 


has also become the English ok, as in Devonshire where 
O&ment Hill is said to be the Anglicised form of udì 
mynydd, the Welsh or British for high hill. I shall, thus, 
in this volume treat the syllable '& or 'g as carrying the 
predominant and apparently more British meaning of high. 
That the sounds 'g and 'k were invariably commutable 
may be inferred from innumerable place-names such as 
O^bourne St. Andrew, alternatively printed O&ebourne, 
and that the same mutability applies to words in general 
might be instanced from any random page of Dr. Murray's 
New English Dictionary. We may thus assume that 
"Kalbion," meant Great Albion or High Albion, and it 
remains to analyse Alba or Albion. 

B and P being interchangeable, the ba of Alba is the 
same word as pa, which, according to Max Müller, meant 
primarily feeder ; papa is in Turkish baba, and in Mexico 
also ba meant the same as our infantile pa, i.e., feeder or 
father. In paab, the British for pope, one p has become b 
the other has remained constant. 

The inevitable interchange of p and b is conspicuously 
evident in the place-name—Battersea, alternatively known 
as Patrickseye, and on. that little ea, eye, or eyot in the 
Thames at one time, probably, clustered the padres or 
paters who ministered to the church of St. Peter—the 
architypal Pater—whose shrine is now Westminster Abbey. 

It is a custom of children to express their superlatives by 
duplications, such as pretty pretty, and in the childhoodΛ 

1 The earliest example of Irish Bardism is to the following effect :— 
I invoke thee Erin 
Brilliant Brilliant sea, 
Fertile Fertile Hill, 
Wavy Wavy Wood 
Flowing Flowing stream, 
Fishy Fishy Lake, etc. 


of the world this habit was seemingly universal. Thus pa, 
the Ayran root meaning primarily feeder, has been dupli 
cated into papa, which is the same word as pope, defined as 
indicating the father of a church. In A.D. 600 the British 
Hierarchy protested against the claims of the " paab " of 
Borne to be considered " the Father of Fathers," 1 and 
there is little doubt that Pope is literally pa-pa or Father 
Father. In Stow's time there existed in London a so- 
called "Papey"—"a proper house," wherein sometime 
was kept a fraternity of St. Charity and St. John. This 
was, as Stow says, known as the Papey;2 "for in some 
language priests are called papes ". 

In the Hebrides the place-names Papa Stour, Papa 
Westray, and so forth are officially recognised as the seats 
of prehistoric padres, patricks, or papas. Skeat imagines 
that the words pap meaning food, ana pap meaning teat or 
breast, are alike " of infantine origin due to the repetition 
of pa pa in calling for food ". They may be so, but to 
understand the childhood of the world one must stoop to 
infantile levels. 

In Celtic alp or ailpe meant high, and also rock. Among 
the ancients rock was a generally recognised symbol of 
the undecaying immutable High Father, and in seemingly 
every tongue will be found puns such as pierre and pere, 
Peter the pater, and Petra the Bock. The papacy of Peter 
is founded traditionally upon St. Petra, the Bock of Ages, 
" Upon this Eock will I found my Church," and the St. 
Bock of this country, whose festival was celebrated upon 
Bock Monday, was assumedly a survival of pagan pre- 
Christian symbolism. 

1 Haslam, W., Perron Zabuloe, p. 8. 

2 Survey of London, Ev. Lib., p. 132. 


 (It li 


ι, 1 
\ 


128 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


IV.] 


ALBION 


129 


FIG. 20.—From Analysis of Ancient Mythology (Bryant, J.). 


In the group of coins here illustrated it will be noticed 
that the Mater Deorum is conventionally throned upon a 
rock. " Unto Thee will I cry, O Lord iny Bock," wrote the 
Psalmist, and the inhabitants of Albion probably once 
harmonised in their ideas with the Kafirs of India, who 
still say of the stones they worship, " This stands for God, 
but we know not his shape ". In Cornwall, within living 
memory, the Druidic stones were believed in some mysteri 
ous way to be sacred to existence, and the materialistic 
theory which attributes ajl primitive worship to fear or 
self-interest, will find it hard to account satisfactorily for 
stone worship. Cold, impassive stone, neither feeds, nor 
warms, nor clothes, yet, as Toland says : " 'Tis certain that 
all nations meant by these stones without statues the 
eternal stability and power of the Deity, and that He could 
not be represented by any similitude, nor under any figure 
whatsoever". 

It is asserted by one of the classical authors that stones 
were considered superior in two respects, first in being 
not subject to death, and second in not being harmful. 
That Albion was harmless and beneficent is implied by the 
adjectives bien, bonny, benevolent, bounteous, and benignant. 
That St. Alban was similarly conceived is implied by the 
statement that this Lord's son of the City of Verulam was 
" a well disposed and seemly young man," who " always 
loved to do hospitality granting meat and drink wherever 
necessary". That St. Alban was not only Alpa, the All 
Feeder, but that he was also Alpe, the High One and the 
Bock whence gushed a "living water," is clear from the 
statement : " Then at the last they carne to the hill where 
this holy Alban should finish and end his life, in which 
place lay a great multitude of people nigh dead for heat of 


 130 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


the sun, and for thirst. And then anon the wind blew 
afresh, cool, and also at the feet of this holy man Alban 
sprang up a fair well whereof all the people marvelled to 
the cold water spring up in the hot sandy ground, and 


see 


FIG 21.—Christ and His Apostles, under the form of Lambs or of Sheep. 
(Latin sculpture ; first centuries of the Church.) 

From Christian Iconography (Didron). 

so high on the top of an hill, which water flowed all about 
and in large streams running down the hill. And then 
the people ran to the water and drank so that they were 
well refreshed, and then by the merits of St. Alban their 
thirst was clean quenched, But yet for all the great good- 


IV.] 


ALBION 


131 


ness that was showed they thirsted strongly for the blood 
of this holy man."1 

From this and other miraculous incidents in the life of 
St. Alban it would appear that the original compilers had 
in front of them some cartoons, cameos, or symbolic pic 
tures of " The Kaadman," which had probably been re 
covered from the ruins of the ancient city. The authenticity 
of St. Alban's " life " is further implied by the frequency 
with which allusions are made to the blazing heat of the 
sun, a sunshine so great, so conspicuous, that it burnt and 
scalded the feet of the sightseers. The Latin for yellow, 
which is the colour of the golden sun, is galbinus, a word 
which like Kalbion resolves into 'g albinus, the high or 
mighty Albanus. From galbinus the French authorities 
derive their word jaune, but jaune is simply Joan, Jeanne, 
shine, shone, or sheen. 

In Hebrew Albanah or Lebanah properly signifies the 
moon, and albon means strength and power, but more 
radically these terms may be connoted with our English 
surname Alibone and understood as either holy good, 
wholly good, or all good. 

Yellow is not.only the colour of the golden sun, but it is 
similarly that of the moon, and at the festivals of the yellow 
Lights of Heaven our ancestors most assuredly halloe'd, 
yelled, yowled, and yowled. The Cornish for the sun is 
haul, the Breton is heol, the Welsh is hayl, and until re 
cently in English churches the congregation used at Yule 
Tide to hail the day with shouts or yells of Yole, Yole, 
Yole ! or Ule, Ule, Ule ! The festival of Yule is a reunion, 
a coming together in amity of the All, and as in Welsh 
y meant the, the words whole, and Yule were perhaps 
1 Golden Legend, 111, 248. 


 132 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


originally ye all or the all. An alloy is a mixture or 
medley, anything allowed is according to law, and hallow 
is the same word as holy. 

The word Alban is pronounced Olbun, and in Welsh Ol, 
meant not only all, but also the Supreme Being. The 
Dictionaries translate the Semitic El as having meant God 
or Power, and it is so rendered when found amid names 
such as BetheZ, Uriei, UZeazar,1 etc. But among the 
Semitic races the deity El was subdivided into a number 
of Baalim or secondary divinities emanating from El, and 
it would thus seem that although the Phoenicians may 
have forgotten the fact, El meant among them what All 
does amongst us. According to Andersen, El was primarily 
Israel's God and only later did He come to be regarded as 
the God of the Universe—"Rising in dignity as the 
national idea was enlarged, El became more just and 
righteous, more and more superior to all the other gods, 
till at last He was defined to be the Supreme Euler of 
Nature, the One and only Lord ".2 

The motto of Cornwall is " One and All," and among 
the Celtic races there is still current a monotheistic folk 
song which is supposed to be the relic of a Druidic ritual 
or catechism. This opens with the question in chorus, 
" What is your one 0 " ? to which the answer is re 
turned :— 

One is all alone, 

And ever doth remain so. 

There figures in the Celtic memory a Saint Alien or St. 
Elwyn, and this " saint " may be modernised into St. 

1 Skeat postulates a mute vowel by deriving lazar or leper from Eleazer 
—He whom God assists. 

2 Extincl Civilisations of the East, p. 104. 


IV-] 


ALBION 


133 


"Alone" or St. "All one": his third variant Elian is 
equivalent to Holy Ane or Holy One.1 

The Greek philosophers entertained a maxim that Jove, 
Pluto, Phoebus, Bacchus, all were one and they accepted 
as a formula the phrase " All is one ". In India Brahma 
was entitled " The Eternal All " and in the Bhagavad Gita 
the Soul of the world is thus adored :— 

0 infinite Lord of Gods 1 the world's abode, 
Thou undivided art, o'er all supreme, 
Thou art the first of Gods, the ancient Sire, 
The treasure-house supreme of all the worlds. 
The Knowing and the Known, the highest seat. 
From Thee the All has sprung, O Boundless Form ! 
Varuna, Vazu, Agni, Yama thou, 
The Moon ; the Sire and Grandsire too of men. 
The infinite in power, of boundless force, 
The All thou dost embrace ; the " Thou art All ". 

Near Stonehenge there is a tumulus known nowadays 
as El barrow, and Salisbury Plain itself was once named 
Ellendune or Ellen Down. The Greeks or Hellenes claimed 
to be descendants of the Dodonian Ellan or Hellan, a per 
sonage whom they esteemed as the " Father of the First- 
bom Woman ". Ellan or Hellan was alternatively entitled 
Hellas, and in Greek the word alias meant " the one ". 

Tradition said that the Temple of Ellan at Dodona—a 
shrine which antedated the Greek race, and was erected 
by unknown predecessors—was founded by a Dove, one of 
two birds which flew from Thebes in Egypt. The super- 
sacred tree at Dodona, as in Persia and elsewhere, was the 
oak, and the rustling of the wind in the leaves of the oak 
was poetically regarded as the voice of the All-Father. 
The Hebrew for an oak tree is allon, elon, or aUah, and 

11 have a chapter of evidence in -MSS. supporting this suggestion. 


(I 


 134 AÜCHAIC ENGLAND [CHAP. 

Allah is the name under which many millions of our fellow- 
men worship The Alone. To this day the oak tree is 
sacred among the folk of Palestine,1 particularly one ancient 


Diana, the Moon, with a 
circular nimbus. (Ro 
man sculpture.) 


Mercury with a circular nim 
bus. (Roman sculpture.) 


Apollo as the Sun, adorned with the Sun, with rays issuing from 
nimbus, and crowned with seven the face, and a wheel-like 
rays. (Roman sculpture.) nimbus on the head. 

(Etruscan sculpture.) 

PIG. 22.—Prom Christian Iconography (Didron). 

specimen on the site of old Beyrut or Berut—a place-name 
which, as we shall see, may be connoted with Brut. 

B being invariably interchangeable with P, the Ban of 
Alban is the same as the Greek Pan.2 From Pan comes 

'Frazer, Sir J. G., Folklore in the Old Testament, iii., 45. 

2 Bulfinch put the horse before the cart when he wrote : " As the name 
of the god signifies all. Pan came to be considered a symbol of the uni 
verse and personification of nature." 


IV-] 


ALBION 


135 


the adjective pan meaning all, universal, so that Alban 
may perhaps be equated 
with Holy Pan. Hale 
also means healthy, and 
the circular halo symbol 
ising the glorious sun was 
used by the pagans long 
before it was adopted by 
Christianity. By the Ca- 
balists—who were indis 
tinguishable from the 
Gnostics—Ell was under 
stood to mean " the Most 
Luminous," II "the Om 
nipotent," Elo " the So 
vereign, the Excelsus," 
and Eloi " the Illuminator, 
the Most Effulgent ". 
Among the Greeks eie 
meant refulgent, and 
Helios was a title of 
Apollo or the Sun. 

The Peruvians named 
their Bona Dea Mama 
Allpa, whom they repre 
sented, like Ephesian Di 
ana, as having numerous 
breasts, and they regarded 
Mama Allpa as the dis 
penser of all human nou 
rishment. In Egypt pa meant ancestor, beginning, origin, 
and the Peruvian many-breasted Mama Allpa seemingly 


PIG. 23.—The statue of Diana of the 
Ephesians worshipped at Massilia. 

From Stonelienge (Barclay, E.). 


 136 


ABCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


meant just as it does in English, i.e., mother, All pa or 
All-feeder. 

It is important to note that the British Albion was not 
always considered as a male, but on occasions as the 
" Lady Albine "-1 

The Sabeans worshipped the many-breasted Artemis 
under the name Almaquah, which is radically alma, and 
the Greeks used the word alma as an adjective meaning 
nourishing. The river Almo near Home was seemingly 
named after the All Mother, for in 
this stream the Komans used cere 
moniously to bathe and purify the 
statue of Ma, the World Mother, 
whose consort was known as Pappas. 
Pappas is the Greek equivalent to 
Papa, and Ma or Mama meaning 
mother is so used practically all the 
world over. Skeat is contemptuous 
towards mama, describing it as " a 
mere repetition of ma an infantile syllable ; many other 
languages have something like it ". Not only all over 
Asia Minor but also in Burmah and Hindustan ma meant 
mother; in China mother is mi or mu, and in South 
America as in Chaldea and all over Europe mama meant 
mother ; Mammal is of course traceable to the same root, 
and it is evident that even were ma merely an infantile 
syllable it obviously carried far more than a contemptible 
or negligible meaning. 

In Europe, Alma and lima are proper names which are 
defined as having meant either Celtic all good, Latin 
kindly, or Jewish maiden. In Finnish mythology the 

1 Wavrin, John de, Chronicles. 


MA. 

PIG. 24.—The Egyptian 
Ma or " Truth ". 


IV-] 


ALBION 


137 


Creatrix of the Universe, or Virgin Daughter of the Air is 
named Ilmatar, which is evidently the All Mater or All 
Mother. Alma was no doubt the almoner of aliment, and 
her symbol was the almond. In Scotland where there is 
a river Almond, ben means mountain or head, and ben 
varies almost invariably into pen, from the Apennines to 
the Pennine Hange. 

It is said that Pan was worshipped in South America, 
and that his name was commemorated in the place-name 
Mayapan. Among the Mandan Indians, pan meant head, 
and also pertaining to that which is above ; in China, pan 
meant mountain or hill, and in Plaœmciau, pennah had the 
same meaning. As, however, I have dealt somewhat fully 
elsewhere with Pan the President of the Mountains, I 
shall for the sake of brevity translate his name into uni 
versal or good. 

In England we have the curious surname Pennefather ;1 
in Cornwall, Pender is very common, and it is proverbial 
that Pen is one of the three affixes by which one may 
know Cornishmen. 

As Pan was pre-eminently the divinity of woods and 
forests, Panshanger or Pan's Wood in Hertfordshire may 
perhaps be connected with him, and the river Beane of 
Hertfordshire may be equated with the kindred British 
river-names, Ben, Bann, Bane, Bain, Banon, Bana, Bandon, 
Banney, Banac, and Bannockburn. 

Bannock or Panak the Great Pan is probably responsible 
for the English river name Penk, and the name Pankhurst 
necessarily implies a hurst or wood of Pank. Penkhull 
was seemingly once Penkhill, and it is evident that Pan or 
Pank, the God of the Universe, may be recognised in Panku, 

1 This name is supposed to have meant a miser or father of pennies. The 
penny is said to have been so named from the pen or head figured upon it. 


 138 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAÎ. 


the benevolent Chinese World Father, for the account of 
this Deity is as follows : " Panku was the first, being placed 
upon the earth at a period when sea, land, and sky were all 
jumbled up together. Panku was a giant, and worked with 
a mallet and chisel for eighteen thousand years in an 
effort to make the earth more shapely. As he toiled and 
struggled so he grew in strength and stature, until he was 
able to push the heavens back and to put the sea into its 
proper place. Then he rounded the earth and made it 
more habitable, and then he died. But Panku was greater 
in death than he was in life, for his head became the surface 
of the earth; his sinews, the mountains; his voice, the 
thunder, his breath, the wind, the mist, and the clouds ; 
one eye was converted into the sun ; the other the moon ; 
and the beads of perspiration on his forehead were crystal 
lised into the scintillating stars." 

The name Panku is radically the same as Punch, and 
there is no doubt that Mr. Punch of to-day represented, 
according to immemorial wont, with a bunch, hill, or 
mountain on his back, has descended from the sacred 
farce or drama. Punch and Punchinello, or Pierre and 
Pierrot are the father and the son of the ancient holy- 
days or holidays. 

At .Bancroft, in the neighbourhood of St. Albans, the 
festivités of May-day included "first " a personage with 
" a large artificial hump on his back,"1 and we may recognise 
the Kaadman of St. Albans in the Cadi of Welsh pageantry. 
In Wales all the arrangements of May-day were made by the 
so-called Cadi, who was always the most active person in the 
company and sustained the joint rôle of marshal, orator, 
buffoon, and money collector. The whole party being 
1Hone, W., Everyday Book, i., col. 566. 


iv.] 


ALBION 


139 


assembled they marched in pairs headed by the Cadi, who 
was gaudily bedecked with gauds and wore a bisexual, 
half-male, half-female costume. With gaud and gaudy, 
which are the same words as good and cadi, may be con 
noted gaudeo the Latin for I rejoice. 

Punch is always represented with an ample paunch, and 
this conspicuous characteristic of bonhomie is similarly 
a feature of Chinese and Japanese bonifaces or Bounty 
Gods. The skirt worn by the androgynous British Cadi 
may be connoted with the kilt in which the Etrurians 
figured their Hercules, and that in Etruria the All Father 
was occasionally depicted like Punch, is clear from the 
following passage from The Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria : 
" Hercules and Minerva were the most generally hon 
oured of the Etruscan divinities, the one representing 
the most valuable qualities of a man's body and the 
other of his soul. They were the excellencies of flesh and 
spirit, and according to Etruscan mythology they were 
man and wife. Minerva has usually a very fine face with 
that straight line of feature which we call Grecian, but 
which, from the sepulchral paintings and the votive offer 
ings, would appear also to have been native. Hercules has 
a prominent and peaky chin, and something altogether 
remarkably sharp in his features, which, from the evidence 
of vases and scarabsei together, would appear to have been 
the conventional form of depicting a warrior. It is pro 
bably given to signify vigilance and energy. A friend of 
mine used to call it, not inaptly, ' the ratcatcher style '. 
Neptune bears the trident, Jove the thunderbolt or sceptre, 
and these attributes are sometimes appended to the most 
grotesque figures when the Etruscans have been repre 
senting either some Greek fable, or some native version of 


 140 


AfcCHAlC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


the same story. This may be seen on one vase where Joye 
is entering a window, accompanied by Mercury, to visit 
Alcmena. Jove has just taken his foot off the ladder, and 
in my ignorance I looked at the clumsy but extraordinary 
vase, thinking that the figures represented Punch ; and 
though I give the learned and received version of the story, 
I am at this moment not convinced that I was wrong, for 
I do not believe the professor who pointed it out to me, 
notwithstanding all his learning, extensive and profound 
as it was, knew that Punch was an Etruscan amusement 
Supposing it, however, to have been Punch, which I think 
was my own very just discovery, the piece acted was 
certainly Giove and Alcmena." 

It is very obvious that the term holy has changed con 
siderably in its meaning. To the ancients " holidays " 
were joy-days, pandemoniums, and the pre-eminent emblem 
of joviality was the holly tree. The reason for the sym 
bolic eminence of the holy tree was its evergreen horned 
leaves which caused it to be dedicated to Saturn the horned 
All Father, now degraded into Old Nick. But " Old Nick " 
is simply St. Nicholas, or Santa Claus, and the name Claus 
is Nicholas minus the adjective 'n or ancient Janus, the 
Latinised form of Joun, was essentially the God of geniality 
and joviality, otherwise Father Christmas and he is the 
same as Saturn, whose golden era was commemorated by 
the Saturnalia. The Hebrew name for the planet Saturn 
was Chiun, and this Chiun or Joun (?) was seemingly the 
same as the Gian Ben Gian, or Divine Being, who ac 
cording to Arabian tradition ruled over the whole world 
during the legendary Golden Age. 

On the first of January, a month which takes its name 
from Janus as being the " God of the Beginning," all 


IV.] 


ALBION 


141 


quarrelling and disturbances were shunned, mutual good- 
wishes were exchanged, and people gave sweets to one 
another as an omen that the New Year might bring nothing 
but what was sweet and pleasant in its train. 

This " execrable practice," a " mere relique of paganism 
and idolatry," was, like the decorative use of holly, sternly 
opposed by the mediaeval Church. In 1632 Prynne wrote : 
" The whole Catholicke Church (as Alchuvinus and others 
write), appointed a solemn publike faste upon this our 
New Yeare's Day (which fast it seems is now forgotten), to 
bewail these heathenish enterludes, sports, and lewd idola 
trous practices which had been used on it : prohibiting all 
Christians, under pain of excommunication, from observing 
the Calends, or first of January (which we now call New 
Yeare's Day),as holy, and from sending abroad New 
Yeare's Gifts upon it (a custom now too frequent), it being 
a mere relique of paganisme and idolatry, derived from 
the heathen Romans' feast of two-faced Janus, and a 
practice so execrable unto Christians that not only the 
whole Catholicke Church, but even four famous Councils " 
[and an enormous quantity of other authorities which it is 
useless to quote], " have positively prohibited the solemnis 
ation of New Yeare's Day, and the sending abroad of New 
Yeare's Gifts, under an anathema and excommunica 
tion." 

There is little doubt that the " Saint " Concord—an al 
leged subdeacon in a desert—who figures in the Eoman 
Martyrölogy on January 1st, was invented to account for 
the Holy Concord to which that day was dedicated. Janus 
of January 1st, who was ranked by the Latins even above 
Jupiter, was termed " The good Creator," the " Oldest of 
the Gods," the " Beginning of all Things," and the " God 


 142 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


of Gods ". From him sprang all rivers, wells, and streams, 
and his name is radically the same as Oceanus. 

Before the earth was known to be a ball, Oceanus, the 
Father of all the river-gods and water-nymphs, was con 
ceived to be a river flowing perpetually round the flat circle 
of the world, and out of, and into this river the sun and 
stars were thought to rise and set. Our word ocean is 
assumed to be from the Greek form okeanus, and the 
official surmise as to the origin of the word is—"perhaps 


FIG. 25.—Personification of Kiver. 
From Christian Iconography (Didron). 

from okis—swift ". But what " swiftness " there is about 
the unperturbable and mighty sea, I am at a loss to recog 
nise. In the Highlands the islanders of St. Kilda used to 
pour out libations to a sea-god, known as Shony, and in 
this British Shony we have probably the truer origin of 
ocean. 

The ancients generally supposed the All Good as wan 
dering abroad and peering unobserved into the thoughts 
and actions of his children. This proclivity was a con 
spicuous characteristic of Jupiter, and also of the Scandin- 


iv.] 


ALBION 


143 


avian All Father, one of whose titles was Gangrad, or 
" The Wanderer ". The verb to gad, and the expression 
"gadding about," may have arisen from this wandering 
proclivity of the gods or gads, and the word jaunt, a 
synonym for " gadding" (of unknown etymology), points to 


FIG. 26.—Figure of Time with Three Faces. From a French Miniature 
of the XIV. cent. 

From Christian Iconography (Didron). 

the probability that the rambling tendencies of " Gangrad " 
and other gods were similarly assigned by the British to 
their Giant, "jeyantt," or Good John. Jaunty or janty 
means full of fire or life, and the words gentle, genial, and 
generous are implications of the original good Giant's 
attributes. 
The coins of King Janus of Sicily bore on their obverse 


 144 


ABCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


the figure of god Janus ; on the reverse a dove, and it is 
evident that the dove was as much a symbol of Father 
Janus as it was of Mother Jane or Mother Juno. Christi- 


FIG. 27.—The Three Divine Faces with two eyes and one single body. 
From a French Miniature of the XVI. cent. 

From Christian Iconography (Didron). 

anity still recognises the dove or pigeon as the symbol of 
the Holy Ghost, and it is probable that the word pigeon 
may be attributed to the fact that the pigeon was invariably 
associated -with pi, οτρα geon.1 

1 The New English Dictionary notes the following " forms " of " pigeon," 
pejon, pejoun, pegion, i>egyon, pïgin, pu/en, pit/ion, pygon. The supposed 


IV.] 


ALBION 


145 


Janus, "the one by whom all things were introduced 
into life," was figured as two-faced, or time past, and time 
to come, and Janus was the " I was," the " I am," and the 


Fio. 28.—BBAHMA.—From A Dictionary of Non-classical Mythology 
(Bdwardes & Spence). 

" I shall be ",1 As the " God of the Beginning," Janus is 
clearly connected with the word genesis; Juno was the 
goddess who presided over childbirth, and to their names 
may be traced the words generate, genus, genital, and the 

connection between pigeon 8,t&pipio, " I chirp," is surely remote, for young 
pigeons do not " chirp ". 

1 Mrs. Hamilton Gray in The Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria, writes : " I 
was particularly struck with one large carved group, which bore a greater 
resemblance to a Hindoo representation of a trinity than anything not 
Indian I have ever seen. Did we not know the thing to be impossible, I 
should be tempted on the strength of this sculptured stone to assert that 
Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu must at some former period have found adorers 
in Etruria. Three monstrous faces, growing together, one full face in the 
middle and a profile on each side " (p. 309). 
10 


 146 


ABCHAIC ENGLAND 


IV.] 


ALBION 


147 


like. Just as January is the first or opening month of the 
year, so June,1 French Jiiin, was the first or opening month 
of the ancient calendar. It was fabled that Janus daily 
threw open the gate of day whence janua was the Latin 
for a gate, and janitor means a keeper of the gate. 

All men were supposed to be under the safeguard of 
Janus, and all women under that of Juno, whence the 
guardian spirit of a man was termed his genius and that of 
a woman iaeijuno. The words genius and genie are evid 
ently cognate with the Arabian jinn, meaning a spirit. 
In Ireland the fairies or " good people " are known as the 
" gentry " ; as the giver of all increase Juno may be re 
sponsible for the word generous, and Janus the Beginning 
or Leader is presumably allied to General. Occasionally 
the two faces of Janus were represented as respectively 
old and young, a symbol obviously of time past and present, 
time and change, the ancient of days and the junior or 
jeun. In Irish sen meant senile. 

It is taught by the mothers of Europe that at Yule-Tide 
the Senile All Bounty wanders around bestowing gifts, and 
St. Nicholas, or Father Christmas, is in some respects the 
same as the Wandering Jew of mediaeval tradition. The 
earliest mention of the Everlasting Jew occurs in the 
chronicles of the Abbey of St. Albans,2 and is probably a 
faint memory of the original St. Alban or All Bounty. It 
was said that this mysterious Wanderer " had a little child 
on his arm," and was an eye-witness of the crucifixion of 
Christ. Varied mythical appearances of the Everlasting 
Jew are recorded, and his name is variously stated as 

xThe official etymology of June is " probably from root of Latin juvenis, 
junior" but where is the sense in this ? 
2 Baring-Gould, S., Curious Myths, p. 5. 


Joseph, and as Elijah. Joseph is radically Jo, Elijah is 
Holy Jah, whence it may follow, that " Jew " should be 
spelled " Jou," and that the Wandering or Everlasting Jew 
may be equated with the Sunshine or the Heavenly Joy. 

In France the sudden roar of the wind at night is attri 
buted to the passing of the Everlasting Jew. In Switzer- 


α. 29.—The Three Divine Heads within a single triangle 
Italian Wood Engraving of the XV. cent. 

From Christian Iconography (Didron). 


From an 


land he is associated with the mighty Matterhorn, in 
Arabia he is represented as an aged man with a bald head, 
and I strongly suspect that the Elisha story of " Go up,' 
thou bald head" arose from the misinterpretation of a 
picture of the Ancient of Days surrounded by a happy 
crowd of laughing youngsters. In this respect it would 


. ll.fl." 


 148 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


ALBION 


149 


have accorded with the representation of the Divine bald- 
head of the Celts, leading a joyful chain of smiling captives. 
In England the Wandering Jew was reputed never to eat 
but merely to drink water which came from a rock. Some 
accounts specify his clothing sometimes as a " purple shag- 
gown," with the added information, " his stockings were 
very white, but whether linen or jersey deponent knoweth 
not, his beard and head were white and he had a white stick 
in his hand. The day was rainy from morning to night, 
but he had not one spot of dirt upon his clothes ",1 This 
tradition is evidently a conception of the white and im 
maculate Old Alban, in the usual contradistinction to the 
young or le jeun, and we still speak of an honest or jonnock 
person as " a white man ". By the Etrurians it was be 
lieved that the soul preserved after death the likeness of 
the body it t a syt^ and that this elfin or spritely body 
composed of ϊϋβ> *ne ^Rtic air was clothed in airy white.2 
There figures1 sen meant sec Legend an Italian St. Albine, 
whose name, ì?y *ne mothfe, " is as much as to say primo ; 
as he was whitpunty Slius this holy saint was all white by 
purity of clean living ". The tale goes on that this St. 
Albine had two wives, also two nurses which did nourish 
him. While lying, in his cradle he was carried away by a 
she-wolf and borne into the fields where happily he was 
espied by a pair of passing maidens. One of these twain 
exclaimed " Would to God I had milk to foster thee withal," 
and these words thus said her paps immediately rose and 
grew up filled with milk. Semblably said and prayed the 
second maid, and anon she had milk as her fellow had and 
so they two nourished the holy child Albine. 

1 Curious Myths, p. 23. 

aGray, Mrs. Hamilton, Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria, pp. 187,189. 


It has been suggested that the Wandering Jew is a 
personification "of that race which wanders Cam-like over 
the earth with the brand of a brother's blood upon it " ; by 


PIGS. 30 to 38.—Prom Les Filigranes (Briquet, C. M.). 

others the story is connected particularly with the gipsies. 
The Eomany word for moon is choon, the Cornish for full 
moon is cann, and it is a curious thing that the Etrurian 
Dante entitles the Man in the Moon, Cain :— 


 i1,'1 

k 


150 ABCHAIC ENGLAND [CHAP. 

Now doth Cain with fork of thorns confine 
On either hemisphere touching the wave 
Beneath the towers of Seville. Yesternight 
The moon was round.1 

Christian symbology frequently associates the Virgin 
Mary with the new moon, and in Fig. 39 a remarkable re 
presentation of the Trinity is situated there. 


FIG. 89.—The Holy Ghost, as a child of eight or ten years old, in the 
arms of the Father. French Miniature of the XVI. cent. 

From Christian Iconography (Didron). 

In the illustrations overleaf of mediaeval papermarks, 
some of which depict. the Man in the Moon in his con 
ventional low-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, there is a 
conspicuous portrayal of the two breasts, doubtless repre 
sentative of the milk and honey flowing in the mystic Land 
of Canaan. This paradise was reconnoitred by Joshua 
accompanied by Caleb, whose name means dog, and it will 

1 Hell., c. xx. 


IV.] 


ALBION 


151 


be remembered that dog-headed St. Christopher was said 
to be a Canaanitish giant. 

Irishmen assign the name Connaught to a beneficent 
King Conn, during whose fabulously happy reign all crops 
yielded ninefold, and the furrows of Ireland flowed with 
" the pure lacteal produce of the dairy ". Conn of Con- 
naught is expressly defined as " good as well as great,"1 
and the Hibernian " pure lacteal produce of the dairy " 
may be connoted with the Canaanitish " milk ". We shall 
trace King Conn of Connaught at Caen or Kenwood, near 
St. John's Wood, London, and also at Kilburn, a burn 
or stream alternatively known as the CWieburn. This 
rivulet comes first within the ken of history in the time of 
Henry I., when a hermit named Godwyn—query Good 
One ?—had his kil or cell upon its banks. King Conn of 
Connaught reigned in glory with " Good Queen Eda," 
a Breaton princess who was equally beloved and esteemed. 
This Eda is seemingly the Lady of Mount Ida in Candia, 
and her name may perhaps be traced in Maida Vale and 
Maida Hill. Pa Eda or Father Ida is apparently memor 
ised at the adjacent Paddington which the authorities de 
rive from Paedaington, or the town of the children ofPaeda. 
Cynthia, the Goddess of the Moon or cann, may be connoted 
with Cain the Man in the Moon, and we shall ultimately 
associate her with Candia the alternative title of Crete, 
and with Caindea, an Irish divinity, whose name in Gaelic 
means the gentle goddess. 

Near Cowiston in Cumberland is Yew Barrow, a rugged/ 
cragged, pyramidal height which like the river Yeo, 
rising from Seven Sisters Springs, was probably asso 
ciated with Jou or Yew. The culminating peak known 

1 Yeats, W. B,, Fairy and Folk-tales of the Irish Peasantry, p. 306, 


 152 


AKCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


as " The Old Man " of Coniston is suggestive of the Elfin 
tradition :— 

High on the hill-top the Old King sits 
He is now so old and grey, he's nigh lost his wits. 

The Egyptians figured Ea, the Ancient of Days, as at times 
so senile that he dribbled at the mouth. 

The traditional attributes of Cain, the Man in the 
Moon, or Cann, the full moon, are a dog, a lanthorn, and 
a bush of thorn. The dog is the Jcuon or chien of St. Kit, 
the Kaadman or the Good Man, and the lanthorn is pro 
bably Jack-a-lantern or Will-o-the-wisp, known of old as 
Kit-with-a-canstick or Kitty-with-a - candlestick. The 
thorn bush was sacred to the Elves for reasons which will 
be discussed in a subsequent chapter. It is sufficient here 
to note that the equivalent of the sacred hawthorn of 
Britain is known in the East as the Alvah or Elluf.1 The 
Irish title of the letter a or haw is alif, as also is the 
Arabian : the Greek alpha is either alpa or alfa. 

The Welsh Archbard Taliesin makes the mystic state 
ment :— 

Of the ruddy vine, 
Planted on sunny days, 
And on new-moon nights ; 

And the white wine. 

The wheat rich in grain 
And red flowing wine 
Christ's pure body make, 

Son of Alpha. 

The same poet claims, " I was in the Ark with Noah and 
Alpha," whence it would seem that Alpha was Mother Eve 
or the Mother of All Living. Alfa the Elf King and his 

1 " Theta," The Thorn Tree, being a Histcny of Thorn Worship. London, 
1863, p. 127. 


IV-] 


ALBION 


158 


followers the elves were deemed to be ever-living, and the 
words love, life, and alive are all one and the same. That 
Spenser appreciated this identity between Elfe and life is 
apparent in the passage :— 

• 

Prometheus did create 
A man of many parts from beasts derived, 
That man so made he called Elfe to wit, 
Quick the first author of all Elfin kind, 
Who wandering through the world with wearie feet 
Did in the gardens of Adonis find 
A goodly creature whom he deemed in mind 
To be no earthly wight, but either sprite 
Or angel, the author of all woman-kind.1 

Quick as in " quick and dead " meant living, whence 
" Elfe, to wit Quick," was clearly understood by Spenser 
as life. It meant further, all vie or aufeu, for the ancients 
identified life and fire, and they further identified the fays 
or elves with feux or fires. The place-name Fife is, I sus 
pect, connected with vif or vive, and it is noteworthy that 
in Fifeshire to this day a circular patch of white snow 
which habitually lingers in a certain hill cup is termed 
poetically " the Lady Alva's web ". Whether this Lady Alva 
was supposed to haunt Glen Alva—a name now associated 
with a more material spirit—I do not know. 

The dictionaries define " Alfred " as meaning " Elf in 
council," and Allflatt or Elfleet as " elf purity ". The big 
Alfe was no doubt symbolised by the celebrated Alphian 
Kock in Yorkshire, and the little Alf was almost certainly 
worshipped in his coty or stone cradle at Alvescott near 
Witney. That this site was another Kit's Coty or " Cradle 
of Tudno," as at Llandudno, is implied by the earlier forms 
Elephescote (1216) and Alfays (1274). The Fays and the 

1 FaSrie Queene, Book XL, c. ix., st. 70-71. 


 M'1 


154 


AECHÄIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


IV-] 


ALBION 


155 


Elves are one and the same as the Jinns, the Genii, or " the 
Gentry ". 

There used to be an " Alphey " within Cripplegate on the 
site of the present Church of St. Alphage in London. It 
was believed that the Elf King inhabited the linden tree,* 
and the elder was similarly associated with him. Linden 
is the same word as London, and the name elder resolves 
into the are or der or abode of El : in Scandinavia the 
elves were known as the Elles, whence probably Ellesmere 
—the Elves pool—and similar place-names. 

We shall subsequently consider a humble Hallicondane 
or Ellie King dun still standing in Eamsgate. There was 
also a famous Elve dun or Elve-haunt at Elbotou, a hill in 
Yorkshire, where according to local legend :— 

Prom Burnsall's Tower the midnight hour 
Had toll'd and its echo was still, 
And the Blphin bard from faerie land 
Was upon Elbokon Hill. 

In the neighbourhood of this ton or dun of Elbo there 
are persistent traditions of a spectral hound or bandog. 

In the immediate neighbourhood of the London Alder- 
manbury—the barrow or court of Alderman—is a church 
dedicated to St. Alban, and in this same district stood the 
parish church of St. Alphage. There figures in the Church 
Calendar a " St. Alphage the Bald," and also a St. Alphage 
or Elphege, known alternatively as Anlaf. The word Anlaf 
resolves into Ancient Ali/, and it may be thus surmised 
that " Alphage the Bald " was the Alif, Aleph, or Alpha 


As has already been seen the Celts represented their 
Hercules as bald-headed. St. Alban's, Holborn, is situated 
in Baldwin's Gardens where also is a Baldwin's Place. 


Probably it was the same Bald One—alias Father Time— 
that originated the Baldwin Street in the neighbourhood 
of St. Alphage and St Alban, Aldermanbury. 

St. Anlaf may be connoted with the St. Olave whose 
church neighbours those of St. Alphage, and St. Alban. By 
the Church of St. Alban used to run Love Lane, and Anlaf 
may thus perhaps be rendered Ancient Love, or Ancient 
Life, or Ancient Elf. 

The Olive branch is a universally understood emblem of 
love, in which connection there is an apparition recorded 
of St. John the Almoner. " He saw on a time in a vision 
a much fair maid, which had on her head a crown of olive, 
and when he saw her he was greatly abashed and de 
manded her what she was." She answered, " I am Mercy ; 
which brought from Heaven the Son of God ; if thou wilt 
wed me thou shalt fare the better ". Then he, understand 
ing that the olive betokened Mercy, began that same day to 
be merciful. 

A short distance from Aldermanbury is Bunhill Bow, on 
the site of Bunhill fields where used to be kept the hounds 
or bandogs of the Corporation of London. The name 
Bunhill implies an ancient tumulus or barrow sacred to 
the same Bun or Ban as the neighbouring St. Albans. 

The " Coleman " which pervades this district of London, 
as in Coleman Street, Colemanchurch, Colemanhawe, Cole- 
mannes, implies that a colony of St. Colmans or " Doves " 
settled there and founded the surrounding shrines. In 
Ireland, Kil as in Kilpatrick, Kilbride, meant cell or shrine, 
whence it may be deduced that the river Cuneburn or 
Kilburn was a sacred stream on the banks of which many 
Godwyns had theirlcells. In this neighbourhood the place- 
names Hollybush Vale, Hollybush Tavern, imply the 


IH 


 ,Μΐί'Ι 


156 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


IV-] 


ALBION 


157 


existence of a very celebrated Holly Tree The illustration 
herewith represents the Twelfth Night Holly Festival in 
Westmorland, which terminated gloriously at an inn :— 


'-· V . V 


FIG. 40.—From The Everyday Book (Hone, \V.). 

To every branch a torch they tie 

To every torch a light apply, 

At each new light send forth huzzahs 

Till all the tree is in a blaze ; 

Then bear it flaming through the town, 

With minstrelsy and rockets thrown.1 

At the Westmorland festival the holly tree was always 
carried by the biggest man, and in all probability this was a 

1 Hone, W., Everyday Book, 111., col. 27. 


similar custom in the Cuneburn or Kilburn district, termin 
ating at the Holly bush Tavern. 

Scandinavian legend tells of a potent enchantress 
who had dwelt for 300 years on the Island of Kunnan 
(Canaan ?) happy in the exquisite innocence of her youth. 
Mighty heroes sued for the love of this fairest of giant 
maidens, and the sea around Kunnan is said to be still 
cumbered with the fragments of rock which her Cyclopean 
admirers flung jealously at one another. Ere, however, she 
was married " the detestable Odin " came into the country 
and drove all from the island. Refuging elsewhere the 
Lady of Kunnan and her consort dwelt awhile undisturbed 
until such time as a gigantic Oluf " came from Britain ". 
This Oluf (they called him the Holy) making the sign of 
the cross with his hands drove ashore in a gigantic ship 
crying with a loud voice : " Stand there as a stone till the 
last day," and in the same instant the unhappy husband 
became a mass of rock. The tale continues that on Yule 
Eve only could the Lord of Kunnan and other petrified 
giants receive back their life for the space of seven 
hours.1 

Now Janus alias Saturn had on his coins the figure of a 
ship's prow ; he was sometimes delineated pointing to a rock 
whence issued a profusion of water ; seven days were set 
apart for his rites in December ; and the seven days of the 
week were no doubt connected with his title of Septimanus. 
In Britain the consort of the Magna Mater Keridwen 
( = Perpetual Love) or Ked was entitled Tegid, and like 
Janus and St. Peter Tegid was entitled the Door-keeper. 
In Celtic te meant good, whence Tegid might reasonably 
be understood as either Good God or The Good. Tegid 
1 Keightley, T., Fairy Mythology, p. 138. 


 il 


158 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


also meant, according to Davies, serene baldness, an in 
terpretation which has been ridiculed, but one which 
nevertheless is in all probability correct for every ancient 
term bore many meanings, and because one is right it does 
not necessarily follow that every other one is wrong. 

Tegid and Ked were the parents of an untoward child, 
whose name Avagddu is translated as having meant utter 
darkness, but as Davies observes " mythological genealogy 
is mere allegory, and the father and the son are frequently 
the same person under different points of view. Thus this 
character in his abject state may be referred to as the 
patriarch himself during his confinement in the internal 
gloom of the Ark, where he was surrounded with utter 
darkness; a circumstance which was commemorated in 
all the mysteries of the gentile world. . . . And as our 
complex Mythology identified the character of the patriarch 
with the sun, so Avagddu may also have been viewed as a 
type of that luminary in his veil of darkness and gloom. 
This gloom was afterwards changed into light and cheer 
fulness, and thus the son of Keridwen may be recognised 
in his illuminated state under the title of Elphin, and 
Bhuvawn Bevyr which implies bursting forth with radi 
ance, and seems to be an epithet of the helio-arkite god." 
Davies continues : " Avagddu thus considered as a type of 
the helio-arkite god in his afflicted and renovated state has 
a striking coincidence of character with Eros the blind 
god of the Greeks ",1 The Cain or " Man in the Moon," 
represented herewith, has the heart of love, or Eros, figured 
on his headgear, and he is carrying the pipes of Pan, or 
of the Elphin Bard of Fairyland. 

It was common knowledge to our predecessors that 
1 Davies, E., Myth of Brit. Druids, pp. 203, 204. 


IV.] ALBION 159 

Titania—" Our radiant Queen "—hated sluts and sluttery 
and when Mrs. Page concocted her fairy plot against 
Falstaff she enjoined— 

Then let them all encircle him about 
And Fairy-like to pinch the unclean Knight, 
And ask him why that hour of fairy revel 
In their so sacred paths he dares to tread. 

The White May or Hawthorn which was so dear to the 
Elves was probably the symbol of that chastity and clean- 


PIG. 41.—Prom Les Fili 
granes (Briquet, C. M.). 


PIG. 42.—British. Prom A New De 
scription of England and Wales 
(Anon., 1724). 

liness which was proverbially an Elphin attribute. It is, 
for instance, said of Sir Thopas, when questing for thé 
Fairy Queen, that— 

... he was chaste and no techour 

And sweet as is the bramble flower, 

That beareth the red hip. 

On reaching the domain of Queen Elf, Sir Thopas is 
encountered by a " great giaunt " Sire Oliphaunt, who in 
forms him— 

Here the Queen of Fairie 
With harpe and pipe and symphonie 
Dwelleth in this place. 


 160 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


Sire Oliphaunt may be connoted with the Elephant which 
occurs on our ancient coinage, and is also found carved on 
many prehistoric stones in Scotland, notably in the cave of 
St. Eule at St. Andrews. The Kate Kennedy still com 
memorated at St. Andrews we shall subsequently connote 
with Conneda and with Caindea. 

The Elephant which sleeps while standing was regarded 
as the emblem of the benevolent sentinel, or watchman, 
and as the symbol of giant strength, meekness, and in 
genuity. According to the poet Donne :— 

Nature's great masterpiece, an Elephant 

The onely harmelesse great thing ; the giant 

Of beasts ; who thought none bad, to make him wise 

But to be just and thankful, loth t' offend 

(Yet nature hath given him no knees to bend) 

Himself he up-props, on himself relies 

And foe to none. 


FIG. 48.—From An Essay on Ancient Coins, Medals, and Gems (Walsh, K.). 

The Elephant or Oliphant (Greek elephas, " origin un 
known ") is the hugest and the first of beasts, and in India 
it symbolises the vanquisher of obstacles, the leader or the 
opener of the way. Ganesa, the elephant-headed Hindu 
god is invariably invoked at the beginning of any enter 
prise, and the name Ganesa is practically the same as gene- 


ALBION 


161 


£sis the origin or beginning. " Praise to Thee, 0 Ganesa," 
wrote a prehistoric hymnist, " Thou art manifestly the 
Truth, Thou art undoubtedly the Creator, Preserver, and 
Destroyer, the Supreme Brahma, the Eternal Spirit." 

One of the reasons for the symbolic eminence of the 
Elephant seems to have been the animal's habit of spouting 
water. It is still said of the Man in the Moon that he is 
a giant who at the time of the flow stands in a stooping 
posture because he is then taking up water which he pours 
out on the earth and thereby causes high tide ; but at the 
time of the ebb he stands erect and rests from his labour 
when the water can subside again.1 

The moon goddess of the Muysca Indians of Bogota is 
named Chin (akin to Cain, cann, and Ganesa ?), and in her 
insensate spleen Chin was supposed at one period to have 
flooded the entire world. In Mexico one of the best re 
presented gods is Chac the rain-god, who is the possessor 
of an elongated nose not unlike the proboscis of a tapir, 
which, of course, is the spout whence comes the rain which 
he blows over the earth.2 The Hebrew Jah, i.e., Jou or 
Joy or Jack, is hailed as the long-nosed, and Taylor in his 
Diegesis3 gives the following as a correct rendering of the 
original Psalm: " Sing ye to the Gods! Chant ye his 
name ! Exalt him who rideth in the heavens by his name 
Jack, and leap for Joy before his face ! For the Lord hath 
a long nose and his mercy endureth for ever ! " It is quite 
beyond the possibilities of independent evolution or of co 
incidence that the divinity with a long nose or trunk, 
should have been known as Choc alike in Mexico and Asia 
Minor. 


1 Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, p. 194. 

2 Spence, Lewis, Myths of Mexico and Peru, p. 170. 
11 


5 P. 159. 


 162 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


The spouting characteristic of the whale rendered it 
a marine equivalent to the elephant. Whale is the same 
word as whole, and leviathan is radically the lev of elephant. 
According to British mythology, Keridwen or Ked was 
a leviathian or whale, whence, as from the Ark, emerged 
all life. 

Not only is the Man in the Moon or the Wandering Jew 
peculiarly identified with St. Albans in Britain, but he reap 
pears at the Arabian city of Elvan. This name is cognate 
with elephant in the same way as alpha is· correlate to 
alpa or alba : Ayliffe and Alvey are common English sur 
names. In Kensington the memory of Renna, a fairy 
princess who was beloved by Albion a fairy prince, lingered 
until recently, and this tradition is seemingly commemor 
ated in the neighbourhood at Albion Gate, St. Alban's 
Road, and elsewhere. In St. Alban's Road, Kensington, 
one may still find the family name Oliff which, like Ayliffe 
and Iliffe, is the same as alif, aleph, or alpha, the letter " a " 
the first or the beginning. 

Panku, the great giant of the universe, is entitled by the 
Chinese the first of Beings or the Beginning, and it is 
claimed by the Christian Church that St. Alban was the 
first of Bf tish martyrs. Eastward of Kensington Gardens 
is St. Alban's Place and also Albany, generally, but in 
correctly termed " The Albany". The neighbouring Old 
Bond Street and New Bond Street owe their nomenclature 
to a ground landlord whose name Bond is radically con 
nected with Albany. The original Bond family were in all 
probability followers of " Bond," and the curiously named 
Newbons, followers of the Little Bond or New Sun. In 
the Isle of Wight there are, half a mile apart, the hamlets 
of Great Pann and Little Pann which, considered in con- 


ALBION 


168 


junction with Bcmchurch, were probably once sacred to Old 
Pan and Little Pan. According to Prof. Weekley the 
name Lovibond, Loveband, or Levibond, " seems to mean 
' the dear bond ' ",1 Who or what " the dear bond " was is 
not explained, but we may connote the kindred surnames 
Goodbon, Goodbun, and Goodband. 

By 24th December, the shortest day in the year, the Old 
Sun had sunk seemingly to his death, and at Yuletide it was 
believed that the rejuvenate New Sun, the Baby Sun, the 
Welsh Mabon, or Baby Boy, was born anew either from 
the sea or from a cave or womb of the earth. The arms 
of the Isle of Man, anciently known as Eubonia, are the 
three-legged solar wheel of the Wandering Joy. Eu of 
Eubonia is seemingly the Greek eu, meaning soft, gentle, 
pleasing and propitious, and the rolling wheel of Eubonia 
was like the svastika, a symbol of the Gentle Bounty run- 
ing his beneficent and never-ending course. St. Andrew, 
with his limbs extended to the four quarters, was, I think, 
once the same symbol,2 and it is probable that the story of 
Ixion bound to a burning wheel and rolling everlastingly 
through space was a perversion of the same original. Ixion 
:s phonetically Ik zion, i.e., the Mighty Sun or Mighty Sein 
or Bosom. It was frankly admitted by the Greeks that 
their language was largely derived from barbarians or 
foreigners, and the same admission was made in relation 
to their theology.8 

1 Surnames, p. 230. 

2 The ecclesiastical raison, d'être for St. Andrew's situation is stated as 
having been " to the end that his pain should endure the longer ". 

3 " Diogenes Lsertius, in the proem of his philosophical history, reckons the 
Druids among the chief authors of the barbarous theology and philosophy, 
Ong anterior to the Greeks, their disciples : and Phurnutus, in his treatise 
>f the Nature of the Gods, says most expressly that among the many and 


 I i 

II· 


!l 


I 


164 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


iv.] 


ALBION 


165 


The circle of the Sun or solar wheel, otherwise the 
wheel of Good law, is found frequently engraved on pre 
historic stones and coins. In Gaul, statues of a divinity 
bearing a wheel upon his shoulder have been found, and 
solar wheels figure persistently in Celtic archaeology. It 
has been supposed, says Dr. Holmes, that they are sym-, 
bolical of Sun worship, and that, the God with the wheel 
was the God of the Sun. It is further probable that the 
wheel on the shoulder corresponded to the child on the 
shoulder of St. Kit, and I am at a loss to understand how 
any thinker can have ever propounded such a proposition 
as to require Dr. Holmes' comment, " the supposition that 
the wheels were money is no longer admitted by competent 
antiquaries".1 Sir James Frazer instances cases of how 
the so-called " Fire of Heaven " used sometimes to be made 
by igniting a cart wheel smeared with pitch, fastened on a 
pole 12 feet high, the top of the pole being inserted in 
the nave of the wheel. This fire was made on the summit 
of a mountain, and as the flame ascended the people 
uttered a set form of words with eyes and arms directed 
heavenwards. In Norway to this day men turn cart wheels 
round the bonfires of St. John, and doubtless at some time 
the London urchin—still a notorious adept at cart-wheeling 
—once exercised the same pious orgy. 

On Midsummer Eve, when the bonfires were lighted on 
every hill in honour of St. John, the Elves were at their 

various fables which the antient Greecs had about the Gods, some were 
derived from the Mages, the Africans, and Phrygians, and others from other 
nations : for which he cites Homer as a witness, nor is there anything that 
bears a greater witness to itself."—Toland, History of Druids. London, 
1814, p. 106. 

1 Ancient Britain, p. 284. 


very liveliest. Elève in French means up aloft, and élève 
means frequently transported with excitement. Shake 
speare refers to elves as ouphes, which is the same word 
as oaf and was formerly spelt aulf. Near Wye in Kent 
there is a sign-post pointing to Aluph, but this little village 
figures on the Ordnance map as Aulph. The ouphes of 
Shakespeare are equipped " with rounds of waxen tapers on 
their heads," and with Jack o' lanthorn may be connoted 
Hob-and-his-lanthorn. In Worcestershire Hob has his 
fuller title, and is alternatively known as Hobredy : 1 with 
the further form Hobany may be correlated Eubonia, and 
with Hobredy, St. Bride, the Bona dea of the Hebrides. It 
is probable that " Hobany " is responsible for the curious 
Kentish place name Ebony, and that the Wandering Dame 
Abonde, Habende, or Abundia of French faerie, was 
Hobany's consort. The worship of La Dame Abonde, the 
star-crowned Queen of Fées, is particularly associated with 
St. John's Day, and there is little doubt that in certain 
aspects she was cann, or the full moon ;— 

The moon, full-orbed, into the well k>oks down, 
Her face is mirrored in the waters clear, 

And fees are gathering in the beech shade browu, 
Prom missions far and near. 

And there erect and tall, Abonde the Qneen, 

Brow-girt with golden circlet, that doth bear 

A small bright scintillating star between 
Her braids of dusky hair.2 

'The Bretons believe in the existence of certain elves 
termed Sand Yan y Tad (St. John and Father) who carry 
lights at their finger ends, which spin round and round like 

1 Keightley, Fairy Mythology, p. 818. 
a Anon., The Fairy Family, 1857. 


 ItfG 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


wheels, and, according to Arab tradition, the Jinn or Jan 
(Jinnee m., Jinniyeh/. sing.) are formed of " smokeless fire ".l 
That the ancient British, like the Peruvians, deemed them 
selves children of the Fire or Sun is implied among other 
testimony from a Druidic folk-tale (collected by a writer 
in 1795), wherein a young prince, divested of his corporeal 
envelope, has his senses refined and is borne aloft into the 
air. " Towards the disc of the Sun the young prince ap 
proaches at first with awful dread, but presently with in 
conceivable rapture and delight. This glorious body (the 
Sun) consists of an assemblage of pure souls swimming in 
an ocean of bliss. It is the abode of the blessed—of the 
sages—of the friends of mankind. The happy souls when 
thrice purified in the sun ascend to a succession of still 
higher spheres from whence they can no more descend to 
traverse the circles of those globes and stars which float in 
a less pure atmosphere."'2 

At New Grange in Ireland, and elsewhere on prehistoric 
rock tombs, there may be seen carvings of a ship or solar 
barque frequently in juxtaposition to a solar disc, and the 
similarity of these designs to the solar ship of Egypt has 
frequently been remarked. The 'Egyptian believed that 
after death his soul would be allowed to enter the land of 
the Sun, and that in the company of the Gods he would 
then sail into the source of immortal Light : hence he 
placed model boats in the tombs, sometimes in pairs which 
were entitled Truth and Eighteousness, and prayed : 
" Come to the Earth, draw nigh, 0 boat of Ea, make the 
boat to travel, 0 Mariners of Heaven ". 

It is no doubt this same Holy Pair of Virtues that suckled 

1 Keightley, Fairy Mythology, pp. 25, 441. 

2 Quoted from Davies, E., Celtic Researches, p. 560. 


IV-] 


ALBION 


167 


the Child Albine, and that are represented as two streams 
of nourishment in the emblem herewith. 

That the British were enthusiastic astronomers is testi 
fied by Caesar, who states that the Druids held a great 
many discourses about the stars and their motion,1 about 


A.LMA 
MATER. 
CANTA, 
BK.ÌOÌA 


PIG. 44.—From the title-page of à seventeenth-century publication of a 
Cambridge printer. 

the size of the world and various countries, about the 
nature of things, about the power and might of the im 
mortal gods, and that they instructed the youths in these 
subjects. It is equally certain that the British reverenced 
Sun and Fire not merely materially but as emblems of the 

' Livy mentions that during the Macedonian War a Gaulish soldier 
Oi-etold an eclipse of the moon to the Eomau Army (Liber XLIV., c. xxxvii.). 


 .il 


168 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


Something behind Matter. " Think not," said a tenth- 
century Persian, " that our fathers were adorers of fire ; 
for that element was only an exalted object on the lustre 
of which they fixed their eyes. They humbled themselves 
before God, and if thy understanding be ever so little ex 
erted thou must acknowledge thy dependence on the Being 
supremely pure." Among the sacred traditions of the 
Hindus which are assigned by competent scholars to 
2400 B.C. occurs what is known as the holiest verse of the 
Vedas. This reads : " Let us adore the supremacy of that 
Divine Sun the Deity who illumines all, from whom all 
proceed, are renovated, and to whom all must return, whom 
we invoke to direct our intellects aright in our progress 
towards His holy Seat ". It is quite permissible to cite 
this Hindu evidence as Hindus and Celts were alike 
branches of the same Aryan family, and between Druids 
and Brahmins there has, apart from etymology,1 been 
traced the same affinity as existed between the Druids and 
the Magi. 

The primeval symbolism of Fire as Love and Light as 
Intellect is stamped indelibly on language, yet like most 
things which are ever seen it is now never seen. We say 
" I see " instead of " I understand " ; we speak of throwing 
light on a subject or of warm affection, yet in entire for- 
getfulness of the old ideas underlying such phraseology. 
When Christianity came westward it was compelled to 
take over almost intact most of the customs of aboriginal 

1 " A few years ago it would have been deemed the height of absurdity to 
imagine that the English and the Hindus were originally one people, 
speaking the same language, and clearly distinguished from other families 
of mankind ; and yet comparative philology has established this fact by 
evidence as clear and irresistible as that the earth revolves round the sun." 
—Smith, Dr. Wm., Lectures on the English Language, p. 2. 


IV.] ALBION 169 

paganry, notably the Cult of Fire. The sacred fire of St. 
Bridget was kept going at Kildare until the thirteenth 
century when it was suppressed by the Archbishop of 
Dublin. It was, however, relighted and maintained by the 
nineteen nuns of St. Bridget—the direct descendants of 
nineteen prehistoric nuns or Druidesses—until the time of 
the Reformation, when it was finally extinguished. 

In old Irish MSS. Brigit—who was represented Madonna- 
like, with a child in her arms—is entitled " The Presiding 
Care ". The name of her father, Dagda Mor, is said by 
Celtic scholars to mean " The Great Good Fire " ; the 
dandelion is called " St. Bride's Forerunner," and in Gaelic 
its name is " Little Flame of God ". 

We have it on the authority of Shakespeare that " Fairies 
use flowers for their charactery," whence probably the pink 
with its pinked or ray-like petals was a flower of Pan on 
High. Dianthus, the Greek for pink, means " divine " or 
" day flower," and like the daisy or Day's Eye the Pansy 
was in all probability deemed to be Pan's eye. Among the 
list of Elphin names with which, complained Reginald 
Scott, " our mothers' maids have so frayed us,"1 he includes 
"Pans" and the "First Fairy" in Lyly's The Maid's 
Metamorphosis, introduces himself by the remark, " My 
name is Penny ". To this primary elf may perhaps be as 
signed the plant name Pennyroyal, and his haunts may be 
assumed at various Pennyfields, Pandowns, and Bunhills. 

Some authorities maintain that Bonfire is a corruption 
of Bonefire, or fire of bones. But bones will not burn, and 
the " Blessing Fire," Bonfire, Good Fire, or Beltane is still 
worshipped in Brittany under the Celtic name of Tan Tad 
or Fire Father. In Brittany there exists to this day a 

1 Keightley, Fairy Mythology, p. 290. 


 170 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


worship of the Druidic Fire Father, which in its elaborate 
ritual preserves seemingly the exact spirit and ceremony 
of prehistoric fire-worship. In Provence the grandfather 
sets the Christmas log alight, the youngest child pours 
wine over it, then amid shouts of joy the log is put upon 
the fire-dogs and its first flame is awaited with reverence. 
This instance is the more memorable by reason of the 
prayer which has survived in connection with the cere 
mony and has been thus quoted in Notes and Queries,: 
" Mix the brightness of thy flames with that of our hearts, 
and maintain among us peace and 'good health. Warm 
with thy fire the feet of orphans and of sick old men. 
Guard the house of the poor, and do not destroy the hopes 
of the peasant or the seaman's boat." 

The instances of Bonfire or Beltane customs collected 
by the author of The Golden Bough clearly evince their 
original sanctity. In Greece women jumped over the all- 
purifying flames crying, " I leave my sins behind me," and 
notwithstanding the strenuous efforts of Christianity to 
persuade our forefathers that all who worship fire " shall 
go in misery to sore punishment," the cult of Fire still 
continues in out-of-the-way parts even now. To this day 
children in Ireland are passed through the fire by being 
caught up and whisked over it, my authority for which 
statement observing : " We have here apparently an exact 
repetition of the worship described in the Old Testament 
and an explanation of it, for there the idolatrous Israelites 
are described as passing their sons and their daughters 
through the fire. This the writer always thought was 
some purifying cruel observance, but it seems that it could 
be done without in any way hurting the children."J 

1 Canon ftrench, Prehistoric Faith in Ireland, p. 80. 


iv.] 


ALBION 


171 


Not only the ritual of fire, but also its ethics have 
largely survived, notably in Ireland, where it was custom 
ary to ask for fire from a priest's house. But if the priest 
refused, as he usually did, in order to discountenance 
superstition, then the fire was asked from the happiest 
man, i.e., the best living person in the parish. When light 
ing a candle it was customary in England to say " May the 
Lord send us the Light of Heaven," and when putting it 
out, " May the Lord renew for us the Light of Heaven ". 

Originally the Persians worshipped the sacred fire only 
upon hill-tops, a custom for which Bryant acidly assigns the 
following reason : " The people who prosecuted this method 
of worship enjoyed a soothing infatuation which flattered 
the gloom of superstition. The eminences to which they 
retired were lonely and silent and seemed to be happily 
circumstanced for contemplation and prayer. They who 
frequented them were raised above the lower world and 
fancied that they were brought into the vicinity of the 
powers of the air and of the Deity, who resided in the 
higher regions." 

The Druids, like the Persians, worshipped upon hill-tops 
or the highest ground, doubtless because they regarded 
these as symbols of the Most High, and there is really 
nothing in the custom flattering either to gloom or super 
stition :— 

Mountains are altars rais'd to God by hands 
Omnipotent, and man mnst worship there. 
On their aspiring summits glad he stands 
And near to Heaven. 

If our ancestors were unable to find a convenient high 
land, they made an artificial mound, and such was the 
sacred centre or sanctuary of all tribal activities. The 


 ι · 


l 


fli 


172 


ABCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


celebrated McAlpine laws of Scotland were promulgated 
from the Mote of Urr, which remarkable construction will 
be illustrated in a later chapter. 

Not only in Homeric Greece, but universally, Kings 
and Chiefs were once treated and esteemed as Sun-gods. 
"Think not," said a Maori chief to a missionary, "that I 
am a man, that my origin is of the earth. I come from 
the Heavens ; my ancestors are all there ; they are gods, 
and I shall return to them".1 The notion of Imperial 
divinity is not yet dead ; it was flourishing in England to 
Stuart times, and though the spirit may now have fled, its 
traces still remain in our regal ceremonial. In the Indian 
Code known as the Laws of Manu, the superstition is 
thus enunciated : " Because a King has been formed of 
particles of those Lords of the gods, he therefore surpasses 
all created beings in lustre, and like the Sun he burns eyes 
and hearts ; nor can anybody on earth even gaze at him. 
Through his power he is Fire and Wind, he the Sun and 
Moon, he the Lord of Justice, he Kubera, he Varuna, he 
Great Indra. Even an infant King must not be despised 
that he is mortal ; for he is a great deity in human form."2 

It is obvious that the British carried this conception of 
the innate divinity of man much farther than merely to 
the personalities of kings. The word soul, Dutch ziel, is 
probably the French word del ; to work with zeal is to 
throw one's soul into it. That the Celts, like the Chinese 
or Celestials, equated the soul with the del or the Celestial, 
believing, as expressed by Taliesin, the famous British Bard, 
that " my original country is the region of the summer 
stars," is unquestionable. Max Müller supposed that the 

1 Cf. Frazer, Sir J. G., Psyche's Task, pp. 7,14. 

2 Cf. Ibid. 


IV.] 


ALBION 


173 


word soul was derived from the Geeek root seio, to shake. 
"It meant," he says, "the storm-tossed waters in contra 
distinction to stagnant or running water. The soul being 
called saivcda (Gothic), we see that it was originally con 
ceived by the Teutonic nations as a sea within, heaving up 
and down with every breath and reflecting heaven and 
earth on the mirror of the deep." 

Whatever the Teutonic nations may have fancied about 
their souls is* irrelevant to the Druidic teaching, which 
was something quite different. In A.D. 45, a Eoman author 
stated that the Druids (who did not flourish in Germany) 
taught many things privately, but that one of their precepts 
had become public, to wit, that man should act bravely in 
war, that souls are immortal, and that there is another life 
after death. There is additional testimony to the effect 
that the Druids of the Isle of Man, or Eubonia, " raised 
their minds to the most sublime inquiries, and despising 
human and worldly affairs strongly pressed upon their 
disciples the immortality of the soul ". " Before all 
things," confirmed Csesar, " they (the Druids) are desirous 
to inspire a belief that men's souls do not perish." That 
they successfully inspired this cardinal doctrine is proved 
by the fact that among the Celts it was not uncommon to 
lend money on the understanding that it should be repaid 
in the next world. It is further recorded that the Britons 
had such an utter disregard of death that they sang cheerily 
when marching into battle, and in the words of an as 
tonished Eoman, Mortem pro joco habent—" They turn 
death into a joke ". 

It was the belief of the Celt that immediately at death 
man assumed a spiritual replica of his earthly body and 
passed into what was termed the Land of the Living, the 


 174 


ABCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHÂP. 


White Land, or the Great Strand, or The Great Land, 
and many other titles. An Elphin Land, where there was 
neither death nor old age, nor any breach of law, where 
he heard the noble and melodious music of the gods, 
travelled from realm to realm, drank from crystal cups, 
and entertained himself with his beloved. In this Fairy 
land of happy souls he supposed the virtuous and brave to 
roam among fields covered with sweet flowers, and amid 
groves laden with delicious fruits. Here some, as their 
taste inclined, wandered in happy groups, some reclined in 
pleasant bowers, while others exercised themselves with 
hunting, wrestling, running races, martial feats, and other 
manly exercises. No one grew old in this Abode, nor did 
the inhabitants feel tedious of enjoyment or know how'the 
centuries passed away. In this spiritual Land of Immortal 
Youth " wherein is delight of every goodness," and " where 
only truth is known," there was believed to be " neither 
age, nor decay; nor gloom, nor sadness, nor envy, nor 
jealousy, nor hatred, nor haughtiness " ; in short, the Fairy 
land or Paradise of the Britons coincided exactly with the 
celestial garden of the Persians wherein, it is said, there was 
"no impotent, no lunatic, no poverty, no lying, no mean 
ness, no jealousy, no decayed tooth, no leprous to be con 
fined," nor any of the brands wherewith evil stamps the 
bodies of mortals. 

To this day the unsophisticated Celts of Britain and 
Brittany believe in this doctrine of a heavenly hereafter, 
and the conception of an all-surrounding " Good People " 
and elemental spirits is still vividly alive. In England 
fairies were known as Mawmets, meaning " little mothers," 
and in Wales as y mamoAi, which means " the mothers ". 
They were also known as " mothers' blessings ". 


IV.] 


ALBION 


175 


To the early Christian preachers the " gentry " and the 
" good people " were the troops of Satan continually to be 
combated and exorcised, but it was a hard task to dispel 
the exquisite images of the fairy-paradise, substituting in 
lieu of it the monkish purgatory. There is a tale extant 
of how St. Patrick once upon a time tried to convince 
Oisin that the hero Fingal was roasting in hell. "If," 
cried out the old Fenian, " the children of Morni and the 
many tribes of the clan Ovi were alive, we would force 
brave Fingal out of hell or the habitation should be our 
own." 

Not only did the British believe that their friends were 
in Elysium, but they likewise supposed- themselves to be 
under the personal and immediate guardianship of the 
" gentry ". The Rev. S. Baring-Gould refers to the beautiful 
legends which centre around this belief as too often, alas, 
but apples of Sodom, fair cheeked, but containing the dust 
and ashes of heathenism. After lamenting the heresy— 
" too often current among the lower orders and dissenters " 
—that the souls of the departed become angels, he goes on 
to explain: "In Judaic and Christian doctrine the angel 
creation is distinct from that of human beings, and a Jew 
or a Catholic would as little dream of confusing the distinct 
conception of angel and soul as of believing in metempsy 
chosis. But not so dissenting religion. According to 
Druidic dogma the souls of the dead were guardians of the 
living, a belief shared with the Ancient Indians, etc. 
Thus the hymn, Ί want to be an Angel,' so popular in 
dissenting schools, is founded on a venerable Aryan myth 
and therefore of exceeding interest, but Christian it is 
not."1 

1 Curious Mytlis, p. 557,- 


 176 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


Lucan, the Roman poet, alluding to the Druids ob 
served— 

If dying mortals doom they sing aright, 
No ghosts descend to dwell in dreadful night 
No parting souls to grisly Pluto go 
Nor seek the dreary silent shades below, 
But forth they fly immortal to their kind 
And other bodies in new worlds they find. - 


FIG. 45.—From Christian Iconography (Didron). 

The symbolism of the butterfly is crystallised in the word 
psyche, which in Greek meant not only butterfly but also 
soul, and to this day butterflies in some districts of Great 
Britain are considered to be souls, though this may have 
arisen not from an ethereal imagination, but from the 
ancient doctrine of metemphsychosis which the Druids 
seemingly held. It was certainly believed that souls, like 
serpents, shed their old coverings and assumed newer and 
more lovely forms, that all things changed, but that nothing 
perished. In Cornwall moths, regarded by some as souls, 
by others as fairies, are known as pisgies or piskies. The 


ALBION 


177 


connection between the Cornish words pisgie or pisJcie and 
the Greek psyche has been commented upon as being 
"curious but surely casual". Grimm has recorded that 
in old German, the caterpillar was named Alba, and that 
the Alp often takes the form of a butterfly.1 

Referring to Ossian, Dr. Waddell states : " He recognised 
the Deity, if he could be said to recognise him at all, as an 
omnipresent vital essence everywhere diffused in the world, 
or centred for a lifetime in heroes. He himself, his kindred, 
his forefathers, and the human race at large were depend 
ent solely on the atmosphere, their souls were identified 
with the air, heaven was their natural home, earth their 
temporary residence." 

But, though certainly upholders of what would nowa 
days be termed complacently " the Larger Hope," it was 
certainly not supposed that evil was capable of admittance 
to the Land of Virtues : on the contrary, the Celts believed 
firmly in the existence of an underworld which their poets 
termed " the cruel prison of the earth," " the abode of 
death," " the loveless land," etc. 

According to the Bardic Triads there were " Three 
things that make a man equal to an angel; the love of 
every good ; the love of exercising charity ; and the love 
of pleasing God". It was further inculcated that "In 
creation there is no evil which is not a greater good than 
an evil : the things called rewards or punishments are so 
secured by eternal ordinances, that they are not conse 
quences, but properties of our acts and habits." 

It was not imagined as it is to-day that " the awful wrath 
of God " could be assuaged by the sacrifice of an innocent 
man, or that— 

1Cf. Keightley, T., Fairy Mythology, p. 298. 
12 


 178 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


fcHAP. 


Believe in Christ, who died for thee, 
And sure as He hath died, 
Thy debt is paid, thy soul is free, 
And thou art justified.1 

It is still the doctrine of the Christian Church that 
infants dying unbaptised are doomed to hell, but to the 
British this barbaric dogma evidently never appealed. In 
the fifth century the peace of the Church was vastly dis 
turbed by the insidious heresy called Pelasgian, and it is 
a matter of some distinction to these islands that " Pelas- 
gus," whose correct name was Morgan, was British-born. 
Morgan or Pelasgus, seconded by Coelestius, an Irish Scot, 
wilfully but gracelessly maintained that Adam's sin affected 
only himself, not his posterity; that children at their birth 
are as pure and innocent as Adam was at his creation, and 
that the Grace of God is not necessary to enable men to 
do their duty, to overcome temptations, or even to attain 
perfection, but that they may do all this by the freedom of 
their own wills. A Council of 214 Bishops, held at Carth 
age, formally condemned these pestilent and insidious 
doctrines which, according to a commentator, " strike at 
the root of genuine piety ". 

There is no known etymology for the words God and 
good, and some years ago it was a matter of divided opinion 
whether or not they were radically the same. In Danish 
the two terms are identical, and there is very little doubt 
that the one is an adjective derived from the other. Max 

1 There is a certain section of Christianity that still revels in hymns 
such as the following : — 

" His nostrils breathe out fiery streams, 
He's a consuming fire, 
His jealous eyes His wrath inflame 
And raise His vengeance higher." 


IV.] 


ALBION 


179 


Müller, however, sums up the contrary opinion as follows : 
" God was most likely an old heathen name of the Deity 
and for such a name the supposed etymological meaning 
of good would be far too modern, too abstract, too Chris 
tian ". 

One might ignore this marvellous complacency were it 
not for the fact that it still expresses the opinion of a 
considerable majority. To refute the presumption that 
Christianity alone is capable of abstract thought, or of 
conceiving God as good, one need only turn to any 
primitive philosophy. It is, however, needless to look 
further afield than pagan Albion. Strabo alludes to the 
Druidic teaching as " moral science," and no phrase better 
defines the pith and dignity of certain British Triads. 
It was daringly maintained that God cannot be matter, 
therefore everything not matter was God : that :— 

In every person there is a soul, 

In every soul there is intelligence : 

In every intelligence there is thought, 

In every thought there is either good or evil : 

In every evil there is death : 

In every good there is life, 

In every life there is God.1 

The Bards of Britain, who claimed to maintain the 
" sciences " of piety, wisdom, and courtesy, taught that— 
the three principal properties of the Hidden God were 
" Power, knowledge, and love " : that the three pur 
poses of God in his works were " to consume the evil ; to 
enliven the dead ; and to cause joy from doing good " : 

'This and the several subsequent quotations from Bardic "Philosophy" 
are taken from the collection published in 1862, by the Welsh MSS. Society, 
under the title Barddas. Whatever may be the precise date of these 
axioms the ideas they express well repay careful consideration. 


 180 


ABCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


that the three ways in which God worked were " experi 
ence, wisdom, and mercy ". 

It will be observed that all these axioms are in three 
clauses, and it was claimed by the Welsh Bards of the 
twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries that 
they possessed many similar Triads or threefold precepts 
which had been handed down by memory and tradition 
from immemorial times.1 It is generally accepted by com 
petent scholars that the Welsh Triads, particularly the 
poems attributed to " Taliesin," undoubtedly contain a 
great deal of pagan and pre-Christian doctrine, but to what 
extent this material has been garbled and alloyed is, of 
course, a matter of uncertainty and dispute. In some in 
stances external and internal evidence testify alike to their 
authenticity. For example, Diogenes Laertius, who died 
in A.D. 222, stated : " The Druids philosophise sententiously 
and obscurely—to worship the Gods, to do no evil, to ex- 

1 According to Csesar the Druidic philosophy was transmitted orally lor 
the purpose of strengthening the memory. The disciples of Pythagoras 
followed a similar precept, hence when the majority of them were destroyed 
in a fire the axioms of Pythagoras were largely lost. That the traditional 
tales of Ireland were maintained in their verbal integrity for untold years 
is implied by Mr. Yeats' statement : " In the Parochial Survey of Ireland 
it is recorded how the story-tellers used to gather together of an eveuing, 
and if any had a different version from the others, they would all recite 
theirs and vote, and the man who had varied would have to abide by their 
verdict. In this way stories have been handed down with such accuracy, 
that the long tale of Dierdre was, in the earlier decades of this century, 
told almost word for word, as in the very ancient MSS. in the Royal Dublin 
Society. In one case only it varied, and then the MSS. was obviously 
wrong—a passage had been forgotten by the copyist. But this accuracy is 
rather in the folk and bardic tales than in the fairy legends, for these vary 
widely, being usually adapted to some neighbouring village or local fairy- 
seeing celebrity."—-Yeats, W. B., Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peas 
antry, p. 11. 


IV·] 


ALBION 


181 


ercise courage'. This precise and comprehensive sum 
mary of the whole duty of man is to be found among the 
Bardic Triads, where it has been translated to read : " The 
three First Principles of Wisdom : obedience to the laws 
of God, concern for the good of mankind, and bravery in 
sustaining all the accidents of life ". 

In Celtic Heathendom Sir John Ehys prints the follow 
ing noble and majestic prayer, of which four MSB. variants 
are in existence :— 

Grant, O God, Thy protection ; 
And in Thy protection, strength, 
And in strength, understanding ; 
And in understanding, knowledge, 
And in knowledge, the knowledge of justice ; 
And in the knowledge of justice, the love of it, 
And in that love, the love of all existences ; 
And in that love of all existences, the love of God. 
God and all goodness. 

Some have supposed that Druidism learned its secrets 
from the Persian Magi, others that the Magi learnt from 
Druidism. Pliny, speaking of the vanities of Magiism or 
Magic, recorded that " Britain celebrates them to-day 
with such ceremonies it might seem possible that she 
taught Magic to the Persians ". In Persian philosophy 
the trinity of Goodness was Good Thought, Good Deed, 
and Good Word, and in Britain these Three Graces were 
symbolised by the three Golden Berries of the Mistletoe 
or Golden Bough. They figure alternatively as Three 
Golden Balls or Apples growing on a crystal tree. The 
Mistletoe—sacred alike in Persia and in Britain—was wor 
shipped as the All-Heal, and it was termed the Ethereal 
Plant, because alone among the vegetable creation it springs 
etherially in mid-air, and-not from earth. Among the 


 182 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


adventures of Prince Conneda of Connaught—the young 
and lovely son of Great and Good King Conn and Queen Eda 
—was a certain quest involving the most strenuous seek 
ing. Aided by a Druid, the youthful Conneda carried with 
him a small ^bottle of extracted Ail-Heal, and was led for 
ward by a magic ball, which rolled ever in advance. The 
story (or rather allegory, for it is obviously such) tells us 
that the Three Golden Apples were plucked from the 
Crystal Tree in the midst of the pleasure garden, and de 
posited by Conneda in his bosom. On returning home 
Conneda planted the Three Golden Apples in his garden, 
and instantly a great tree bearing similar fruit sprang up. 
This tree caused all the district to produce an exuberance 
of crops and fruits, so that the neighbourhood became as 
fertile and plentiful as the dominion of the Firbolgs, in 
consequence of the extraordinary powers possessed by the 
Golden Fruit.1 

The trefoil or shamrock (figured constantly in Crete) was 
another symbol of the Three in One, and I have little doubt 
that at Tara there once existed a picture of St. Patrick 
holding this almost world-wide emblemr Tara is the same 
word as tri or three and in Faerie this number is simi 
larly sacred. The Irish used to march in battle in threes, 
the Celtic mairae or fairy mothers were generally figured 
in groups of three, and the gown of the Fairy Queen is 
said to have been— 

Of pansy, pink, and primrose leaves, 
Most curiously laid on in threaves.z 

The word shamrock in Persian is shamraich, and three 
to four thousand years ago a Persian poet hymned : " We 

1 Cf. Yeats, W. B., Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, p. 318. 
sKeightley, T., I 'airy Mythology, p. 346. 


IV.] 


ALBION 


183 


worship the pure, the Lord of purity. We worship the 
universe of the true spirit, visible, invisible, and all that 
sustains the welfare of the good creation. We praise all 
good thoughts, all good words, all good deeds, which are 
and will be, and keep pure all that is good. Thou true 
and happy Being ! we strive to think, to speak, to do only 
what, of all actions, may promote the two lives, the body 
and the mind. We beseech the spirit of earth, by means 
of these best works (agriculture) to grant us beautiful and 
fertile fields, for believer and unbeliever, for rich and poor. 
We worship the Wise One who formed and furthered the 
spirit of the earth. We worship Him with our bodies and 
souls. We worship Him as being united with the spirits 
of pure men and women. We worship the promotion 
of all good, all that is very beautiful, shining, immortal, 
bright, everything that is good." 

The alleged author of this invocation to the God of 
Goodness and Beauty lived certainly as early as 1200 B.c., 
some think 2000 B.c. : the hymn itself was collected into 
its present canon during the fourth century of this era, but, 
like the British Triads and all other Bardic lore, it is sup 
posed to have been long orally preserved. It is perfectly 
legitimate to compare the literature of Ancient Persia 
with that of Britain, for the religious systems of the two 
countries were admittedly almost identical ; and until 
recently Persia was the most generally accepted cradle 
of the Aryans. 

It is impossible to suppose that the earliest compilers 
and transcribers of the British Triads had access to the 
MSS. of the hymn just quoted ; yet while Persian tradition 
records, " We worship the promotion of all good, all that is 
very beautiful, shining, immortal, bright, everything that 


 184 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


is good," the British Bards seemingly worshipped the 
promotion of all good, in fact the Three Ultimate Objects 
of Bardism are on record as being " to reform morals and 
customs ; to secure peace and praise everything that is 
good and excellent ". 

British literature, British folklore, and British custom, 

all alike refute Max Muller's preposterous supposition that 

the equation God = Good is " far too modern, too abstract, 

too Christian," and there is manifestly some evidence in 

favour of the probability that Giant Albion was worshipped 

as the Holy Good and the All Goud. There is no known 

tribe of savages that is destitute of some code of ethics, and 

it is seemingly a world-wide paradox that spiritual wisdom 

and low civilisation can, and often do, exist concurrently. 

Side by side with the childish notions of modern savages, 

one finds, not infrequently, what Andrew Lang termed, 

" astonishing metaphysical hymns about the first stirrings 

of light in darkness, of becoming, of being, which remind 

us of Hegel and Heraclitus ",1 The sacred Books of 

Christendom emanated from one of the crudest and least 

cultivated of all the subject races of the Roman Empire. 

It is self-evident that the Hebrews were a predatory and 

semi-savage tribe who conceived their Divinity as vengeful, 

cursing, swearing, vomiting, his fury coming up into his 

face, and his nostrils smoking; nevertheless, as in the 

Psalms and elsewhere, are some of the noblest and most 

lofty conceptions of Holiness and Beauty. 

As a remarkable instance of this seeming universal para 
dox, one may refer to Micah, a Hebrew, whose work first 
appeared in writing about 300 B.C. There is in Micah 
some of the best philosophy ever penned, yet the status of 
1 Myth, Ritual and Religim, 1. 186. 


ALBION 


185 


the tribe among whom he lived and to whom he addressed 
himself, was barbarous and brutal. Of this, an example is 
found in Chapter III, where the prophet writes : " And I 
said, Hear I pray you, 0 heads of Jacob and ye princes of 
the house of Israel ; Is it not for you to know judgement ? 
who hate the good, and love the evil ; who pluck off their 
skin off them, and their flesh from off their bones ; who 
also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off 
them; and they break their bones, and chop them in 
pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the caldron ". 

As a parallel to this cannibalism it is thus quite conceiv 
able that while some of the MacAlpines were lauding 
Albani, others were larding their weaker brethren for the 
laird's table: but the whole trend of Alban custom and 
Alban literature renders the supposition unlikely. There 
is extant a British Triad inculcating the three maxims for 
good health as "cheerfulness, temperance, and early 
rising". There is another enunciating the three cares 
that should occupy the mind of every man as: "To wor 
ship God, to avoid injuring any one, "and to act justly 
towards every living thing ". The latter of these is curiously 
reminiscent of Micah's Triadic utterance : " He hath 
showed thee 0 man what is good, and what doth the Lord 
require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and walk 
humbly with God". 


 CHAPTEE V 

GOG AND MAGOG 

" Scarce stand the vessels hauled upon the beach, 
And bent on marriages the young men vie 
To till new settlements, while I to each 
Due law dispense and dwelling place supply, 
When from a tainted quarter of the sky 
Bank vapours, gathering, on my comrades seize, 
And a foul pestilence creeps down from high." 

—VIBGIL·, The JEneid. 

THE British Chronicles relate that when Brute and his 
companions reached these shores the island was then un 
inhabited, save only for a few giants. Seemingly these 
natives did not oppose the Trojan landing, for the story 
runs that " Nought gave Corineus (Brute's second-in-com 
mand) greater pleasure than to wrestle with the giants of 
whom there was a greater plenty in Cornwall than else 
where ". On a certain day, however, the existing relations 
ceased, owing to an obnoxious native named Goemagog, 
who, accompanied by a score of companions, interrupted a 
sacred function which the Trojans were holding. From 
the recommendations of the pious ^Sneas, it would seem 
that the Trojans had suffered similarly in other directions :— 

When thy vessels, ranged upon her shore, 
Rest from the deep, and on the beach ye light 
The votive altars, and the gods adore, 
Veil then thy locks, with purple hood bedight, 
And shroud thy visage from a foeman's sight, 
186 


v·] 


GOG AND MAGOG 


187 


Lest hostile presence, 'mid the flames divine, 
Break in, and mar the omen and the rite. 
This pious use keep sacred, thou and thine, 
The sous of sous unborn, and all the Trojan line.1 

The graceless Goemagog and his ruffianly crew did 
passing cruel slaughter on the British, howbeit at the last 
the Britons, rallying from all quarters, prevailed against 
them and slew all save only Goemagog. Him, Brute had 
ordered to be kept alive as he was minded to see a wrest 
ling bout betwixt him and Corineus, " who was beyond 
measure keen to match himself against such a monster ". 
Corineus, all agog and o'erjoyed at the sporting prospect, 
girded himself for the encounter, and flinging away his 
arms challenged Goemagog to a bout at wrestling. After 
" making the very air quake with their breathless gaspings," 
the match ended by Goemagog being lifted bodily into the 
air, earned to the edge of the cliff, and heaved over.2 

One cannot read Homer without realising that this 
alleged incident was in closest accord with the habits and 
probabilities of the time. Alike among the Greeks and 
the Trojans wrestling was as popular and soul-absorbing 
a pastime as it is to-day, or was until yesterday, among 

Cornishmen :— 

Tired out we seek the little town, and run 
The sterns ashore and anchor in the bay, 
Saved beyond hope and glad the land is won, 
And lustral rites, with blazing altars, pay 
To Jove, and make the shores of Actium gay 
With Ilian games, as, like our sires, we strip 
And oil our sinews for the wrestler's play, 
Proud, thus escaping from the foeman's grip, 
Past all the Argive towns, through swarming Greeks, to slip.8 

1 Virgil, The Mnetà, Bk. III., e. lui. 

3 Cf. Geoffrey's Histories of the Kings of Britain (Everyman's Library), 
p. 202. 

3 Virgil, Tt^^lneid, Bk. III., 37. 


 188 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


The untoward Goemagog was probably one of an ele 
mentary big-boned tribe whose divinities were Gog and 
Magog, and there are distinct traces, at any rate, of Magog 
in Ireland. According to De Jubainville, "the various 
races that have successively inhabited Ireland trace them 
selves back to common ancestors descended from Magog 
or Gomer, son of Japhet, so that the Irish genealogy 
traditions are in perfect harmony with those of the Bible ",1 

The figures of Gog and Magog used until recently to be 
cut into the slope of Plymouth Hoe : in Cambridgeshire, 
are the Gogmagog hills ; at the extremity of Land's End 
are two rocks known respectively as Gog and Magog, and 
there is an unfavourable allusion to the same twain in 
Revelation.2 Gog and Magog are the "protectors" of 
London, and at civic festivals their images used with pomp 
and circumstance to be paraded through the City. 

In some parts of Europe the civic giants were represented 
as being eight in number, and the Christian Clergy in 
herited with their office the incongruous duty of keeping 
them in good order. One of these ceremonials is described 
by an eye-witness writing in 1809, who tells us that in 
Valencia no procession of however little importance took 
place, without being preceded by eight statues of giants of 
a prodigious height. " Four of them represented the four 
quarters of the world, and the other four their husbands. 
Their heads were made of paste-board, and of an enormous 
size, frizzled and dressed in the fashion. Men, covered 
with drapery falling on the ground, carried them at the 
head of the procession, making them dance, jump, bow, 
turn, and twist about. The people paid more attention to 
these gesticulations than to the religious ceremony which 

1 Irish Mythological Cycle, p. ,50. 2 xx. 8. 


GOG AND MAGOG 


189 


followed them. The existence of the giants was deemed 
of sufficient importance to require attention as to the means 
of perpetuating them ; consequently there was a consider 
able foundation in Valencia for their support. They had 
a house belonging to them where they were deposited. 
Two benefices were particularly founded in honour of 
them ; and it was the duty of the Ecclesiastics who pos 
sessed these benefices to take care of them and of their 
ornaments, particular revenues being assigned for the ex 
pense of their toilettes."1 

Four pairs of elemental gods were similarly worshipped 
in Egypt, each pair male and female, and these eight 
primeval Beings were known as the Ogdoad or Octet. In 
Scotland, the Earth Goddess who is said to have existed 
"from the long eternity of the world," is sometimes de 
scribed as being the chief of eight "big old women," at 
other times as " a great big old wife," and with this untoward 
Hag we may equate the English " Awd Goggie " who was 
supposed to guard orchards. 

The London figures of Gog and Magog—constructed of 
wicker work—had movable eyes which, to the great joy 
of the populace, were caused to roll or goggle as the images 
were perambulated. Skeat thinks- the word gog is "of 
imitative origin," but it is more likely that goggle was 
originally Gog oeuil or Gog Eye. The Irish and Gaelic 
for Goggle-eyed isgogshuileach, which the authorities refer 
to gog, " to move slightly " and mil, " an eye ". 

At Gigglewick or Giggles-fort in Yorkshire (anciently 
Deira), there is a celebrated well of which the famed 
peculiarity is its eightfold flow, and it was of this Giggle 
Well that Drayton wrote in Polyolbion :— 

1 Wood, E. 3., Giamtsand Dwarfs, p. 54. 


 190 


ABCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


At Giggleswiok where I a fountain can you show, 
That eight times a day is said to ebb and flow. 

In Cornwall at St. Isseys there used to be a sacred 
fountain known as St. Giggy's Well, and as every stream 
and fount was the supposed home of jinns or genii it is 
possible that "Saint Giggy " may be equated with igigi, a 
word meaning in Babylonian mythology " the spirits of 
Heaven ". Jinn or Genie may also be connoted with a 
well near Launceston known as Joan's Pitcher, the pitcher 
or vase whence the living waters were poured being a con 
stantly recurring emblem of Mother Natura It will be 
noticed in Fig. 25, p. 142, and in Fig. 256, p. 428. 

The French have an expression a gogò (" origin un 
known ") which means at one's ease, or in clover ; in old 
French gogiie (" origin unknown ") meant pleasantry or fun, 
and goguenard a funmaker, or a jester. All these and 
kindred terms are probably correlate to the jovial Gogmagog 
carnivals and festivals. In London the house of Gog and 
Magog is the Guildhall in Aldermanbury : if born within 
the sound of the bells of the neighbouring St. Mary-le-Bow 
a Londoner is entitled to be termed a cockney ; Cockayne 
is an old and romantic term for London, and it would 
therefore seem likely that among the cluster of detached 
duns which have now coalesced into London, the followers 
of Gog and Magog had a powerful and perhaps aboriginal 
footing. Around Londonderry in Ireland are the memories 
of a giant Gig na Gog, and at Launceston in Cornwall 
there used to be held a so-called Giglot Fair. At this a 
gogò festival every wench was at liberty to bestow the eye 
of favour, ogle, or look gougou, on any swain she fancied : 
whence obviously the whole village was agog, or full of 
eagerness, and much ogling, giggling, goggling, and 
gougounarderie. 


GOG AND MAGOG 


191 


In Cornwall googou means a cave, den, souterrain, or 
" giants holt," and there are several reasons to suppose that 
the Gogmagogei or gougouites were troglodytes. " Son of 
Man," said Ezekiel, " set thy face against Gog the Land 
of Magog," and to judge from similar references, it would 
seem that the followers of Gogmagog were ill-favoured and 
unloved. Sir John Maundeville (1322) mentions in his 
Travels, that in the Land of Cathay towards Bucharia, 
and Upper India» the Jews of ten lineages " who are called 
Gog and Magog " were penned up in some mountains called 
Über. This name Über we shall show is probably the same 
as obr, whence the Generic term Hebrew, and it is said by 
Maundeville that between those mountains of Über were 
enclosed twenty-two kings, with their people, that dwelt 
between the mountains of Scythia.1 Josephus mentions 
that the Scythians were called Magogoei by the Greeks : 
by some authorities the Scythians are equated with the 
Scotti or Scots. There are still living in Cornwall the 
presumed descendants of what have been termed the 
" bedrock " race, and these people still exhibit in their 
physiognomies the traces of Oriental or Mongoloid blood. 
The early passage tombs of Japan are, according to Borlase, 
(W. C.), literally counterparts in plan and construction 
of those giant-graves or passage-tombs which are prevalent 
in Cornwall, and, speaking of the inhabitants of Cornwall 
and Wales, Dr. Beddoe says : " I think some reason can be 
shown for suspecting the existence of traces of some 
Mongoloid race in the modern population of Wales and the 
West of England. The most notable indication is the 
oblique or Chinese eye. I have noted thirty-four persons 
with oblique eyes. Their heads include a wide range of 

1 Chap. sxvi. 


 192 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 

relative breadth. In other points the type stands out dis 
tinctly. The cheek bones are almost always broad: the 
brows oblique, in the same direction as the eyes; the chin 
as a rule narrow and angular ; the nose often concave and 
flat, seldom arched ; and the mouth rather inclined to be 
prominent. . . . The iris is 'usually hazel or brown, and 
the hair straight, dark-brown, black, or reddish. " It is," 
he adds, " especially in Cornwall that this type is Common." 

Our British Giants, Gog, Magog, Termagol, and the 
rest of the terrible tribe, sprang, according to Scottish 
myth, from the thirty-three daughters of Diocletian, a 
King of Syria, or Tyria. These thirty-three primeval 
women drifted in a ship to Britain, then uninhabited, 
where they lived in solitude, until an order of demons be 
coming enamoured of them, took them to wife and begot 
a race of giants. Anthropology and tradition thus alike 
refer the Magogoei to Syria, or Phoenicia, and there would 
seem to be numerous indications that between these people 
and the ethereal, romantic, and artistic Cretans there 
existed a racial, integral, antipathy. 

The Gogonians may be connoted with the troglodyte 
Ciconians, or Cyclops, to whom Homer so frequently and 
unfavourably alludes, and the one-eyed Polyphemus of 
Homer is obviously one and the same with Balor, the one- 
eyed giant of Tory Isle in Ireland. This Balor or Conann 
the Great, as he is sometimes termed, was cock-eyed, 
one terrible eye facing front, the other situated in the back 
of his head facing to the rear. To this day the fateful eye 
of Balor is the Evil Eye in Ireland, whence anyone is liable 
to be o'erwished. Ordinarily the dreadful optic was close 
shut, but at times his followers raised the eyelid with an 
iron hook, whereupon the glance of Balor's eye blasted 


GOG AND MAGOG 


193 


everything and everybody upon whom it fell. On one 
occasion the fateful eye of Balor is said to have overflowed 
with water, causing a disastrous flood ; whence, perhaps, 
why a watery eye is termed a " Balory " or " Bleary eye ". 
That Balor was Gog may be inferred from Belerium or 
Bolerium, being the name applied by Ptolemy to the Land's 
End district where still stand the rocks called Gog and 
Magog. That Balor was Polyphemus, the Cyclopean Ci- 
conian, is probable from the fact that he was blinded by a 
spear driven into his ill-omened eyeball, precisely as Poly 
phemus was blinded by a blazing stake from Ulysses. Did 
the unlettered peasantry of Tory Isle derive this tale from 
Homer, or did Homer get the story from Ogygia, a sup 
posedly ancient name for Erin? Not only is there an 
identity between the myth of Balor and Polyphemus, but, 
further—to quote D'arbois de Jubainville—"As fortune 
strangely has it the Irish name Balor has preserved its 
identity with Belleros, whom the poems of Homer and 
Hesiod and many other Greek writers have handed down 
to us in the compound Bellero-phontes, "slayer of Bel- 
leros".1 

The author of The Odyssey describes the Ciconians as 
a race endued with superior powers, but as troubling their 
neighbours with frequent wrongs :— 

.... o'er the Deep proceeding sad, we reach'd 
The land at length, where, giant-sized and free 
Prom all constraint of law, the Cyclops dwell 
They, trusting to the Gods, plant not, or plough 


No councils they convene, no laws contrive 
But iu deep caverns dwell, found on the heads 
Of lofty mountains. 

1 The Irish Mythological Cycle, p. 116. 


13 


 ι I 


I 
. 

ΙΊ 

i! 


194 


ABCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


Apparently some of these same lawless and predatory 
troglodytes were at one time dwelling in Wales, for a few 
miles further north of Aberystwith we find the place-name 
Goginan there applied to what is described as " a locality 
with extensive lead-mines ". The Welsh for cave is ogof, 
or gogof, and in Cornish not only gougou, but also ugo, or 
hugo meant the same : thus og and gog would seem to have 
been synonymous, a conclusion confirmed in many other 
directions, such as goggle and ogle. In Hebrew, og meant 
gigantic, mighty, or long-necked, which evidently is the 
same word as the British uch, German hoch, meaning 
high; whence, there is every probability that Og, or Gog, 
meant primarily High-High, or the Most High, and Magog, 
Mother Most High. 

Okehampton, on the river Okement in Devonshire, held, 
like Launceston, a giglet fair, whence it is probable that 
Kigbear, the curious name of a hamlet in Okehampton, 
took its title from the same Eig as was responsible for 
giglet. There are numerous allusions in the classics to a 
Cyclopean rocking-stone known as the Gigonian Bock, but 
the site of this famous oracle is not known. Joshua refers 
to the coast of Og, King of Bashan, which was of the 
remnant of the giants, and that this obnoxious ruler was 
a troglodyte is manifest from his subterranean capital at 
Edrei, which is in existence to this day, and will be de 
scribed later. That at one time Og was a god of the ocean 
may be deduced from the Eabbinic tradition that he 
walked by the side of the ark during the flood, and the 
waters came up only to his knees. From the measure 
ments of Og's famous bedstead it has been calculated that 
Og himself " was about nine feet high ",1 

' Wood, E. J., Giants and Dwarfs, p. 5, 


V-] 


GOG AND MAGOG 


195 


In Hebrew og is also understood to mean he who goes 
in a circle, which is suggestive of the Sun or Eye of 
Heaven. That the sun was the mighty, all-seeing ogler or 
goggler of the universe is a commonplace among the poets, 
whence Homer, alluding to the Artist of the World, ob 
serves : " His spy the Sun had told him all ". To the 
jocund Sun, which on Easter Day in particular was sup 
posed to dance, may be referred the joyful gigues, or jigs 
of our ancestors. Gig also meant a boy's top, and to the 
same source may be assigned whirligig1. Shec is the Irish 
form of Jack, and gigans or gigantic are both radically 
Jack or Jock. In English, Jack means many things, from 
a big fresh-water fish to a jack pudding, and from Jack-in- 
Green to Jack-a-lanthorn : Skeat defines it, inter alia, as 
a saucy fellow, and in this sense it is the same as a 
young cock. Among the characteristics of Mercury—the 
Celtic Ogmius, or Hercules—were versatility, fascination, 
trickery, and cunning : sometimes he is described as " a 
mischievous young thief," whence, perhaps, the old word 
cog, which meant cheating, or trickery. 

The names Badcock, Adcock, Pocock, Bocock, Meacock, 
and Maycock, as also Cook and Cox, are all familiar ones 
in London or Cockayne. As Prof. Weekley observes, 
'many explanations have been given to the suffix cock, 
but I cannot say that any of them have convinced me. 
Both Cock and Cocking are found as early personal names."1 
In London or Cockaigne, coachmen used to swear, " By 
Gog and Magog,"2 and it may prove that "By Gosh" is 
like the surnames Goodge and Gooch, an inflection of Gog. 

Cogs are the teeth or rays upon a wheel, and that cog 

1 The Romance of Names, p. 65. 

2 Hone, W., Anoient Mysteries, p. 264. 


 196 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


meant sun or fire is implied by the word cook, -i.e., baked 
or fried. Coch is Welsh for red, kakk was the Mayan for 
fire; in the same language kin meant sun and oc meant 
head, and among the Peruvians Mama Cocha was the title 
of the Mother of all Mankind. As coke is cooked coal, one 
might better refer that term to cook, than, as officially at 
present, to colli, the core of an apple. It is difficult to ap 
preciate any marked resemblance between coke and the 
core of an apple. 

The authorities connote Cockayne with cookery, and 
there is undoubtedly a connection, but the faerie Cockayne 
was more probably the Land of All Highest Ayne. The 
German for cock is hahn, and the cock with his jagged 
scarlet crest was pre-eminently the symbol of the good 
Shine. Chanticleer, the herald of the dawning sun, was 
the cognisance of Gaul, and East and West he symbolised 
the conqueror of darkness :— 

Aurora's harbinger—who 
Scatters the rear of darkness thin. 

The Cockayne of London, France, Spain and Portugal 
was a degraded equivalent to the Irish Tir nan Og, which 
means the Land of the Young, and the word Cockayne is 
probably cognate with Yokhanan, the Hebrew form of 
John, meaning literally, " God is gracious ". According 
to Wright, " the ancient Greeks had their Cockaigne. 
Athenseus has preserved some passages from lost poets of 
the best age of Grecian literature, where the burlesque on 
the golden age and earthly paradise of their mythology 
bears so striking a resemblance to our descriptions of 
Cockaigne, that we might almost think, did we not know 
it to be impossible, that in the one case whole lines had 


GOG AND MAGOG 


197 


v-] 

been translated from the other." 1 The probability is, that 
the poems, like all ancient literature, were long orally pre 
served by the bards of the two peoples. 

In Irish mythology, it is said of Anu, the Great Mother, 
that well she used to cherish the circle of the Gods ; in 
England Ked or Kerid was " the Great Cherisher," and her 
symbol as being perpetuai love was, with great propriety, 
that ideal mother, the hen. The word hen, according to 
Skeat, is from the " Anglo-Saxon hana, a. cock," literally " a 
singer from his crowing ". But a crowing hen is notori 
ously a freak and an abomination. 

In Lancashire there is a place called Ainsworth or 
Cockey : in Yorkshire there is a river Cock, and near 
Biggleswade is a place named Cockayne Hatley : the sur 
name Cockayne is attributed to a village in Durham named 
Coken. In Northumberland is a river Cocket or Coquet, 
and in this district in the parish of St. John Lee is Cock- 
law. Cockshott is an eminence in Cumberland and Cocks 
Tor—whereon are stone circles and stone rows—is a com 
manding height in Devon. In Worcestershire is Cokehill, 
and it is not improbable that Great and Little Coggeshall 
in Essex, as also the Oxfordshire place-name Coggo, Cogges, 
or Coggs, are all referable to Gog. 

In Northamptonshire is a place known as Cogenhoe or 
Cooknoe, and in seemingly all directions Cook, Cock, and 
Gog will be found to be synonymous. The place-name 
Docknage is officially interpreted as having meant " hatch, 
half-door, or wicket gate of the cock," but this is not very 
convincing, for no cock is likely to have had sufficient 
prestige to name a place. The Cornish place-name Cog- 
ynos, is interpreted as " cuckoo in the moor," but cuckoos 

1 Wright, T., Patrick's Purgatory, p. 56. 


 198 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAK 


are sylvan rather than moorland birds : the word cuckoo, 
nevertheless, may imply that this bird was connected with 
Gog, for the Welsh for cuckoo is cog, and in Scotland the 
cuckoo is known as a gauk or gowk. These terms, as also 
the Cornish guckaw, may be decayed forms of the Latin 
cuculus, Greek kokkuz, or there are equal chances that they 
are more primitive. In Cornwall, on 28th April, there 
used to be held a so-called Cuckoo Feast.1 

There is an English river Cocker : a cocker was a prize 
fighter, and it is possible that the expression, " not accord 
ing to cocker," may contain an allusion older than popularly 
supposed. There are rivers named Ock, both in Berks and 
Devon, and at Derby there is an Ockbrook : there is an 
Ogwell in Devon, a river Ogmore in Glamorganshire, and 
a river Ogwen in Carnarvon. In Wiltshire is an Ogbourne 
or river Og, and on the Wiltshire Avon there is a prehistoric 
British camp called Ogbury. This edifice may be de 
scribed as gigantic for it covers an area of 62 acres, is up 
wards of a mile in circuit, and has a rampart 30 to 33 feet 
high.2 The number 33 occurred in connection with the 
original British giants, said to be 33 in number, and we 
shall meet with 30 or 33 frequently hereafter. Ogre (of 
unknown origin), meaning a giant, may be connoted with 
the Iberian ogro, and with haugr the Icelandic word for hill, 
with which etymologers connect the adjective huge : the 
old Gaulish for a hill was hoge or hogue,3 and the proba 
bility would seem to be that Og and huge were originally 
the same term. There is a huge earthwork at Uig in 

1 Coiirtney, Miss M. L., Cornish Feasts and Folklore, p. 28. 

2 Bartholomew, J. G., A Survey Gazetteer of tlie British Islands, I. 
612. 

s The duplication cock, as in haycock, also meant a hill. 


GOG AND MAGOG 


199 


v.] 

Scotland, the walls of which, like those at Ogbury in Wilt 
shire, measure 30 feet in height. 

The surname Hogg does not necessarily imply a swinish 
personality : more probably the original Hoggs were like 
the Haigs, followers of the Hagman, who was commemor 
ated in Scotland during the Hogmanay festivities. In 
Turkey aga means lord or chief officer, and in Greece hagia 
means holy, whence the festival of Hogmanay has been 
assumed to be a corruption of the Greek words hagia mene, 
in holy month. If this were so it would be interesting to 
know how these Greek terms reached Scotland, but, as a 
matter of fact, Hogmanay does not last a month : at the 
outside it was a fête of three weeks, and more particularly 
three nights. 

Three weeks before the day whereon was borne the Lorde of Grace, 

And on the Thursdaye boyes and girls do runne in every place, 

And bounce and beate at every doore, with blowes and lustie snaps, 

And crie, the Ad.vent of the Lord not borne as yet perhaps, 

And wishing to the neighbours all, that in the houses dwell, 

A happie yeare, and every thing to spring and prosper well : 

Here have they peares, and plumbs, and pence, ech man gives willinglee, 

For these three nightes are alwayes thought unfortunate to bee ; 

Wherein they are affrayde of sprites and cankred witches spight, 

And dreadful devils blacke and grim, that then have chiefest might.1 

During Hogmanay it was customary for youths to go in 
procession from house to house singing chants of heroic 
origin :— 

As we used to do in old King Henry's day, 

Sing fellows, sing Hagman heigh 1 

The King Henry here mentioned is probably not one of 
the Tudors, but the more primitive Nick or Old Harry, 


1 Quoted from Brand's Antiquities, p. 42. 


 ) .l'I 


ιϊ 


200 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


and the percipient divine who thundered against the popu 
lar festival : " Sirs, do you know what Hagmane signifies ? 
It is the Devil le in the house / That's the meaning of 
its Hebrew original," had undoubtedly good grounds for 
his denunciation. 

But the still more original meaning of Hagman was in 
all probability the uchntan, or high man, or giant man. 
According to Hellenic mythology Hercules was the son of 
Jove and Alcmena : the name Alcmena is apparently the 
feminine form of All or Holy Acmen—whence indirectly 
the word acumen or " sharp mind "—the two forms mena 
and man seemingly figure in Scotch custom as Hogmanay, 
and as the Hagman of " Sing Hagman heigh ! " J 

One of the great Eoman roads of Britain is known as 
Akeman Street, and as it happens that this prehistoric 
highway passes Bath it has been gravely suggested that it 
derived its title from the gouty, aching men who limped 
along to Bath to take the waters. But as man is the same 
word as main the word Akeman Street resolves more 
reasonably into High Main Street, which is precisely what 
it was. 

In some parts of England fairy-rings are known as Hag- 
tracks, whence seemingly fairies were sometimes known 
as hags : at Lough Crew in Ireland, there is a cabalisti- 
cally-decorated stone throne known as " the Hag's Chair ". 

In Mid-Wales ague is known as y ivrach, which means 
the hag or the old hag ; the notion being that ague (and 
all aches ?) were smitings of the ugly old Hag, or " awd 
Goggie ". Various indications seem to point to the con 
clusion that the aboriginal " bedrock " Og or Gog was a 
Tyrian or Turanian Deity, and that in the eyes of the 

1 Cf. Urlin, Miss Ethel, Festivals, Holt/days, and Saint Days, p. 2. 


V.] 


GOG AND MAGOG 


201 


Hellenes and Trojans anything to do with Og was ug\y, 
i.e., Ug-like and wj/some. 

In the county of Fife the last night of the dying year 
used to be known as Singin-e'en, a designation which is 
connected with the carols sung on ^ that occasion. But 
Singin may, and in all probability did, mean Sinjohn, for 
the Celtic Geon or giant was Ogmius the Mighty Muse, 
and chanting was attributed to this world-enchanter. As 
already seen he was pictured leading the children of men 
tongue-tied by his eloquence, and it is not improbable that 
Ogmius is equivalent to Mighty Muse, for muse in Greek 
s mousa. According to Assyrian mythology the God of 
wondrous and enchanting Wisdom rose daily from the sea 
and was named Oannes—obviously a Hellenised form of 
John or Yan. Among the Aryan nations an meant mind, 
and this term is clearly responsible for inane or without 
ane. The dictionaries attribute inane to a " root un 
known," but the same root is at the base of anima, the 
soul, whence animate or living. Oannes, who was evi 
dently the Great Acumen or Almighty Mind is said to 
have emerged daily from the ocean in order to instruct 
mankind, and he may be connoted with the Hebridian 
lea-god Shony. In the image of the benevolent Oannes 
reproduced overleaf it will be noted he is crowned with 
the cross of Allbein or All Well. 

In Brittany there are legends of a sea-maid of enchant 
ing song, and wondrous acumen named Mary Morgan, 
and this incantatrice corresponds to Morgan le fay or 
Morgiana. The Welsh for Mary is Fair, and the fairies 
3f Celtic countries were known as the Mairies,1 whence 
" Mary Morgan " was no doubt " Fairy Morgan ". In Celtic 

1 Anwyl, E., Celtic Religion. 


 I, 


202 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


mor or mawr also meant big, whence Morgan may be 
equated with fog gan and Morgiana with either Big Jane 
or Fairy Giana. This fairy Big gyne or Big woman was 
known alternatively in the East as Merjan Banou and in 
Italy as Fata or Maga. 

It is authoritatively assumed that the word cogitate is 
from co " together " and agere " to drive," but " driving to 
gether " is not cogitation. The root cog which occurs in 
cogent, cogitate, cognisance, and cognition is more probably 


Pios. 46 and 47.^Pcom Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (Baring- 
Could). 

an implication that Gog like Oannes was deemed to be the 
Lord of the Deep wisdom : Gog, in fact, stands to Oannes 
or Yan in the same relation as Jack stands to John : the 
one is seemingly a synonym for the other. 

The word magic implies a connection with Maga or 
Magog: in Greek mega means great, and the combined 
idea of great and wise is extended into magus, magister, 
and magician. The Latin magnus and magna are respec 
tively Mag Unus and Mag Una : Mogounus was one of the 
titles applied to St. Patrick, and it was also a sobriquet of 
the Celtic Sun God.1 

1 Anwy], E., Celtic Religion, p. 40. 


GOG AND MAGOG 


203 


One of the stories of the Wandering Jew represents him 
as benevolently assisting a weaver named Koltot to dis 
cover treasure, and in an Icelandic legend of the same 
Wanderer he is entitled Magus. On Magus being interro 
gated as to his name he replied that he was called " Vidfor- 
ull," which looks curiously like " Feed for all," or " Food 
for all ". The story relates that Magus possessed the mar 
vellous capability of periodically casting his skin, and of be 
coming on each occasion younger than before. The first 
time he accomplished this magic feat he was 330 years old - 
—a significant age—and in face of an astonished audience 
he gave a repetition of the wonderful performance. Baring 
his head and stroking himself all over the body, he rolled 
together the skin he was in and lay down before a staff or 
post muttering to himself : " Away with age, that I may 
have my desire ". After lying awhile motionless he sud 
denly worked himself head foremost into the post, which 
thereupon closed over him and became again solid. Soon, 
however, the bemazed onlookers heard a great noise in the 
post, which began gradually to bulge at one end, and after 
a few convulsive movements the feet of Magus appeared, 
followed in due course by the rest of his body. After this 
bewildering feat Magus lay for awhile as though dead, but 
when the beholders were least expecting it he sprang sud 
denly up, rolled the skin from off his head, saluted the 
King, and behold " they saw that he was no other than a 
beardless youth and fair faced ",1 

This magic change is not only suggestive of the two- 
faced Janus, but also of Aeon, one of the British titles for 
the Suu :— 

1 Citrious Myths of tlie Middle Ages, pp. 637-40. 


 204 ARCHAIC ENGLAND [CHAP. 

Aeon hath seen age after age in long succession roll, 
But like a serpent which has cast its skin, 
Rose to new life in youthful vigour strong. 

Commenting on this passage Owen Morgan observes : 
" The expression ' cast his skin ' alluded to the idea that 
the Sun of the old year had his body destroyed in the 
heavens at noon on each 20th December, by the Power of 
Darkness ",1 The Gnostics considered there were thirty 
divine Powers or Eulers, corresponding obviously to the 
days of the month, and these Powers they termed Aeons : 
among the Greeks aeon meant an enormously vast tract 
of time ; in Welsh Ion means Leader or Lord. 

The story of Vidforull or Magus gains in interest in view 
of his mystic age of 330, or ten times 33, and the emerging- 
ex-post incident may have some connection with the 
nomenclature of the flame-flowered staff of post now 
termed a Hollyhock, or Holy Hock. One of the miracles 
attributed to St. Kit—a miracle which we are told was the 
means of converting eight thousand men to Christianity— 
was the budding of his staff. " Christopher set his staff in 
the earth, and when he arose on the morn he found his 
staff like a palmier bearing flowers, leaves, and dates." 
Kit or Kate is the same word as " Kaad," and there is 
a serpent represented on the post or staff at St. Alban's 
Kaadman, figured on p. 110. The serpent was universally 
the symbol of subtlety and deep wisdom, and among the 
Celts it was, because it periodically sloughed its skin, re 
garded as the emblem of regeneration and rejuvenescence.2 

1 " Morieu " Light of Britannia, p. 262. 

2 The phallic symbolism of the serpent has been over-stressed so ob 
trusively by other writers, that it is unnecessary here to enlarge upon that 
aspect o£ the subject. 


V·] 


GOG AND MAGOG 


205 


The Hawk, which is the remaining symbol of the Kaad 
man (Fig- 16), was the uch or high-flying bird, which 
soared sun-wise and hovered overworld eyeing or ogling 
the below with penetrating and all-seeing vision. It is 
difficult to see any rational connection between hawk and 
Jieave—a connection which for some mysterious reason 
the authorities connote—but the hawk was unquestionably 
an emblem of the Most High. A hawker is a harokel, 
Hercules, or merchant, and with Maga may be connoted 
magazine, which means storehouse. In Celtic make or 
maga means " I feed " ; in Welsh tnagu means breed, and 
to nurse ; in Welsh magad is brood. It is to this root that 
obviously may be assigned the Gaelic Mac or Me, which 
means " breed of " or " children of ". In the Isle of Man, the 
inhabitants claimed to be descended from the fairies, whence 
perhaps the MacAuliffes of Albany originally claimed 
to be children of the Elf. Among the Berbers of Africa 
Mac has precisely the same meaning as among the Gaels, 
and among the Tudas of India mag also means children of. 
" Surely after this," says a commentator, " the McPhersons 
and McGregors of our Highland glens need not hesitate 
to claim as Scotch cousins the inhabitants of the Indian 

peninsula."] 

There are many tales current in Cornwall of a famous 

witch known as " Maggie Figgie," and a particular rock 

on one of the most impressive 'headlands of the Duchy is 

entitled " Maggy Figgie's Chair ". Here, it is said, Maggie 

was wont to seat herself when calling to her aid the spirits 

of the storm, and upon this dizzy height she swung to and 

fro as the storms far below rolled in from the Atlantic. 

Just as Maggie is radically make, so is figgy related to 

1 Baldwin, J. P., Prehistoric Nat,ions, p. 240. 


•u 


 206 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


fake. The many-seeded fica or fig was the symbol of the 
Mother of Millions, and the same root is responsible for 
fecund, and probably for phooka, which is the Irish for 
Fairy or Elf. Feckless means without resource, shiftless, 
incompetent, and incapable ; vague means wandering, and 
the word vagabond is probably due to the beneficent 
phooka or Wanderer. That Pan was not only a hill and 
wood deity, but also a sea-vagabond is implied by the in 
vocation :— 

Io I Io I Pani Pani 

Oh Pan thon ocean Wanderer.1 

In Northumberland among the Fern Islands is a rock 
known as the Megstone, and in Westmorland is the 
famous megalithic monument, known as Long Meg and 
her Daughters. The daughters were here represented by 
seventy-two stones placed in a circle (there are now only 
sixty-seven), and Long Meg herself, who is said to have 
been the last of the Titans, is identified with an outstand 
ing rock, which is recorded as measuring 18 feet in height, 
and 15 feet in circumference. The monument is situated 
on what is called The Maiden Way, and the measurement 
15 is therefore significant, for the number 15 was peculiarly 
the Maiden's number, and " when she was fifteen years of 
age " is almost a standard formula in the lives of the Saints. 
We shall meet with fifteen in connection with the Virgin 
Mary, who, we shall note, was reputed to have lived to the 
age of seventy-two. The circle of " the Merry Maidens " 
near St. Just is 72 feet in diameter, and the Nine Maidens 
near Penzance is also 72 feet in diameter.2 Christthe Corner 
Stone is said to have had seventy-two disciples, and the 

1 Sophocles, Ajax, 694-700. 

8 Windle, Sir B. C. A., Remains of the Prehistoric Age in Britain, p. 198, 


V-] 


GOG AND MAGOG 


207 


seventy-two stones of Long Meg's circle have probably 
some relation to the seventy-two dodecans into which the 
Chaldean and Egyptian Zodiac was divided. In connection 
with magu, the Welsh for nurse, it is worth noting that St. 
Margaret, or St. Meg, is said to have been delivered to a 
nurse to be kept, but on a certain day, when she was 
fifteen years of age and kept the sheep of her nurse, her 
circumstances took a sudden change for the worse. 

The Parthenon, or Maiden's House, at Athens was sup- 


FiG. 48.—Long Meg and her Daughters. From Our Ancient Monuments 
(Kains-Jackson). 

ported by fifteen pairs of columns ; the number eighteen is 
twice nine, and in all probability stood for the divine twain, 
Meg and Mike, Michal and St. Michael. The duality of 
St. Michael which is portrayed in Fig. 200, page 363, was no 
doubt also symbolised by the two rocks, which, according 
to The Golden Legend, Michael removed and replaced by 
a single piece of stone of marble. A second apparition re 
corded of St. Michael states that the saint stood on a stone 
of marble, and anon, because the people had great penury 
and need of water, there flowed out so much water that 
unto this day they be sustained by the benefit thereof.1 

1 The Golden Legend, V. 182.3. 


 l·' 


208 


ABCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


This is evidently the same miracle as that illustrated in 
Fig. 21, on page 180, and in this connection it is noticeable 
that in the neighbourhood of Mickleham (Surrey) are 
Margery Hall, Mogadur, and Mug's well. 

Meg is a primitive form of Margaret, and in Art St. 
Margaret is always represented as the counterpart of St. 
Michael with a vanquished dragon at her feet. To account 
for this emblem the hagiographers relate that St. Margaret 
was swallowed by a dragon, but that the cross which she 
happened to be holding caused the creature to burst, 
whereupon St. Margaret emerged from its stomach un 
scathed. 

There is a counterpart to Maggie Figgie's chair at St. 
Michael's Mount, but in the latter case " Kader Migell " 
was a hallowed site. " Who knows not Mighell's Mount 
and chair, the pilgrims Holy vaunt ? " According to Carew 
this original "chair," outside the castle, was a bad seat in 
a craggy place, somewhat dangerous of access. 

St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall used to be known as 
Dinsul, which the authorities suggest was dun sol, or the 
Sun Hill. Very probably this was so, and there is an equal 
probability that it meant also din seul, i.e., the hill of Le 
Seul or La Seule, the Solitary or Alone.1 In the Old 
Testament -Michal figures as the daughter of King Saul, 
which is curious in view of St. Michael's Mount being 
named Dmseul. St.· Michael's in Brittany and St. Mi 
chael's elsewhere are dedicated ad duas tumbas, which 
means the two tumuli or tumps.2 At St. Albans, the sacred 

1 The ancient name " hoar rock," or white rock in the wood, may have 
referred to the white god probably once there worshipped, for actually 
there are no white rocks at St. Michael's, or anywhere else in Cornwall. 

2 The Golden Legend records an apparition of St. Michael at a town 
named Tumba. 


V-] 


GOG AND MAGOG 


209 


processions started from two tumps or toot hills, and it 
may be suggested these symbolised the two teats of the 
primeval parent. In Ireland at Killarney are two mounts 
now termed The Paps, but originally known as The Paps 
of Anu, i.e., the Irish Magna Mater. Similar "Paps" 
are common in other parts of Britain, and there is little 
doubt that mam, the Welsh for a gently rising hill, has an 
intimate relation to mammal or teat. The Toothills were 
where tout or all congregated together in convocation, and 
in all probability every toot hill originally represented the 
teat of Tad, or Dad, the Celtic tata, or daddy. Toot 
hills are alternatively known as moot hills, and this latter 
term may be connoted with maeth, the Welsh for nourish 
ment : near, Sunderland are two round-topped rocks named 
Maiden Paps. 

Mickleham in Surrey is situated at the base of Tot Hill : 
Tothill Street at Westminster marks the locality of an 
historic toot hill standing in Tothill Fields, and at West 
minster the memory of St. Margaret has seemingly sur 
vived in dual form—as the ecclesiastical St. Margaret 
whose church nestles up against the Abbey of St. Peter, 
and as the popular giantess Long Meg. This celebrated 
heroine " did not only pass all the rest of her country in 
the length of her proportion, but every limbe was so fit to 
her talnesse that she seemed the picture and shape of 
some tall man cast in a woman mould ". In times gone 
by a " huge " stone in the cloisters of Westminster used 
to be pointed out to visitors as the very gravestone of 
Long Meg,1 and this " long, large, and entire " piece of 
rock may be connoted with the Megstone of the Fern Is 
lands and the Long Meg of Cumberland. In 1635 there 

1 Wood, E. 3., Giants and Dwarfs, p. 91. 
14 


 210 


ABÛHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


was published The Life of Long Meg of Westminster, 
containing the rnad merry pranks she played in her life 
time, not only in performing sundry quarrels with divers 
ruffians about London, but also how valiantly she behaved 
herself in the " Warres of Bolloinge ". 

This allusion to Bolloinge suggests that the chivalrous 
and intrepid Long Meg was famous at Bulloigne, and that 
the name of that place is cognate with Bellona, the Goddess 
of War. That the valiant St. Margaret was as uncon 
querable as Micah was invictus, may be judged from the 
sacred legend that the devil once appeared before her in 
the likeness of a man, whereupon, after a short parley, 
" she caught him by the head and threw him to the ground, 
and set her right foot on his neck saying : ' Lie still, thou 
fiend, under the feet of a woman '. The devil then cried : 
' O Blessed Margaret, I am overcome ' ". 

As St. Michael was the Leader of All Angels, so St. 
Margaret was the Mother of All Children, and the circle 
of Long Meg was evidently a mighty delineation of the 
Marguerite, Marigold, or Daisy. The Celts, with their ex 
quisite imagination, figured the daisy or marguerite as the 
symbol of innocence and the newly-born. There is a Celtic 
legend to the effect that every unborn babe taken from 
earth becomes a spirit which scatters down upon the earth 
some new and lovely flower to cheer its parents. " We 
have seen," runs an Irish tale, " the infant you regret re 
clining on a light mist ; it approached us, and shed on our 
fields a harvest of new flowers. Look, oh, Malvina ! 
among these flowers we distinguish one with a golden disc 
surrounded by silver leaves : a sweet tinge of crimson 
adorns its delicate rays ; waved by a gentle wind we 
might call it a little infant playing in a green meadow, and 


GOG AND MAGOG 


211 


v.] 

the flower of thy bosom has given a new flower to the 
hills of Cromia. Since that day the daughters of Morven 
have consecrated the Daisy to infancy. It is called the 
flower of innocence ; the flower of the new-born."l 

The Scotch form of Margaret is Maisie, and from the 
word muggy, meaning a warm, light mist, it would seem 
that Maisie or Maggy was the divinity of mists and mois 
ture. It was widely supposed that the mists of Mother 
Earth, commingling with the beams of the Father Sun, 
were together the source of all juvenescence and life. Ac 
cording to Owen Morgan, " Ked's influence from below was 
supposed to be exercised by exhalations, the breathings as 
it were of the Great Mother,"2 and it is still- a British 
belief that— 

Mist in spring is the source of wine. 

Mist in summer is the source of heat, 

Mist in autumn is the source of rain, 

Mist in winter is the source of snow. 

Maggie or Maisie being thus probably the Maid of the 
Mist, or Mistress of the Moisture, and there being no 
known etymology for fog, the unpopular Maggie Figgie 
who sat in her chair charming the spirits of the ocean, 
was perhaps the ill-omened Maggie Foggy. 

It is a world-wide characteristic of the Earth Mother to 
appear anon as a baleful hag, anon as a lovely maid, and 
in all probability to " Maid Margaret that was so meeke 
and milde," may be attributed the adjective meek. In 
London an ass, in Cockney parlance, is a moke ; Christ was 
said to ride upon an ass as symbolic of his meekness, and 
as already noted Christ by the Gnostics was represented as 

1 Of. Friend, Rev. Hilderio, Flowers and Folklore, IL, p. 455. 

2 " Morien," Light of Brittania, p. 27. 


 hl 


212 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


ass-headed. The worship of the Golden Ass persisted in 
Europe until a comparatively late period ; a jenny is a 
female moke, a jackass is the masculine of Jenny. 

At St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall is a Jack the Giant- 
Killer's Well. The French name Michelet means " little 
Michael," and that Great Michael was Cain the Wandering 
One is implied by the tradition that St. Kayne visited St. 
Michael's Mount, and conferred certain powers upon the 
stone seat or Kader Mighel situated so dizzily amid the 
crags. The orthodoxy of this St. Kayne—who appears 
again at Keyneliani—was evidently more than suspect, and 
according to Norden " this Kayne is said to be a woman - 
saynte, but it better resembleth kayne, the devil who had 
the shape of a man ". At Keynsham St. Kayne is popu 
larly supposed to have turned serpents into stone, and there 
is no doubt that his or her name was intimately associated 
with the serpent. The Celtic names Kean and Kenny are 
translated to mean vast, but in Cornish ken meant pity, 
and ken, cunning, and canny all imply knowledge and deep 
wisdom. In Welsh, cain means sun and also fair ; can- 
dere, to glow, is, of course, connected with candescent, 
candid, and candour. 

The seat on St. Michael's Tower is the counterpart to 
Maggie Figgie's Chair, which is near the village of St. 
Levan, and in the previous chapter it was seen that Levan 
or Elvan was a synonym for elban or Alban. The family 
name at St. Michael's Mount is St. Levan, and the usual 
abode of Maggie Figgie is assigned to the adjacent village 
of St. Levan. The chief fact recorded of St. Levan is his 
cell shown at Bodellen, near which is his seat—a rock split 
in two. He is also associated with a chad fish, entitled 
" chuck child," to account for which a ridiculous story has 


GOG-AND MAGOG 


213 


v.] 

been concocted to the effect that St. Levan once caught a 
chad, which choked a child. Like the cod the chad was 
perhaps so named because of its amazing fecundity, and 
the term chuck child was probably once Jack, the child 
Michael, or the giant-killing Jack, whose well stands on 
St. Michael's Mount. It is not improbable that " chuck," 
like Jack, is an inflexion of Gog, and that it is an almost 
pure survival of the British uch uch or high high. The 
great festival of Gog and Magog in Cockaigne was un 
questionably on Lord Mayor's Show Day, and this used 
originally to fall—or rather the Lord Mayor was usually 
chosen—on Michaelmas Day.1 

In addition to associating St. Levan with the chad or 
" chuck child," legend also connects St. Levan with a 
woman named Johanna. W. C. Borlase observes that 
Carew calls him St. Siluan, and that this form is still 
retained in the euphonious name of an estate Selena. 
Selena was a title under which the Mother of Night, the 
consort of Cain, the Man in the Moon, was worshipped by 
the Greeks. With regard to the Sel of Selena or Silenus 
it will be seen as we proceed that silly, Seeley, etc., did not 
imply idiocy, but that silly, as in Scotland where it meant 
holy, and as in the German selig, primarily meant innocent. 
We speak to-day of " silly sheep " ; in the Middle Ages 
Christ was termed the silly Babe, and the county of Suf 
folk still vaunts itself as Silly Suffolk. Silène or Selina 
would thus imply the Innocent or Holy Una : her counter 
part Silenus was usually represented as a jovial, genial, and 
merry patriarch. Selenus, like Janus, was apparently the 
Old Father Christmas, and Selena or Cynthia seemingly 
the maiden Cain, Kayne, St. Kenna, or Jana. 

1 Anon, A New Description of England and Wales (1724), p. 121. 


 214 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


At Treleven, the tre or the Home of Leven, there is a 
Lady's Well said to possess exceptional healing properties, 
and the power of conferring great vigour and might to the 
constitution. Levin in Old English meant the lightning 
flash, Levant was the uprising, the Orient, or the East, 
and levante is Italian for the wind. According to Etruscan 
mythology, there were eleven thunderbolts or levins wielded 
by Nine Great Gods,1 and that the number eleven was as 
sociated with Long Meg of Westmorland, would appear 
from the fact that her circle measured " about 1100 feet in 
circumference ". With this measurement may be connoted 
the British camp on Herefordshire Beacon, " which takes 
the form of an irregular oval 1100 yards in length," ^ and 
that 1100 implied some special sanctity may be gathered 
from the bardic lines— 

The age of Jesus, the fair and energetic Hu 
. In God's Truth was eleven hundred.3 

The more usually assumed age of Jesus, i.e., thirty-three, 
may be connoted with the persistent thirty-threes elsewhere 
considered. The diameter of the circle of Long Meg and 
her Daughters is stated as 330 feet,4 a measurement which 
seemingly has som& relation to the 330 years of age as 
signed to Magus when he accomplished his magic change. 
Christianity has retained the memory of a St. Ursula 
and 11,000 virgins, but it has been a puzzle to hagio- 
graphers to account for the " 11 " or 11,000 so persist 
ently associated with her. In his essay on the legend, 
Baring-Gould refers to it as being " generated out of worse 

1 Dennis, G., Cities and Centuries of Etruria, p. 31. 

2 Munro, E., Prehistoric Britain, p. 223. s Barddas, p. 222. 
4 Kains-Jackson, Our Ancient Monuments, p. 112. Fergusson states 
" about 330 feet ". 


GOG AND MAGOG 


215 


than nothing," lamenting this and kindred stories. " Alas ! 
too often they are but apples of Sodom, fair-cheeked, but 
containing the dust and ashes of heathenism ". But thé 
story of St. Ursula is essentially beautiful ; moreover, it 
is essentially British. The Golden Legend tells us that 
Ursula was a British princess, and Cornwall claims, with 
a probability of right, that she was Cornish. Her mother 
was named Daria, her cousin Adrian, and there is a clear 
memory of the Darian, Adrian, Droian, or Trojan games 
perpetrated in the incident which The Golden Legend thus 
records : " By the counsel of the Queen the Virgins were 
gathered together from diverse realms, and she was leader 
of them, and at the last she suffered martyrdom with them. 
And then the condition made, all things were made ready. 
Then the Queen shewed her counsel to the Knights of her 
Company, and made them all to swear this new chivalry, 
and then began they to make diverse plays and games of 
battle as to run here and there, and feigned many manners 
of plays. And for all that they left not their purpose, and 
sometimes they returned from this play at midday, and 
sometimes unnethe at evensong time. And the barons and 
great lords assembled them to see the fair games and dis 
ports, and all had joy and pleasure in beholding them, and 
also marvel."1 

From this account it would appear that twice a day the 
followers of St. Ursula joyed themselves and the onlookers 
by a sacred ballet, which no doubt symbolised in its con 
volutions the ethereal Harmony and the ordered move 
ments of the Stars. Her consort's name is given as 
Ethereus, whence Ursula herself must have been Etherea, 
the Ethereal maid, conceived in all likelihood at the idyllic 

1 Vol. vi., p. 64, 


 216 AECHAIC ENGLAND [CHAP. 

island Douche, Idea, Aeria, Candia, or Crete. The name 
Ursula means bear, and it was supposed that around the 
seven stars of Arcturus, the immovable Great Bear, all the 
lesser stars wheeled in an everlasting procession. Of this 
giant's wheel or marguerite, Margaret, or Peggie, was 
seemingly deemed to be the axle, peg, or Golden Eye, and 
this idea apparently underlies Homer :— 

. . . the axle of the Sky, 
The Bear revolving points his Golden Eye. 

Having quitted Britain, St. Ursula and her train of 
11,000 maidens underwent various vicissitudes. Eventu 
ally circumstances took them to Cologne, whereupon, to 
quote The Golden Legend, " When the Huns saw them 
they began to run upon them with a great cry and araged 
like wolves on sheep, and slew all this great multitude "-1 
From time to time the monks of Cologne have unearthed 
large deposits of children's bones which have piously been 
claimed to be authentic relics of the 11,000 martyrs. 

In China and Japan the Great Mother is represented 
pouring forth the bubbling waters of creation from a vase, 
and in every bubble is depicted a small babe. This God 
dess Kwanyon, known as the eleven faced and thousand 
handed, is represented at the temple of San-ju-San-gen-do 
by 33,333 images, and her name resolves, as will be seen, 
into Queen Yon. The name China, French Chine, is John, 
and Japon or Yapon, the hand of the Eising Sun, whose 
cognisance is the Marguerite or Golden Daisy, whose 
priests are termed bonzes, and whose national cry is banzai, 
is radically the same as the British Eubonia or Hobany, 
La Dame Abonde, the Giver of Abundance. 

1 Vol. vi., p. 66. 


GOG AND MAGOG 


217 


v·] 

Among the megalithic remains in Brittany there have 
been found ornaments of jade, a material which, until 
recently, was supposed not to exist except in China or 
Japan. At Carnac, near the town of Elven, is the world- 
famed megalithic ruin now consisting of eleven rows of 
rocks, said to number "somewhere between nine and ten 
thousand". As for many years these relics have been 
habitually broken up and used for building and road-making 
purposes, it is not unlikely that originally there were 1000 
rocks in each of the eleven rows, totalling in all to the 
mystic 11,000. We shall see in a later chapter that Elphin 
stones were frequently eleven feet high : our word eleven is 
elf in Dutch, ellifir in Icelandic, ainlif or eirilif in Gothic ; 
but why this number should thus have been associated 
with the elves I am unable to decide, nor can I surmise 
why the authorities connote the word eleven with liJca, 
which means "remaining," or with linguere, which means 
"to leave". In modern Etruria it is believed by the de 
scendants of the Etruscans that the old Etruscan deities 
of the woods and fields still live in the world as spirits, 
and among the ancient Etrurians it was held that in the 
spiritual world the rich man and the poor man, the master 
and the servant, were all upon one level or all even.1 Our 
word heaven is radically even and ange, the French for 
angel is the same word as onze meaning eleven. 

The Golden Legend associates St. Maur with the Church 
of St. Maurice, where a blind man named Lieven is said 
to have sat for eleven years.2 This marked connection 
between Maurice and eleven renders it probable that St. 
Maurice was the same King Maurus of Britain as was 

1 Gray, Mrs. Hamilton, Sepulchres of Etruria. 

2 Vol., iii., p. 73. 


 218 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


reputed to be the father of St. Ursula. The precise site 
of the monarch's domain is not mentioned, but as Corn 
wall claims him the probabilities are that his seat was St. 


ΕΜΜ·Ρ·Η·Ε 

Fio. 49.—The Trinity in One Single God, holding the Balances and the 

Compasses. From an Italian Miniature of the XIII. Cent. 

From Christian Iconography (Didron). 

Levan. St. Maurus of the Church Calendar is reputed to 
have walked on the waters, and he is represented in Art as 
holding the weights and measures with which he is said to 
have made the correct allotment of bread and wine to his 


v·] 


GOG AND MAGOG 


219 


monks. These supposed. " measures " are tantamount to 
St. Michael's scales, which were sometimes assigned by 
Christianity to God the Father. 

Ursula, as the daughter of Maurus, would have been 
Maura, and in face of the walking-on-the-sea story she 
was, no doubt, the Mairymaid, Merrowmaid, or Mermaid. 
Of St. Margaret we read that after her body had been 
broiled with burning brands, the blessed Virgin, without 
any hurt, issued out of the water. That St. Michael was 
associated in Art with a similar incident is evident from 
his miraculous preservation of a woman " wrapped in the 
floods of the sea ". St. Michael " kept this -wife all whole, 
and she was delivered and childed among the waves in the 
middle of the sea "-1 The Latin word mergere, i.e., Margery, 
means to sink into the sea, and emerge means to rise out 
of the sea. In Cornwall Margery Daw is elevated into 
Saint Margery Daw, and we may assume that her cele 
brated see-saw was the eternal merging and emerging of 
the Sun and Moon. 

The Cornish pinnacle associated with Maggie Figgy of 
St. Levan may be connoted with a monolith overlooking 
Loch Leven and entitled, "Carlin Maggie" or "Witch 
Maggie". This precipitous rock is precisely the same 
granite formation as is Maggie Figgy's Chair, and legend 
says that it originated from Maggie "flyting" the devil 
who turned her into stone.2 The Scotch Loch Leven is 
known locally as Loch Eleven, " because it is eleven miles 
round, is surrounded by eleven hills, is fed or drained by 
eleven streams, has eleven islands, is tenanted by eleven 


1 Golden Legend, vol. v., p. 184. 

2 Simpkins, J. E., Fife, p. 4 ; County Folklore, vol. vii. 


 220 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


kinds of fish ".l It was also said to have been surrounded 
by the estates of eleven lairds. 

At Dunfermline is St. Margaret's Stone, " probably the 
last remnant of a Druid circle or a cromlech ".2 

The megalithic Long Meg in Westmorland, standing by 
what is termed the " Maiden Way," is in close proximity 
to Hunsonby. The Dutch for sun is zon, the German is 
sonne, whence Hunsonby in all probability was once 
deemed a by or abode of Hunson the ancient sun or 
zone. ' 

The circle of Long Meg is an enceinte, i.e., an incinctus, 
circuit or enclosure; that St. Margaret of Christendom 
was the patroness of all enceinte women is obvious from 
Brand's reference to St. Margaret's Day, as a time " when 
all come to church that are, or hope to be, with child that 
year ". Sein is the French for bosom, and that Ursula of 
the 11,000 virgins was a personification of the Good 
Mother of the Universe or Bosom of the World may be 
further implied by the fact that she corresponds, according 
to Baring-Gould, with the Teutonic Holda. Holda or 
Holle (the Holy), is a gentle Lady, ever accompanied by 
the souls of maidens and children who are under her care. 
Surrounded by these bright-eyed followers she sits in a 
mountain of crystal, and comes forth at times to scatter 
the winter snow, vivify the spring earth, or bless the fruits 
of autumn. 

The kindly Mother Holle was sometimes entitled Gode,3 
whence we may connote Margot, Marghet, or Marget with 
Big Good, or Big God. In Cornwall the Holly tree is 
termed Aunt Mary's tree, which, I think, is equal to Aunt 

1 Simpkins, 3. E., Kinross-shire, p. 377. 2Ibid., p. 241. 
3 Curwus Myths of Hie Middle Ages, p. 336. 


GOG AND MAGOG 


221 


Maura's tree, St. Maur being tantamount to St. Fairy or 
St. Big. 

According to Sir,John Bhys, Elen the Fair of Britain 
figures like St. Ursula as the leader of the heavenly virgins ; 
St. Levan's cell is shown at Bodellen in St. Levan, and as 
in Cornwall lod—as in Bodmin—meant abode of, one may 
resolve Bodellen into the abode of Ellen, and equate 
Ellen or Helen with Long Meg or St. Michael. 

We may recognise St. Kayne in the Kendale-Lonsdale 
district of North Britain, where also in the neighbourhood 
of the rivers Ken or Can, and Lone or Lune is a maiden 
way and an Elen's Causeway.1 On the river Can is a 
famous waterfall at Levens, and in the same neighbour 
hood a seat of the ancient Machel family. In 1724 there 
existed at Winander Mere " the carcass of an ancient city,"2 
and it is not improbable that the ander of Winander is re 
lated to the divine Thorgut, whose ejfigy from a coin is 
reproduced in a later chapter (Fig 422, p. 675). Kendal or 
Candale has always been famous for its British " cottons 
and coarse cloaths ". 

In Etruria and elsewhere good genii were represented 
as winged elves—old plural elven—and the word mouche 
implies that not only butterflies and moths, but also all 
winged flies were deemed to be the children of Michael or 
Michelet. According to Payne Knight, ' ' The common Fly, 
being in its first stagex>f existence a principal agent in dis 
solving and dissipating all putrescent bodies, was adopted 
as an emblem of the Deity ".3 Thus it would seem that 

11 am unable to lay my hand on the reference for this Elen's Causeway 
in Westmorland. 

2 Anon., A New Description of England, 1724, p. 318. 
8 Symbolical Language, p. 37. 


 lili, 


Ί 


ι Ι 


222 


ABCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


not only the mouches, but likewise the maggots were 
deemed to be among Maggie's millions, fighting like the 
Hosts of Michael against filth, decay, and death. 

The connection between flies or mouches, and the elves 
or elven, seems to have been appreciated in the past, for 
The Golden Legend likens the lost souls of Heaven, i.e., 
the elven of popular opinion, to flies : " By the divine dis 
pensation they descend oft unto us in earth, as like it hath 
been shewn to some holy men. They fly about us as flies, 
they be innumerable, and like flies they fill the air without 
number."J Even to-day it is supposed that the spirits of 
holy wells appear occasionally in the form of flies, and 
there is little doubt that Beelzebub, the " Lord of flies," 
alias Lucifer, whose name literally means " Light Bringer," 
was once innocuous and beautiful. 

In Cornwall flies seem to have been known as "Mother 
Margarets " (a fact of which I was unaware when equat 
ing mouche with Michelet or Meg), for according to Miss 
Courtney, " Three hundred fathoms below the ground at 
Cook's Kitchen Mine, near Cambourne, swarms of flies may 
be heard buzzing, called by the men for some unknown 
reason ' Mother Margarets ' ".2 Whether these subter 
ranean " Mother Margarets " are peculiar to Cook's Kitchen 
Mine, and whether Cook has any relation to Gog and to 
the Cocinians who in deep caverns dwelt, I am unable to 
trace. 

That St. Michael was Lord of the Muckle and the 
Mickle, is supported in the statement that "he was prince 
of the synagogue of the Jews ".s The word synagogue is 

1 Golden Legend, vol. v., p. 189. 

2 Cornish Feasts and Folklwe, p. 131. 

3 Golden Legend, vol. v., p. 181. 


V·] 


GOG AND MAGOG 


223 


understood to have meant—a bringing together, a con 
gregation ; but this was evidently a secondary sense, due, 
perhaps, to the fact that the earliest synagogues were not 
held beneath a roof, but were congregations in sacred 
plains or hill-sides. It may reasonably be assumed that 
synagogues were prayer meetings in honour primarily of 
San Agog, St. Michael, or the Leader and Bringer together 
of all souls. 

By the Greeks the sobriquet Megale was applied to Juno 
the pomegranate—holding Mother of Millions, and the 
bird pre-eminently sacred to Juno was the Goose. The 
sackling of Juno's or Megale's sacred geese saved the 
Capitol, and the Goose of Michaelmas Day is seemingly 
that same sacred bird. In Scotland St. Michael's Day 
was associated with the payment of so-called cane geese, 
the word cane or Tcain here being supposed to be the Gaelic 
cean, which meant head, and its original sense, a duty paid 
by a tenant to his landlord in kind. The word due is the 
same as dieu, and the association of St. Keyne with 
Michael renders it probable that the cane goose was 
primarily a dieu offering or an offering to the Head King 
Gun, or Chun. Etymology would suggest that the cane 
goose was preferably a ganäer. 

Even in the time of the Romans, the Goose was sacred 
in Britain, and East and West it seems to have been an 
emblem of the Unseen Origin. In India, Brahma, the 
Breath of Life, was represented riding on a goose, and by 
the Egyptians the Sun was supposed to be a Golden Egg 
laid by the primeval Goose. The little yellow egg or 
öOoseberry was seemingly—judged by its otherwise inexplic 
able name—likened to the Golden Egg laid by Old Mother 
Goose. Among the symbols elsewhere dealt with were 


 il 


2'24 


AKCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


V·] 


GOG AND MAGOG 


225 


some representative of a goose from whose mouth a curious 
flame-like emission was emerging. I am still of the opinion 
that this was intended to depict the Fire or Breath of Life, 
and that the hissing habits of the Swan and Goose caused 
those birds to be elevated into the eminence as symbols of 
the Breath. The word goose or geese is radically ghost, 
which literally means spirit or breath ; it is also the same 
as cause with which may be connoted chaos. According 
to Irish mythology that which existed at the beginning 
was Chaos, the Father of Darkness or Night, subsequently 


Pio. 50.—Prom Christian Iconography (Didron). 

came the Earth who produced the mountains, and the sea, 
and the sky.1 

In the emblem here reproduced Chaos or Abyssus is 
figured as the youthful apex of a primeval peak ; at the 
base are geese, and the creatures midway are evidently 
seals. The seal is the silliest of gentle creatures, and being 
amphibious was probably the symbol of Celi, the Concealed 
One, whose name occurs so frequently in British Mythology. 
To seal one's eyelids means to close them, and the blind old 
man named Lieven, who sat in the porch of St. Maurice's for 

1 Jubainville, D'arbois de, Irish Mythological Cycle, p. 140. 


eleven years, may be connoted with Homer the blind and 
wandering old Bard, who dwelt upon the rocky islet of 
Chios, query chaos ? Among the Latins Amor or Love was 
the oldest of the gods, being the child of Nox or Chaos : 
Love—" this senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid "1—is 
proverbially blind, and the words .Amor, Amour, are pro 
bably not only Homer, but likewise St. Omer. The British 
(Welsh) form of Homer is Omyr : the authorship of 
Homer has always been a matter of perplexity, and the 
personality of the blind old bard of Chios will doubtless 
remain an enigma until such time as the individuality of 
" Old Moore," " Aunt Judy," and other pseudonyms is un 
ravelled. It has always been the custom of story-tellers to 
attribute their legends to a fabulous origin, and the most 
famous collection of fairy-tales ever produced was published 
in France under the title Contes de la Mere Oie—" The 
Tales of Mother Goose ' '. Goose is radically the same word 
as gas, a term which was coined by a Belgian chemist in 
1644 from fche Greek chaos: the Irish for swan is geis, 
and all the ^eese tribe are gassy birds which gasp. 

In a subsequent chapter we shall analyse goose into 
ag'oos, the Mighty Ooze, whence the ancients scientifically 
supposed all life to have originated, and shall equate ooze 
with hoes, the Welsh word for life, and with Ouse or Oise, 
a generic British river name. In huss, the German for 
goose, we may recognise the oose without its adjectival 'g. 

With the Blind Old Bard of Chios may be connoted the 
Cornish longstone known as "The Old Man,"2 or "The 
Fiddler," also a second longstone known as " The Blind 

1 Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, iii., 1. 

2 Ossian, the hero poet of oaeldojn, is represented as old, blind, and 
solitary. 

15 


 •i! 


226 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


v·] 


GOG AND MAGOG 


227 


Fiddler".1 In because or by cause we pronounce cause 
" Jeoz," and in Slav fairy-tales as elsewhere there is frequent 
mention of an Enchanter entitled Kostey, whose strength 
and vitality lay in a monstrous egg. The name Kostey 
may be connoted with Cystennyns,3 an old Cornish and 
Welsh form of Constantine : at the village of Constantine 
in Cornwall there is what Borlase describes as a vast egg- 
like stone placed on the points of two natural rocks, and 
pointing due North and South. This Tolmen or Meantol 
—" an egg-shaped block of granite thirty-three feet long, 
and eighteen feet broad, supposed by some antiquaries to 
be Druidical, is here on a barren hill 690 feet high".3 
The Greek for egg is oon, and our egg may be connoted 
not only with Echo—the supposed voice of Ech ?—but also 
with egg, meaning to urge on, to instigate, to vitalise, or 
render agog. 

The acorn is an egg within a cup, and the Danish form 
of oak is eeg or eg : the oak tree was pre-eminently the 
symbol of the Most High, and the German eiche may be 
connoted with uch the British for high. The Druids 
paid a reverential homage to the oak, worshipping under 
its form the god Teut or Teutates: this latter word is 
understood to have meant "the god of the people,"* and 
the term teut is apparently the French tout, meaning all or 
the total. The reason suggested by Sir James Frazer 
for oak-worship is the fact that the Monarch of the Forest 
was struck more frequently by lightning than any meaner 
tree, and that therefore it was deemed to be the favoured 

1 Cf. Windle, Sir B. C. Α., Remains of tìie Precisione Age, pp. 197-8. 

2 Salmon, A. L., Cornwall, p. 88. 

3 Wilson, J. M., Tìie Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales, i., p. 484, 
4Anwyl, E,, Celtic Religion, p. 39, 


one of the Fire god. But to rive one's best beloved with 
a thunderbolt is a more peculiar and even better dissembled 
token of affection than the celebrated kicking-down-stairs. 
According to the author of Tlie Language and Sentiment 
of Flowers1 the oak was consecrated to Jupiter because it 
had sheltered him at his birth on Mount Lycaeus ; hence 
it was regarded as the emblem of hospitality, and to give 
an oak branch was equivalent to "You are welcome". 
That the oak tree was originally a Food provider or Feed 
for all is implied by the words addressed to the Queen of 
Heaven by Apuleus in The Golden Ass : " Thou who didst 
banish the savage nutriment of the ancient acorn, and 
pointing out a better food, dost, etc." 

It has already been suggested that derry or dru, an oak 
or tree, was equivalent to tre, an abode or Troy, and there 
is perhaps a connection between this root and terebinth, 
the Tyrian term for an oak tree. That the oak was re 
garded as the symbol of hospitality is exceedingly probable, 
and one of the earliest references to the tree is the story of 
Abraham's hospitable entertainment given underneath the 
Oak of Mamre. The same idea is recurrent in the legend 
of Philemon and Baucis, which relates that on the moun 
tains of Phrygia there once dwelt an aged, poor, but loving 
couple. One night Jupiter and Mercury, garbed in the 
disguise of two mysterious strangers who had sought in 
vain for hospitality elsewhere, craved the shelter of this 
Darby and Joan.2 With alacrity it was granted, and such 

1 " L. V.," London (undated). 

21 do not think this proverbially loving couple were exclusively Scotch. 
The darbies, i.e., handcuffs or clutches of the law may be connoted with 
Gascoigne's line (1576) : " To bind such babes iufatJier Darbie's bands ". 
" Old Joan. " figures as one of the characters in the festivities of Plough 


 228 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


was the awe inspired by the majestic Elder that Baucis 
desired to sacrifice a goose which they possessed. But the 
bird escaped, and fluttering to the feet of the disguised gods 
Jupiter protected it, and bade their aged hosts to spare it. 
On leaving, the Wanderer asked what boon he could confer, 
and what gift worthy of the gods they would demand. 
" Let us not be divided by death, O Jupiter," was the reply : 
whereupon the Wandering One conjured their mean 
cottage into a noble palace wherein they dwelt happily 
for many years. The story concludes that Baucis merged 
gradually into a linden tree, and Philemon into an oak, 
which two trees henceforward intertwined their branches 
at the door of Jupiter's Temple. 

The name Philemon is seemingly philo, which means 
love of, and mon, man or men, and at the time this fairy 
tale was concocted Love of Man, or hospitality, would ap 
pear to have been the motif of the allegorist. 

We British pre-eminently boast our ships and our men 
as being Hearts of Oak : the Druids used to summon their 
assemblies by the sending of an oak-branch, and at the 
national games of Btruria the diadem called Etrusco, Cor 
ona, a garland of oak leaves with jewelled acorns, was held 
over the head of the victor.1 There is little doubt that 
Honor Oak, Gospel Oak, Sevenoaks, etc' derived their 
titles from oaks once sacred to the Uch or High, the Alien 
or Alone, who was alternatively the Seven Kings or the 
Three Kings. "It is strange," says Squire, "to find 
Gael and Briton combining to voice almost in the 'same 
words this doctrine of the mystical Celts, who while still 

Monday, and in Cornwall any very ancient woman was denominated " Aunt 
Jenny ". 

1Gray, Mrs. Hamilton, Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria, p. 131. 


GOG AND MAGOG 


229 


in a state of semi-barbarism saw with some of the great 
est of ancient and modern philosophers the One in the 
Many, and a single Essence in all the manifold forms of 
life." 1 

1 The Mythology of the British Islands, p. 125. 


 CHAPTEE VI. 

PUCK. 

" Do you imagine that Robin Goodfellow—a mere name to you—conveys 
anything like the meaning to your mind that it did to those for whom the 
name represented a still living belief, and who had the stories about him 
at their fingers' ends ? Or let me ask you, Why did the fairies dance on 
moonlight nights ? or, Have you ever thought why it is that in English 
literature, and in English literature alone, the fairy realm finds a place in 
the highest works of imagination ? "—P. S. HARTIAND. 

IN British Faerie there figures prominently a certain " Man 
in the Oak " : according to Keightley, Puck, alias Bobin 
Goodfellow, was known as this " Man in the Oak," and he 
considers that the word pixy " is evidently Pucksy, the en 
dearing diminutive sy being added to Puck like Betsy, 
Nancz/, Dixie ",1 It is probable that this adjectival si re 
curring in sweet, sooth, suave, sw&n, etc., may be equated 
with the sanscrit su, which, as in sîoastika, is a synonym 
for the Greek eu, meaning soft, gentle, pleasing, and pro 
pitious. When used as an affix, this " endearing diminu 
tive " yields spook, which was seemingly once " dear little 
Pook," or " soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious Puck". 
In Wales the fairies were known as " Mothers' Blessings," 
and although spook now carries a sinister sense, there is 
no more reason to suppose that " dear little Pook " was 
primarily malignant than to suggest that the Holy Ghost 

1 Fairy Mythology, p. 298. 
230 


CHAP. VI.] 


PUCK 


231 


was—in the modern sense—essentially ghastly. Skeat sug 
gests that ghost (of uncertain origin) " is perhaps allied to 
Icelandic geisa, to rage like fire, and to Gothic us-gais-yan, 
to terrify ". Some may be aghast at this suggestion, 
others, who cannot conceive the Supreme Sprite except as 
a raging and consuming fury, will commend it. In the 
preceding chapter I suggested that the elementary deriva 
tion of ghost was 'goes, the Great Life or Essence, and as 
te in Celtic meant good, it may be permissible to modernise 
ghoste, also Kostey of the egg, into great life good. 

That there was a good and a bad Puck is to be inferred 
from the West of England belief in Bucca Gwidden, the 
white or good spirit, and Bucca Dhu, the black, malevolent 

^l Puck, like Dan Cupid, figures in popular estimation 


one.1 


as a pawky little pickle ; in Brittany the dolmens are 
known as poukelays or Puck stones, and the particular 
haunts of Puck were heaths and desert places. The place- 
name Picktree suggests one of Puck's sacred oaks ; Pick- 
thorne was presumably one of Puck's hawthorns, and the 
various Pickwells, Pickhills, Pickmeres, etc., were once, in 
all probability, spoofc-haunted. The highest point at Peck- 
ham, neai London, is Honor Oak or One Tree Hill, and 
Peckhams or Puckhomes are plentiful in the South of· Eng 
land. One of them was inferentially near Ockham, at 
Great and Little Bookham, where the common or forest 
consists practically solely of the three pre-eminently fairy- 
trees—oak, hawthorne, and holly. The summit of the 
Buckland Hills, above Mickleham, is the celebrated, box- 
planted Boxhill, and at its foot runs Pixham or Pixholme 
Lane. On the height, nearly opposite Pixham Lane, the 
Ordnance Map marks Pigdon, but the roadway from 

1 Courtney, Miss, Cornigli Feasts mid Folklore, p. 129. 


 232 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


Bookham to Boxhill is known, not as Pigdon Hill, but 
Bagden Hill. In all probability the terms Pigdon and 
Bagden are the original British forms of the more modern 
Pixham and Bok's Hill. 

In the North of England Puck seems more generally 
Peg, whence the fairy of the river Bibbie was known as 
Peg O'Nell, and the nymph of the Tees, as Peg Powler.1 
Peg—a synonym for Margaret—is generally interpreted as 
having meant pearl. 

The word puck or peg, which varies in different parts of 
the country into pug, pouke, pwcca, poake, pucke, puckle, 
and phooka, becomes elsewhere bucca, bug, bogie, bogle, 
boggart, buggaboo, and bugbear. 

According to all accounts the Pucks, like the Buccas, 
were divided into two classes, " good and bad," and it was 
only the clergy who maintained that " one and the same 
malignant fiend meddled in both ". As Scott rightly ob 
serves : " Before leaving the subject of fairy superstition 
in England we may remark that it was of a more playful 
and gentle, less wild and necromantic character, than that 
received among the sister people. The amusements of the 
s'outhern fairies were light and sportive ; their resentments 
were satisfied with pinching or scratching the objects of 
their displeasure ; their peculiar sense of cleanliness re 
warded the housewives with the silver token in the shoe ; 
their nicety was extreme concerning any coarseness or 
negligence which could offend their delicacy ; and I cannot 
discern, except, perhaps, from the insinuations of some 
scrupulous divines, that they were vassals to or in close 
alliance with the infernals, as there is too much reason 

1 Hope, E. C., Sacred Wells. 


VI.] 


PUCK 


233 


to believe was the case with their North British sister 
hood."1 

The elemental Bog is the Slavonic term for God,2 and 
when the early translators of the Bible rendered " terror 
by night " as " bugs by night " they probably had spooks 
or bogies in their mind. In Etruria as in Egypt the bug 
or maybug was revered as the symbol of the Creator Bog, 
because the Egyptian beetle has a curious habit of creating 
small pellets or balls of mud. In Welsh bogel means the 
navel, also centre o/ a wheel, and hence Margaret or Peggy 
may be equated with the nave or peg of the white-rayed 
Marguerite or Day's Eye? 

It must constantly be borne in mind that the ancients 
never stereotyped their Ideal, hence there was invariably 
ι vagueness about the form and features of prehistoric 
Joy, and Shakespeare's reference to Dan Cupid as a " senior- 
junior, giant-dwarf," may be equally applied to every Elf 
and Pixy. It is unquestionable that in England as in 
Scandinavia and Germany " giants and dwarfs were origin 
ally identical phenomenon ".4 

In the words of an Orphic Hymn " Jove is both male 
and an immortal maid " : Venus was sometimes repre 
sented with a beard, and as the Supreme Parent was in 
discriminately regarded as either male or female, or as 
both combined, an occasional contradiction of form is not 
to be unexpected. The authorities attribute the contrariety 

Demonology and Witchcraft. 

2 At the time of writing the Servians say they are putting their trust in 
" Bog and Britannia ". 

3 This is an official etymology. It is the one and only poetic idea ad 
mitted into Skeat's Dictionary. 

4C/. Johnson, W., Folk Memory, p. 159." 


 234 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


VI-] 


PUCK 


235 


of sex which is sometimes assigned to the Cornish saints 
as being due to carelessness on the part of transcribers, but 
in this case the monks may be exonerated, as the greater 
probability is that they faithfully transmitted the pagan 
legends. The Moon, which, speaking generally, was es 
sentially a symbol of the Mother, was among some races, 
e.g., the Teutons and the Egyptians, regarded as mascu 
line. In Italy at certain festivals the men dressed in 
women's garments, worshipped the Moon as Lunus, and 
the women dressed like men, as Luna. In Wales the 
Cadi, as we have seen, was dressed partially as a woman, 
partially as a man, and in all probability the cassock of the 
modern priest is a survival of the ambiguous duality of 
Kate or Good. In Irish the adjective mo—derived seemingly 
from Mo or Ma, the Great Mother—meant greatest, and 
was thus used irrespective of sex. 

The French word lune, like moon and choon, is radically 
une, the initial consonants being merely adjectival, and is 
just as sexless as our one, Scotch ane. In Germany hunne 
means giant, and the term " Hun," meant radically anyone 
formidable or gigantic.- 

The Cornish for full moon is cann, which is a slightly 
decayed form of ok ann or great one, and this word can, 
or khan, meaning prince, ruler, king or great one, is trace 
able in numerous parts of the world. Can or chan was 
Egyptian for lord or prince ; can was a title of the kings 
of ancient Mexico ; khan is still used, to-day by the kings 
of Tartary and Burmah and by the governors of provinces 
in Persia, Afghanistan, and other countries of Central 
Asia. In China kong means king, and in modern England 
king is a slightly decayed form of the Teutonic konig or 
kinig. The ancient British word for mighty chief was 


chun or cun, and we meet with this infinitely older word 
than king as a participle of royal titles such as Cundbe- 
linus, Cîwoval, Cunomor and the like. The same affix 
was used in a similar sense by the Greeks, whence Apollo 
was styled Cwiades and also Cunniw. The Cornish for 
prince was kyn, and this term, as also the Irish cun, mean 
ing chief, is evidently far more primitive than the modern 
king, which seems to have returned to us through Saxon 
channels. Prof. Skeat expresses his opinion that the term 
king meant " literally a man of good birth," and he identi 
fies it with the old High German chunig. Other author 
ities equate it with the Sanscrit janaka, meaning father, 
whence it is maintained that the original meaning of the 
word was "father of a tribe". Similarly the word queen 
is derived by our dictionaries from the Greek gyne, a 
woman, or the Sanscrit jani, " all from root gan, to produce, 
from which are genus, kin, king, etc. " 

The word chen in Cornish meant cause, and there is no 
doubt a connection between this term and kyn, the Cornish 
for prince ; the connection, however, is principally in the 
second syllable, and I see no reason to doubt my previous 
conclusions formulated elsewhere, that kyn or king origin 
ally meant great one, or high one, whereas chun, jani, gyne, 
etc., meant aged one. 

One of the first kings of the Isle of Man was Hacon or 
Hakon, a name which the dictionaries define as having 
meant high kin. In this etymology ha is evidently equated 
with high and con or kon with kin, but it is equally likely 
that Hakon or Haakon meant originally uch on the high 
one. In Cornish the adjective ughan or aughan meant 
supreme : the Icelandic for queen is icona, and there is no 
more· radical distinction between king and the disyllabic 


U ,> -^ 


 « 


iti'1 


236 


ABCHATC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


kween, than there is between the Christian names Ion lan 
and the monosyllabic Ban. 

Janaka, the Sanscrit fox father, is seemingly allied to 
the English adjective jannoch or jonnack, which may be 
equated more or less with canny. ^canny means some. 
thing unwholesome, unpleasant, disagreeable; in Cornish 
«m meant sweet or affable, and we still speak of sweets as 
candies. 

In Gaelic cenn or ken meant head, the highest peak in 
the Himalayas is Mount Kun ; one of the supreme summits 
of Africa is Mount Kenia, and in Genesis (14-19) the 
Hebrew word Konah is translated into English as "the 
Most High God". Of this Supreme Sprite the 
pyramid was a symbol, and the reverence in which this 
form was held at Albano in Etruria may be estimated from 
the monument here depicted.' In times gone by khans, 

> Pliny relates Varro's description as follows : " King Porsenna was buried 
beneath the city of Clusium, in a place where he left a monument of Mm- 
self m rectangular stone. Each side was 300 feet long and 50 feet ωΐ 
and wrtmn the basement he made an inextricable labyrLh, So IS 
anyone ventured without a clue, there he must remato he neve^ulï 
find the way out again. Above this base stood five pyramids one in the 

rr;:; ! ra: ÏY*· each °f *- ™ ^ £«*»^i ï 

base, and 150 feet h,gh, tapering to the top so as to be covered by a cupola 
of bronze. From this there hung by chains a peal of bells, wh^when 
abated by the wind, sounded to a great distance. Above tu^oia± 
to other ^amids each !00 feet high, and above these again.ÎoZ 

Î ϊ ν,' WhÌCh toWered t0 a heÌght S° ™Ls and to. 

, that Varrò hesitates to affirm their altitude." Andin thishe was 
e, for he had already said more upon the subject than was credibT 
However, any one who has seen the tomb of Aruns, the son of Porsenna 
near the gate of Albano, will be struck with the similarity of style w"ch' 
comparmg small thing, with great, existed between J monumel ^ 

Th in Π' Wh° haVe neVe' bMl Ìn Ita1^ m^Uke te *»« thl 
th1S tomb of Aruns u said to have been buiU by Porsenna, for the young 


VI·] 


PUCK 


237 


PIG. 51.—Prom The Sepulchres of JStrwia (Gray, Mrs. Hamilton). 


I ']' 


 238 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


cuns, or kings were not only deemed to be moral and 
intellectual gods, but in some localities bigness of person 
was cultivated. The Maoris of New Zealand, whose 
tattooings are identical in certain respects with the com 
plicated spirals found on megaliths in Brittany and Ireland, 
and who in all their wide wanderings have carried with 
them a totemic dove, used to believe bigness to be a royal 
essence. " Every means were used to acquire this dignity ; 
a large person was thought to be of the highest impor 
tance ; to acquire this extra size, the child of a chief was 
generally provided with many nurses, each contributing to 
his support by robbing their own offspring of their natural 
sustenance ; thus, whilst they were half-starved, miserable- 
looking little creatures, the chief's child was the contrary, 
and early became remarkable by its good appearance." 1 

The British adjective big is of unknown origin and has 
no Anglo-Saxon equivalent. In Norway bugge means a 
strong man, but in Germany bigge denoted a little child— 
as also a pig. The site of Troy—the famous Troy—is 
marked on modern maps Biglia, the Basque for eye is 
beguia ; bega is Celtic for life. A. fabulous St. Bega is the 
patron-saint of Cumberland ; there is a Baggy Point near 
Barnstaple, and a Bigbury near Totnes—the alleged landing 
place of the Trojans. Close to Canterbury are some high 
lands also known as Bigbury, and it is probable that all 

Prince who fell there in battle with the Latins, aud with the Greeks from 
Cuma, and it is certainly the work of Etruscan masons. Five pyramids 
rise from a base of 55 sq. feet, and the centre one contains a small chamber, 
in which was found, about fifty years since, an urn full of ashes.—Gray, 
Mrs. Hamilton, Sepulchres of Etruria, p. 450. 

1 Taylor, K., Te Ika A Haiti, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants, p. 
352, 


vi.] 


PUCK 


239 


these sites were named after beguia, the Big Eye, or Bug- 
gaboo, the Big Father. 

At Canterbury paleolithic implements have been found 
which supply proof of human occupation at a time when 
the British Islands formed part of the Continent, and, ac 
cording to a scholarly but anonymous chronology exhibited 
in a Canterbury Hotel, " Neolithic, bronze, and iron ages 
show continuous occupation during the whole prehistoric 
period. The configuration of the city boundaries and the 
still existing traces of the ancient road in connection with 
the stronghold at Bigbury indicate that a populous com 
munity was settled on the site of the present Canterbury 
at least as early as the Iron Age." 

The branching antlers of the buck were regarded as the 
rays of the uprising sun or Big Eye, and a sacred procession, 
headed by the antlers of a buck raised upon a pole, was 
continued by the clergy of St. Paul's Cathedral as late as 
the seventeenth century.1 A scandalised observer of this 
ceremony in 1726 describes " the whole company blowing 
hunters' horns in a sort of hideous manner, and with this 
rude pomp they go up to the High Altar and offer it there. 
You would think them all the mad votaries of Diana! " 
On this occasion, evidently in accordance with immemorial 
wont, the Dean and Chapter wore special vestments, the 
one embroidered with bucks, the other with does. The 
buck was seemingly associated with Puck, for it was popu 
larly supposed that a spectre appeared periodically in 
Herne's Oak at Windsor headed with the horns of a buck. 
So too was Father Christmas or St. Nicholas represented 
as riding Diana-like in a chariot drawn by bucks. 

The Greek for buck or stag is elaphos, which is radically 
1 Cf. Stow, London. 


 240 


ABCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


elaf, and it is a singular coincidence that among the Cretan 
paleolithic folk in the Fourth Glacial Period " Certain 
signs carved on a fragment of reindeer horn are specially 
interesting from the primitive anticipation that they present 
of the Phoenician letterate/".1 

Peg or Peggy is the same word as pig, and it is generally 
supposed that the pig was regarded as an incarnation of 
the "Man in the Oak," i.e., Puck or Buck, because the 
bacco or bacon lived on acorns. There is little doubt that 
the Saint Baccho of the Church Calendar is connected 
with the worship of the earlier Bacchus, for the date of 
St. Baccho's festival coincides with the vintage festival of 
Bacchus. The symbolism of the pig or bacco will be dis 
cussed in a subsequent chapter, meanwhile one may here 
note that hog is the same as oak, and swine is identical 
with swan. So also Meg is connected with muc or moch 
which were the Celtic terms for hog. Among the appel 
lations of ancient Ireland was Muc Inis,2 or Hog Island 
and Moccus, or the pig, was one of the Celtic sobriquets 
for Mercury. The Druids termed themselves " Swine of 
Mon," s the Phoenician priests were also self-styled Swine, 
and there is a Welsh poem in which the bard's opening 
advice to his disciples is—" Give ear little pigs ". 

The pig figures so frequently upon Gaulish coins that 
M. de la Saussaye supposed it with great reason to have 
been a national symbol. That the hog was also a vener 
ated British emblem is evident from the coins here illus 
trated, and that CÜNO was the Spook King is obvious from 
Figs. 52 and 57, where the features face fore and aft like 

1 Evans, Sir Arthur, quoted in Crete of Pre-Jiellenic Europe, p. 32. 
a Bonwick Irish Druids and Old Irish Religion, p. 230. 
3Anwyl, E. 


PUCK 


241 


vi-] 

those of Janus. The word Cunobeline, Cunbelin, or Cym- 
beline, described by the dictionaries as a Cornish name 
meaning "lord of the Sun," is composed seemingly of King^ 


PIGS. 52 to 5?:—British. From'Ancient Coins (Akerman, J. Y.). 
Belin. Belin, a title of the Sun God, is found also in Gaul, 
notably on the coinage of the Belindi : Belin is featured 
as in Fig. 58, and that the sacred Horse of Belin was as 
sociated with the ded pillar is evident from Fig. 59. 


FIGS. 58 to 59.—Gaulish. Prom ibid. 

Commenting upon Fig. 52 a numismatist has observed : 

"This seems made for two young women's faces," but 

whether Cunobelin's wives, sisters, or children, he knows 

not. In Britain doubtless there were many kings who 

1C 


 242 


ÀECHAIC ENGLANl) 


[CHAP. 


assumed the title of Cunobelin, just as in Egypt there were 
many Pharoahs ; but it is no more rational to suppose that 
the designs on ancient coins are the portraits of historic 
kings, their wives, their sisters, their cousins, or their 
aunts, than it would be for an archaeologist to imagine that 
the dragon incident on our modern sovereigns was an epi 
sode in the career of his present Majesty King George. 

We shall subsequently connect George, whose name 
means ploughman, with the Blue or Celestial Boar, which, 
because it ploughed with its snout along the earth, was 
termed boar, i.e., boer or farmer. With bacco or bacon 
may be connoted boukolos, the Greek for cowherd, whence 


FIQ. 60.—Gaulish. From Akerman. 


bucolic. The cattle of Apollo, or the Sun, are a familiar 
feature of Greek mythology. 

The female bacon, which inter alia was the symbol of 
fecundity, was credited with a mystic thirty teats. The sow 
figures prominently in British mythology as an emblem of 
Ked, and was seemingly venerated as a symbol of the 
Universal Feeder. The little pig in Fig. 60, a coin of the 
Santones, whose capital is marked by the modern town of 
Saintes, is associated with a fleur-de-lis, the emblem of 
purity. The word lily is all holy ; the porker was associ 
ated with the notoriously pure St. Antony as well as with 
Ked or Kate, the immaculate Magna Mater, and although 
beyond these indications I have no evidence for the sug 
gestion, I strongly suspect that the scavenging habits of 


vi.] 


PUCK 


243 


the mock caused it, like the fly or mouche, to be reverenced 
as a symbol of Ked, Cadi, Katy, or Katerina, whose name 
means the Pure one or the All Pure. The connection be 
tween hog and cock is apparent in the French coche or 
cochon (origin unknown). Cochon is allied to eigne, the 
French for swan, Latin, cygnus, Greek, kuJcnos ; the 
voice of the goose or swan is said to be its cackle, and the 
Egyptians gave to their All Father Goose a sobriquet 
which the authorities translate into " The Great Cackler ". 
Among the meanings assigned to the Hebrew og is 
' long necked," and it is not im 
probable that the mysterious 
Inn sign of the " Swan with 
two necks " was originally an 
emblem of Mother and Father 
Goose. In Fig. 61 the geis or 
swan is facing fore and aft, like 
Cuno, which is radically the 
same Great Uno as Juno or 
Megale, to whom the goose was 
sacred. Geyser, a gush or spring, is the same word as 
geeser, and there was a famous swan with two necks 
at Goswell Road, where the word Goswell implies an 
erstwhile well of Gos, Goose, or the Gush.1 A W&yzgoose 
is a jovial holiday or festival, gust or gusto means enjoy 
ment, and the Greengoose Fair, which used to be held at 
Stratford, may be connoted with the " Goose-Ioterttos," 
a festival which was customarily held on the sixteenth 
Sunday after Pentecost. Pentecost, the time when the 
Holy Ghost descended in the form of " cloven tongues," 
resolves into Universal Good Ghost. 

It is not unlikely that the Goes and Caes families of to-day are the 
descendants otthe British tribe referred to by the Bomaue as the Cassi. 


Fio. 61. — Swan with Two 
Necks. (Bank's Collection, 
1785). 

From Tlie History of Signboards 
(Larwood & Hotten). 


 244 


AECHAIC ^ENGLAND 


[CHAR 


The Santones, whose emblem was the Pig and Fleur- 
de-lis, were neighbours of the Pictones. Our British Picts, 
the first British tribe known by name to history, are gener 
ally supposed to have derived their title because they de 
picted pictures on their bodies. In West Cornwall there 
are rude stone huts known locally as Picts' Houses, but 
whether these are attributed to the Picts or the Pixies it 
is difficult to say. In Scotland the " Pechs " were obvi 
ously elves, for they are supposed to have been short, wee 
men with long arms, and such huge feet that on rainy days 
they stood upside down and used their feet as umbrellas. 
That the Picts' Houses of Cornwall were attributed to the 
Pechs is probable from the Scottish belief, " Oh, ay, they 
were,great builders the Pechs ; they built a' the auld castles 
in the country. They stood a' in a row from the quarry 
to the building stance, and elka ane handed forward the 
stanes to his neighbour till the hale was bigget." 

That the pig and the bogie were intimately associated is 
evidenced by a Welsh saying quoted by Sir John Ehys :— 

A cutty black sow on every style 
Spinning and carding each November eve. 

In Ireland Pooka was essentially a November spirit, 
and elsewhere November was pre-eminently the time of All 
Hallows or All Angels. Hallow is the same word as elle 
the Scandinavian for elf or fairy, and at Michaelmas or 
Hallowe'en, pixies, spooks, and bogies were notoriously 
ail-abroad :— 

On November eve 
A Bogie On every stile. 

The time of All Hallows, or Michaelmas used to be 
known as Hoketide, a festival which in England was more 
particularly held upon St. Blaze's Day ; and at that cheer- 


vi.] 


PUCK 


245 


less period the people used to light bonfires or make blazes 
for the purpose of " lighting souls out of Purgatory ". In 
Wales a huge fire was lighted by each household and into 
the ashes of this bonfire, this alban or elphin fire,1 every 
member of the family threw a ivhite or " Alban," or an 
elphin stone, kneeling in prayer around the dying fire.4 In 
the Isle of Man Hallowtide was known as Hollantide,3 
which again permits the equation of St. Hellen or Elen 
and her train with Long Meg and her daughters. On the 
occasion of the Hallow or Ellie-time saffron or yellow cakes, 
said to be emblematical of the fires of purgatory, used to 
be eaten. To run amok in the East means & fiery fury— 
the words are the same ; and that bake (or beeak as in 
Yorkshire dialect) meant fire is obvious from the synonym 
ous cook. Coch is Welsh for red, and the flaming red 
poppy or corncockle, French—coquelicot, was no doubt the 
symbol of the solar poppy, pope, or pap. The Irish for 
pap or breast is cich, and in Welsh cycho means a hive, or 
anything of concave or hivelike shape. Possibly here we 
have the origin of quick in its sense of living or alive. 

One of the features of Michaelmas in Scotland was the 
concoction and cooking of a giant cake, bun, or bannock. 
According to Martin this was " enormously large, and 
compounded of different ingredients. This cake belonged 
to the Archangel, and had its name from him. Every one 
in each family, whether strangers or domestics, had his 
portion of this kind of shew-bread, and had of course some 
tithe to the friendship and protection of Michael." 4 In 

1 The Welsh for alban Or alpin is elphin. 

3 Urlin, Miss Ethel M., Festivals, Holy Days, and Saints' Days, p. 192. 
sIbid., p. 196. 

4 Cf. Hone, W., Everyday Book, vol. i., col. 1340. 


 246 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


Hertfordshire during a corresponding period of " joy, 
plenty, and universal benevolence," the young men as 
sembled in the fields choosing a very active leader who then 
led them a Puck-like chase through bush and through 
briar, for the sake of diversion selecting a route through 
ponds, ditches, and places of difficult passage.1 The term 
Ganging Day applied to this festival may be connoted with 
the Singin 'een of the Scotch Hogmanay, and with the 
leader of St. Micah's rout may be connoted demagog. This 
word, meaning popular leader, is attributed to demos, people, 
and agogos, leading, but more seemingly it is Dame Gog or 
Good Mother Gog. 

In Durham is a Pickburn or Pigburn ; beck is a generic 
term for a small stream ; in Devon is a river Becky, and 
in Monmouthshire a river Beeg. In Kent is Bekesbourne, 
and Pegwell Bay near St. Margarets in Kent, may be con 
noted with Backwell or Bachwell in Somerset. In Here 
fordshire is a British earthwork, known as Bach Camp, 
and on Bucton Moor in Northumberland there are two 
earth circles. In Devonshire is Buckland-Egg, or Egg- 
Buckland, and with the various Boxmoors, Boxgroves, 
Boxdales, and Boxleys may be connoted the Box river 
which passes Keynton and crosses Akeman Street. A 
Christmas box is a boon or a gift, a box or receptacle is the 
same word as pyx ; and that the evergreen undying box- 
tree was esteemed sacred, is evident from the words of 
Isaiah : " I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine 
tree, and the box tree together ".2 

Bacon, radically bac, in neighbouring tongues varies 
into baco, baltice, baie, and bâche. Bacon is a family name 
immortally associated with St. Albans, and it is probable 
1 Cf. Hone, W., Everyday Book, vol. i., col. 1340. 3 xli. 19. 


VI.] 


PUCK 


247 


that Trebiggan—a vast man with arms so long that he 
could take men out of the ships passing by Land's End, 
and place them on the Long Ships—was the Eternal 
Biggan or Beginning. In British Eomance there figures 


FIGS. 62 to 64.—Iberian. From Akerman. 

a mystic Lady Tryamour, whose name is obviously Tri 
or Three Love, and it is probable that Giant Trebiggan 
was the pagan Trinity, or Triton, whose emblem was the 
three-spiked trident. Triton alias Neptune was the re 
puted Father of Giant Albion, and the shell-haired deity 
represented on Figs. 62 to 64 is probably Albon, for the 


 248 


ABCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


inscription in Iberian characters reads BLBAN. In the 
East Bel was a generic term meaning lord : in the West it 
seemingly meant, just as it does to-day, fine or beautiful. 
The city of BLBAN or beautiful Ban is now Bilbao, and 
the three fish on this coin are analogous to the trident, 
and to numberless other emblems of the Triune. 

The radiating fan of the cockle shell connects it with 
the Corn-cockle as the Dawn, standing jocund on the misty 
mountain tops, is related to the flaming midday Sun. 
All conchas, particularly the echinea or " St. Cuthbert's 
Bead," were symbols of St. Katherine or Cuddy, and in 
Art St. Jacques or St. Jack was always represented with a 
shell. Coquille, the French for shell, is the same word as 
goggle, and in England the cockle was popularly connected 
with a strange custom known as Hot Cockles or Cockle 
Bread. Full' particulars of this practice are given by 
Hazlitt, who observes : " I entertain a conviction that with 
respect to these hot cockles, and likewise to leap-candle, 
we are merely on the threshhold of the enquiry . . . the 
question stands at present much as if one had picked up 
by accident the husk of some lost substance. . . . Speak 
ing conjecturally, but with certain sidelights to encourage, 
this seems a case of the insensible degradation of rite into 
custom."1 

Shells are one of the most common deposits in prehis 
toric graves, and at Boston in Lincolnshire stone coffins 
have been found completely filled with cockle-shells. There 
would thus seem to be some connection between Ickanhoe, 
the ancient name for Boston, a town of the Iceni. situ 
ated on the Ichenield Way, and the echinea or concha. 
As the cockle was particularly the symbol of Birth, the 

1 Faiths andlFolklore, i., 332. 


VI-] 


PUCK 


249 


presence of these shells in coffins may be attributed to a 
hope of New Birth and a belief that Death was the yoni 

or Gate of Lif a 

The word inimical implies un-amicable, or unfriendly, 
whence Michael was seemingly the Friend of Man. Macu 
late means spotted, and the coins here illustrated, believed 
to have been minted at St. Albans, obviously feature no 
physical King but rather the Kaadman or Good Man of 
St. Albans in his dual aspect of age and youth. The 
starry, spotted, or maculate effigy is apparently an attempt 
to depict the astral or spiritual King, for it was an ancient 
idea that the spirit-body and the spirit-world were made 


PIGS. 65 and 66.—British. Prom Akerman. 

of a so-called stellar-matter—a notion which has recently 
been revived by the Theosophists who speak of the astral 
body and the astral plane. Our modern breath, old Eng 
lish breeth, is evidently the Welsh brith which means 
spotted, and it is to this root that Sir John Ehys attributes 
the term Brython or Britain, finding in it a reference to 
that painting or tattooing of the body which distinguished 
the Picts.1 The word tattoo, Maori tatau, is the Celtic 
tata meaning father, and the implication seems to follow 
that the custom of tattooing arose from picking, dotting, 
or maculating the tribal tptem or caste-mark. 

In the Old English representation here illustrated either 
St. Peter or God the Father is conspicuously tattooed or 

1 Celtic Britain, p. 211. Sir John frequently changed his mind. 


 Il 


250 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


spotted ; Pan was always assigned a panihei'e skin, or 
spotted cloak. 

A speck is a minute spot, and among the ancients a 
speck or dot within a circle was the symbol of the central 
Spook or Spectre. This, like all other emblems, was under 
stood in a personal and a cosmic sense, the little speck 
and circle representing the soul surrounded by its round 


rium VH.V.YfcA^fJE«, 


frtihat tttftmnm A/~ 


- Ï 


' - -ill· 

- ïhito 

;. »-s 


J£ c 

WP* ~——3Va 
^. **· 

PIG. 67.—Christ's Ascent from Hell. Prom Ancient Mysteries (Hone, W.). 

of influence and duties ; the Cosmic speck, the Supreme 
Spirit, and the circle the entire Universe. In many in 
stances the dot and ring seems to have stood for the pupil 
in the iris of the eye. In addition it is evident that θ was 
an emblem of the Breast, and hiefoglyphed the speck in 
the centre of the zone or sein, for the Greek letter theta 
written—θ is identical with teta, teat, tada, dot or dad. 
The dotted effigy on the coins supposedly minted at St. 


PUCK 


251 


Albans may be connoted with the curious fact that in 
Welsh the word alban meant a primary point.1 

Specie is the root of speculum, a mirror, and it might be 
suggested by the materialist that the first reflection in a 
metal mirror was assumed to be a spook. The mirror is 
an attribute of nearly every ancient Deity, and the British 
Druids seem to have had some system of flashing the sun 
light on to the crowd by means of what was termed by the 


PIG. 68.—The Mirror of Thoth. 
From The Correspondences of Egypt (Odhner, C. T.)· 

Bards, the Speculum of the Pervading Glance. Specula 
means a watch-tower, and spectrum means vision. Speech, 
speak, and spoke, point to the probability that speech was 
deemed to be the voice of the indwelling spook or spectre, 
which etymology is at any rate preferable to the official 
surmise " all, perhaps, from Teutonic base spreic—to make 

a noise ". 

The Egyptian hieroglyph here illustrated depicts the 
speculum of Thoth, a deity whom the Phoenicians rendered 
1 Barddas, p. 416. 


 252 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


FIG. 69. 


Fios. 70 to 72.—British. From 
English Coins and Tokens (Je- 
witt & Head). 


Taut, and to whom they attributed the invention of the 
alphabet and all other arts. The whole land of Egypt was 


Pio. 73.—From The Correspondences of Egypt (Odhner, C. T.). 

known among other designations as " the land of the Eye," 
and by the Egyptians as also by the Etrurians, the sym- 


vi-] 


PUCK 


253 


FIG. 74.—From Numis 
matique Ancienne (Bar 
thélémy, 3. B. A. Α.). 


bolic blue Eye of Horus was carried constantly as an 
amulet against bad luck. Fig. 69 is an Egyptian die-stamp, 
and Figs. 70 to 72 are.Jrkitish coins of which the intricate 
symbolism will be considered in due course. The arms of 
Fig. 73 are extended into the act of 
benediction, and utat, the Egyptian 
word for this symbol, resolves into 
the soft, gentle, pleasing, and pro 
pitious Tat. That the utat or eye 
was familiar in Europe is evidenced 
by the Kio coin here illustrated. 

Spica, which is also the same word as spook, meant ear 
of corn ; the wheatear is proverbially the Staff of Life, and 
loaf, old English Zoo/, is the same word as life. Not in 
frequently the Bona Dea was re 
presented holding a loaf in her 
extended hand, and the same idea 
was doubtless expressed by the 
two breasts upon a dish with 
which St. Agatha, whose name 
means Good, is represented. 
Christianity accounts for this 
curious emblem by a legend that 
St. Agatha was tortured by hav 
ing her breasts cut off, and it is 
quite possible that this nasty tale 

is correctly translated ; the original tyrant or torturer being 
probably Winter, or the reaper Death, which cuts short 
the fruit fulness of Spring. In the Tartar emblem here 
with the Phrygian-capped Deity is holding, like St. Agatha, 
the symbol of the teat or feeder, or fodder.1 
1 The Phrygian Cap was symbolic. 


FIG. 75.—From Symbolism 
of the East and West (Ayn- 
sley, Mrs. Murray). 


 254 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


The wheatear or spica, or fcwcA-wheat was a frequent 
emblem on our British coins, and to account for this it has 
been suggested that the British did a considerable export 
trade in corn ; but unfortunately for this theory the spica 
figures frequently upon the coins of Spain and Gaul. As a 
symbol the buckwheat typified plenty, but in addition to 
the wheatear proper there appear kindred objects which 


FIGS. 76 and 77.—Iberian. From Akerman. 

have been surmised to be, perhaps, fishbones, perhaps fern- 
leaves. There is no doubt that these mysterious objects 
are variants of the so-called " ded " amulet, which in Egypt 
was the symbol of the backbone of the God of Life. This 
amulet, of which the hieroglyph has been rendered vari 
ously as ded, didu, tet, and tat, has an ancestry of amazing 
antiquity, and according to Mackenzie, " in Paleolithic 
times, at least 20,000 years ago, the spine of the fish was 
laid on the corpse when it was entombed, just as the ' ded,' 


vi-] 


PUCK 


255 


amulet, which was the symbol of the backbone of Osiris, 
was laid on the neck of the Egyptian mummy ",1 Fre- 


5 

FIQS. 78 to 84.—British. Nos. 1 to 8 from Ancient British Coins 
(Evans, J.). No. 4 from A New Description of England and Wales 
(Anon., 1724). No. 5 from English Coins and Tokens (Jewitt & 
Head). 

quently this " ded " emblem took the form of a column or 
pillar, which symbolised the eternal support and stability 
of the universe. On the summit of Fig. 85 is a bug, cocA:- 

1 Myths of Crete and Pre-Heltenic Europe·, p. xxxii. 


 256 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP 


roach, or coc&chaf er : in Etruria as in Egypt the bug 
amulet or scarabeus was as popular as the Eye of Horus. 
In Fig. 68 the spectral Eye was supported by Thoth, 
whose name varies into Thot, Taut, and numerous inter 
mediate forms, which equate it with ded or dad : similarly 


L\ 


FIG. 85.—From 27ii Correspondences of Egypt (Odhner, C. T.), 

it will be found that practically every place-name consti 
tuted from Tot or Tat varies into Dot or Dad, e.g., Llan- 
dudno, where is found the cradle of St. Tudno. Sometimes 
the Egyptians represented two or more pillars termed 
deddii, and this word is traceable in Trinidad, an island 
which, on account of its three great peaks, was named 
after trinidad, the Spanish for trinity. But trinidad is 


VI.] 


PUCK 


257 


evidently a very old Iberian word, for its British form was 
drindod, as in the place-name Llandrindod or " Holy En 
closure of the Trinity ". The three great mounts on 
Trinidad, and the three famous medicinal springs at Llan 
drindod Wells render it probable that the site of Llan- 
drindod was originally a pagan dedication to the trine teat, 
or triune dad. 

Amid numerous hut circles at Llandudno is a rocking 
stone known as Cryd-Tudno, or the Cradle of Tudno. Who 
was the St. Tudno of Llandudno whose cradle or cot, like 
Kit's Coty in Kent, has been thus preserved in folk- 
memory? The few facts related of him are manifestly 
fabulous, but the name itself seemingly preserves one of 
the numerous sites where the Almighty Child of Christmas 
Day was worshipped, and the no of Tudno may be con 
noted with new, Greek, neo, Danish, ny, allied to Sanscrit, 
no, hence new, " that which is now ". 

"At Llanamlleck in Wales there is a cromlech known as 
St. Illtyd's House, near which is a rude upright stone 
known as Maen-Illtyd, or Illtyd-stone. We may connote 
this IMtyd with All-tya or All Father, in which respect 
Illtyd corresponds with the Scandinavian Ilmatar, Al- 
matar, or All Mother. 

It is told of Saint Illtyd that he befriended a hunted stag, 
and that like Semele, the wife of Jove, his wife was stricken 
with blindness for daring to approach too near him. The 
association of Illtyd with a stag is peculiarly significant in 
view of the fact that at Llandudno, leading to the cot or 
cradle of St. Tudno, are the remains of an avenue of 
standing stones called by a name which signifies " the 
High Eoad of the Deer ". The branching antlers of the 
deer being emblems of the dayspring, the rising or new 
17 


 i il il 


258 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


sun, is a fact somewhat confirmatory of the supposition 
that the Cradle of Tudno was the shrine of the new or 
Rising Tud, and in all probability the High Road of the 
Deer was once the scene of some very curious ceremonies. 
Many of our old churches even to-day contain in their 
lofts antlers which formed part of the wardrobe of the 
ancient mummers or guise dancers. 

In the Ephesian coin herewith Diana—the divine Ana 
—the many-breasted Alma Mater, 
is depicted in the form of a pillar- 
palm tree between two staga 
Among the golden treasures found 
by Schliemann at Mykense, were 
ornaments representing two stags 
on the top of a date palm tree with 
three fronds.1 The date palm may 
be connoted with the ded pillar, and 
the triple-fronded date of Mykense with the trindod or 
drindod of Britain. 

The honeysuckle, termed conventionally a palmette, is 
classically represented as either seven or nine-lobed, and 
this symbol of the Dayspring or of Wisdom was common 
alike both East and West. The palm branch is merely 
another form of the fern or fish-bone, and the word palm 
is radically alma, the all nourisher. The palm leaf appears 
on one of the stones at New Grange, but as Fergusson re 
marks, " how a knowledge of this Eastern plant reached 
New Grange is by no means clear".0 The feather was a 
further emblem of the same spiritual father, feeder, or 
fodder, and in Egypt Ma or Truth was represented with a 
single-feather headdress (ante, p. 136). From the mistletoe 
1 MyJcence, p. 179, 2 nude Stone Monuments, p. 207. 


FIG. 86.—From Numis- 
incienne. 


PUCK 


259 


Greek Honeysuckle umameot. 


Sacred Tree (N.W. Palace, jSfimroud). 


Ornament on the Robe of King. 

FIG. 87.—From Nineveh (Layard). 


.». I * 


 260 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


to the fern, agprig of any kind was regarded as the spright, 
spirit, or spurt of new life or new- Thought (Thaut ?), and 
the forms of this young sprig are innumerable. The gist, 
ghost, or essence of the Maypole was that it should be 


FIG. 88.—From Irish Antiquities Pagan and Christian (Wakeman). 


a sprout well budded out, whence to this day at Saffron 
Waiden the children on Mayday sing :— 

A branch of May we have brought you, 

And at your door it stands ; 
It is a sprout that is well budded out, 

The work of our Lord's hands. 

Teat may be equated with the Gaulish tout, the whole 
or All, and it is probable that the Pelasgian shrine of 
Dodona was dedicated to that All One or Father One. It 


vi·] 


PUCK 


261 


s noteworthy that the sway of the pre-Grecian Pelasgians 
extended over the whole of the "Ionian coast "beginning 
from Mykale " :1 this Mykale (Megale or Michael ?) district 
is now Albania, and its capital is Janina, quçry Queen Ina ? 

It is probable that Kenna, the fairy princess of Kensington 
who is reputed to have loved Albion, was camia, the New 
King or New Queen. On the river Canna in Wales is 
TLAaagan or Llanganna : Ltlangan on the river Taff is 
dedicated to St. Canna, and Ltlaugain to St. Synin. All 
these dedications are seemingly survivals of King, Queen, 
or Saint, Ina, Una, Une, ain or one. In Cornwall there 
are several St. Euny's Wells: near Evesham is Honey- 
bourne, and in Sussex is a Honey Child. Upon Honey- 
church the authorities comment, " The connection 
between a church and honey is not very obvious, and this is 
probably Church of Huna ". Quite likely, but not, I think, 
a Saxon settler. 

The ancients supposed that the world was shaped like 
a bun, and they imagined it as supported by the tet or 
pillar of the Almighty. It is therefore possible that the 
Toadstool or Mushroom derived its name not because toads 
never sit upon it, but because it was held to be a perfect 
emblem of the earth. In some districts the Mushroom is 
named " Pooka's foot," 2 and as the earth is proverbially 
God's footstool, the Toad-stool was held seemingly to be 
the stool of earth supported on the dea, or pillar of Titan. 
The Fairy Titania, who probably once held sway in Totten 
ham Court Eoad, may be connoted with the French teton, 
a teat ; tetine, an udder ; teter, to milk ; and tetin, a nipple. 

It is probable that "The Five Wells" at Taddington, 

1 Baldwin, J. G., Prehistoric Nations, p. 162. 
2Keightley, Fairy Mythology, p. 317. 


 262 AÎÎCHAie ENGLAND [CHAP. 

" the Five Kings at Doddington," where also is " the Duddo- 


PIG. 89.—Prom Christian Iconography (Didron). 


PIG. 90.—The Spirit of Youth. · Prom a French Miniature of the four 
teenth century. Prom Christian Iconography (Didron). 

Stone," likewise Dod Law at Doddington ; Dowdeswell, 


Vi. J 


PUCK 


263 


Dudsbury, and the Cornish Dodrnan, are all referable 
originally to the fairy Titan or the celestial Daddy. 

In accordance with universal wont this Titan or Almighty, 
" this senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid," was con- 


jij0- 9i._Prom Christian Iconography (Didron). 

ceived as anon a tiny toddling tot or Tom-tit-tot, anon as 
Old Tithonus, the doddering dotard: the Swedish for 
death or dead is dod ; the German is tod. Tod is an 
English term for a fox, and Thot was the fox orjackal- 
headed maker-of-tracts or guide : thought is invariably 


 264 


ABCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


the guide to every action, and Divine Thought is the final 
bar to which the human soul comes up for judgment. It 
has already been seen that in Europe the holder of the 
sword and scales was Michael, and there is reason to sup 
pose that the Dog-headed titanic Christopher, who is said 
to have ferried travellers picJc-a-back across a river, was 
at one time an exquisite conception of Great Puck or 


FIG. 92.—Figure of Christ, beardless. Roman Sculpture of the IV. cent. 
From Christian Iconography (Didron). 

Father Death carrying his children over the mystic river. 
By the pagans—the unsophisticated villagers among whom 
Pucca mostly survived—Death was conceived as not in 
variably or necessarily frightful, but sometimes as a lovely 
youth. In Fig. 91 Death is Amor or Young Love, and in 
Fig. 90 an angel occupies the place of Giant Christopher : 
the words death and dead are identical with dad and tod. 
The Christian emblems herewith represent Christ sup 
ported by the Father or' Mother upon a veil or scarf, 


VI ι PUCK 265 
which is probably intended for the rainbow or spectrum : 


FIG. 93.—Iberian. From Akerman. 


FIG. 94.—From Christian Iconography (Didron), 
the pagan Europa was represented, vide Fig. 93, holding 
a similar emblem. According to mythology, Iris or the 


 266 


AECHAIC ENRLANP 


[CHAP. 


Rainbow was like Thot or Mercury, the Messenger of the 
Gods, and the symbolists delighted to blend into their 
hieroglyphs that same elusive ambiguity as separates Iris 
from Eros and the blend of colours in the spectrum. 

In the ninth century a learned monk expressed the 
opinion that only two words of the old Iberian language 
had then survived : one of these was fern, meaning any 
thing good, and with it we may connote the Fern Islands 
among which stands the Megstone. Ferns, the ancient 
capital'of Leinster, attributes its foundation to a St. Mogue, 
and St. Mogue's Well is still existing in the precincts of 
Ferns Abbey. The equation of Long Meg and her 
Daughters with Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins 
is supported by the tradition that the original name of St. 
Ursula's husband was Holofernes,1 seemingly Holy Ferns 
or Holy Phoroneus. What is described as "the highest 
term in Grecian history " was the ancestral Inachus, the 
father of a certain Phoroneus. The fabulous Inachus2— 
probably" the Gaelic divinity Oengus3—is the Ancient 
Mighty Life, and Phoroneus is radically fern or frond. 
There figures in Irish mythology " a very ancient deity " 
whose name, judging from inscriptions, was Feron or 
Vorenn, and it is noteworthy that Oengus is associated 
particularly with New Grange, where the fern palm leaf 
emblem has been preserved. The Dutch for fern is 
varen, and the root of all these terms is fer or ver : the 
Latin ferre is the root of fertile, etc., and in connection 
with the Welsh ver, which means essence, may be noted 
ver the Spring and vert, green, whence verdant, verdure, 
vernal, and infernal (?). 

1Hazlitt, W. Carew, Faiths and Folklore, ii., 008. 

2Rhys, Sir J., Celtic Bi-itain, p. 271. 

3 The Celtic Angus is translated excellent virtue. 


vi.] 


PUCK 


267 


Among the ferns whose spine-like fishbone fronds seem 
ingly caused them to be accepted as emblems of the fertile 
Dayspring or the permeating Spirit of all Life, the osmunda 
was particularly associated with the Saints and Gods: 
in the Tyrol it is still placed over doors for Good Luck, 
and one species of Osmunda (Crispa) is in Norway called 


FIGS. 95 to 102.—British. 


Nos. to from Akerman. 
Evans. 


Nos. to from 


St. Olafs Beard. This is termed by Gerarde the Herb 
Christopher, and the Latin crispa.somewhat connects it 
with Christopher. The name Osmund is Teutonic for 
divine protector, but more radically Osmunda was oes 
munda, .or the Life of the World. In Devonshire the 
Pennyroyal is also known as organ, organy, argante, or 
erigane, all of which are radically the same as origin. 
The British coins inscribed Ver are believed to have 


 268 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


emanated from Verulaia or St. Albans, but the same VBE, 
VIE, or kindred legend is found upon the coins of Iberia 
and Gaul. It is not improbable that Verulam was at one 
time the chief city in Albion, but the place which now 
claims to be the mother city is Canterbury or Dniovern. 
The ancient name of Canterbury is supposed to have been 
bestowed upon it by the Eomans, 
and to have denoted evergreen ; but 
Canterbury is not physically more 
evergreen than every other spot in 
verdant England: Canterbury is, 
however, permeated with relics, 
memories, and traditions of St. 
George ; and St. George is still 
addressed in Palestine as the 
" evergreen green one ". Green 
was the symbol of rejuvenescence 
and immortality, and " the Green 

FIG. 103.— Green Man J> 
(Roxburghe Ballads, circa Man °f Our English Inn Signs, 

1650).—From The His- as also the Jack-in-Green who 
used to figure along with Maid 
Marian and the Hobby Horse in 
the festivities of May Day, was representative of the May 
King or the Lord of Life. The colour green, according 
to the Ecclesiastical authorities, still signifies "hope, 
plenty, mirth, youth, and prosperity": as the colour 
of living vegetation, it was adopted as a symbol of life, 
and Angels and Saints, particularly St. John, are repre 
sented clad in green. In Gaul the Green Man was evi 
dently conceived as Ver Galant, and the two cups, one 
inverted, in all probability implied Life and Death. Ac 
cording to Christian Legend, St. George was tortured by 


toi-y of Signboards (Lar- 
wood & Hotten). 


PUCK 


269 


VI.] 

being forced to drink two cups, whereof the one was pre 
pared to make him mad, the other to kill him by poison. 
The prosperity of an emblem lies entirely in the Eye, and 
it is probable that all the alleged dolours to which George 
was subjected are nothing more than the morbid miscon- 


FIG. 104.—From The Everyday Book (Hone, W.). 

ceptions of men whose minds dwelt normally on things 
most miserable and conceived little higher. Thus seem 
ingly the light-shod Mercury was degraded into George's 
alleged torture of being " made to run in red hot shoes " : 
the heavy pillars laid upon him suggest that he was once 
depicted bearing up the pillars of the world : the wheel 
covered with razors and knives to which he was attached 


 270 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


imply the solar wheel of Kate or Catarina : the posts to 
which he was fastened by the feet and hands were seem 
ingly a variant of the deddu, and the sledge hammers with 
which he was beaten were, like many other of the excruci 
ating torments of the " saint," merely and inoffensively the 
emblems of the Heavenly Hercules or Invictus. 

Maid Marion, who was not infrequently associated with 


'7ÄVUERGÄLAN5J 


FIG. 105.—Ver Galant (Bue 
Henri, Lyons, 1759). From 
27ίβ History of Signboards. 


FIG. 106.—Green Man and Still (Harleian 
Collection, 1630). Ibid. 


St. George, is radically Maid Big Ion, or Fairy Ion, and 
that St. George was also a marine saint is obvious from 
the various Channels which still bear his name. The en 
sign of the Navy is the red cross on a white ground, known 
originally as the Christofer or Jack, and in Fig. 106 the 
Green Man is represented with the scales of a Merman, or 
Blue John. The Italian for blue is vera ; vera means 
true ; " true blue " is proverbial ; and that Old George was 
Trajan, Tarchon, Tarragone, or Dragon is obvious from 
the dragon-slaying incident. Little George has already 


PUCK 


2Ti 


been identified by Baring-Gould with Tammuz, the Adonis, 
or Beauty, who is identified with the Sun :l " Thou shin 
ing and vanishing in the beauteous circle of the Horse, 
dwelling at one time in gloomy Tartarus, at another ele 
vating thyself to Olympus, giving ripeness to the fruits ".2 
The St. George of Diospolis, the City of Light, who by 
the early Christians was hailed as " the Mighty Man," the 


|f* , ·.'' ,Λ\ 'Λ ì'O'X" '<*.-. V· "*-. , - J'·1. «n V- 
·. · '.». * " ·|-Μ · \'.V- " · ·· : "Φ'-_* - · 

•ÌV'^W ···/''·' '; t ':/' " - - .'.'.C; 'u,1 

'' 1 ' ' " 


.'·' -' '*. J' 

χ-•-Τ..'," - f" \°''· 


'-"-· 


FIG. 107.—Frora Ttte Everyday Book (Hone, W.). 

' Star of the Morning," and the " Sun of Truth," figures 
in Cornwall, particularly at Helston, where there is still 
danced the so-called Furry dance : Helston, moreover, 
claims to show the great granite stone which was intended 
to cover the mouth of the Nether Régions, but St. Michael 
met Satan carrying it and made him drop it. 

1Cf. Baring-Gould, Eev. S., Curious Myths, pp. 266-316. 
2 Orphic Hymn, lv., 5, 10, and 11. 


 [fill 


272 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


vi.] 


PUCK 


273 


It is unnecessary to labour the obvious identity between 
Saints George and Michael : " George," meaning husband 
man, i.e., the Almighty in a bucolic aspect, is merely an 
other title for the archangel, but more radically it may be 
traced to geo (as in geology, geography, geometry) and urge, 
i.e., earth urge. It is physically true that farmers urge 
the earth to yield her increase, and until quite recently, 
relics of the festival of the sacred plough survived in 
Britain. Within living memory farmers in Cornwall turned 
the first sod to the formula " In the name of God let us 
begin " :1 in China, where the Emperor himself turns the 
first sod, much of the ancient ceremonies still survive. 

The legend of St. George and the dragon has had its 
local habitation fixed in many districts notably in Berkshire 
at the vale of the White Horse. The famous George of 
Cappadocia is first heard of as " a purveyor of provisions 
for the Army of Constantinople," and he was subsequently 
associated with acertain Dracontius (i.e., dragon)," Master 
of the Mint ". The same legend is assigned at Lambton 
in England not to George but to " John that slew ye 
worm " : in Turkey St. George is known as Oros, which 
is obviously Horus or Eros, the Lord of the Horse or 
hours, and the English dragon-slayer Conyers of Sockburn 
is presumably King Yers, whose burn or brook was pre 
sumably named after Shock or Jock. In some parts of 
England a bogey dog is known under the title of " Old 
Shock," and in connection with Conyers and John that 
slew ye worm may be noted near Conway the famous 
Llandudno headlands, Great and Little Orme or Worm. 

The St. George of Scandinavia is named Gest: that 
Gest was the great Gust or Mighty Wind is probable, and 
1 Oourtney, Miss M. L., Garnish Feasts and Folklore, p. 136. 


it is more likely that Windsor, a world-famous seat of St. 
George, meant, not as is assumed winding shore, but wind 
sire. That St. George was the Euler of the gusts or winds 
is implied by the fact that among the Finns, anyone 
brawling on St. George's Day was in danger of suffering 
from storms and tempests. The murmuring of the wind 
in the oak groves of Dodona was held to be the voice of 
Zeus, and the will of the All Father was there further de 
duced by means of a three-chained whip hanging over a 
metal basin from the hand of the statue of a boy. From 
the movements of these chains, agitated by the wind and 
blown by the gusts till they tinkled against the bowl, the 
will of the Ghost was guessed, and the word guess seem 
ingly implies that guessing was regarded as the operation 
of the good or bad geis within. In Windsor Great Forest 
stood the famous Oak or Picktree, where Puck, alias Herne 
the Hunter, appeared occasionally in the form of an antlered 
Buck. The supposition that St. George was the great 
Gush or geyser is strengthened by the fact that near the 
Cornish Padstow, Petrock-Stowe, or the stowe of the Great 
Pater, there is a well called St. George's Well. This well 
is described as a " mere spring which gushes from a rock," 
and the legend states that the water gushed forth immedi 
ately St. George had trodden on the spot and has ne'er 
since ceased to flow. 

The Italian for blue—the colour of the deep water and 
of the high Heavens—is also turchino, and on 23rd April 
(French Avril), blue coats used to be worn in England in 
honour of the national saint whose red cross on a white 
ground has immemorially been our Naval Ensign.1 

1 From prehistoric times this ensign seems to have heen known as " the 
ack," and the immutability of the fabulous element was evidenced, anew 
18 


 Ill 


I.· 


274 


AËCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


St. George figured particularly in the Furry or Flora 
dance at Helston, and the month of Avril, a period when 
the earth is opening up its treasures, seemingly derives 
its name from Ver or Vera, the " daughter deare " of 
Flora. On 23rd April " the riding of the George " was a 
principal solemnity in certain parts of England : on St. 
George's Day a White Horse used to stand harnessed at 
the end of St. George's Chapel in St. Martin's Church, 
Strand, and the Duncannon Street, which now runs along 
the south side of this church, argues the erstwhile existence 
either here or somewhere of a dun or down of cannon. A 
cannon is a gun, and our Dragoon guards are supposed to 
have derived their title from the dragons or fire-arms 
with which they were armed. The inference is that the 
first inventors of the gun, cannon, or dragon, entertained 
the pleasing fancy that their weapon was the fire-spouting 
worm.1 The dragon was the emblem of the Cz/nbro or 
Kymry : associated with the red cross of St. George it is 
the cognisance of London, and a fearsome dragon stands 
to-day at the boundary of the city on the site of Temple 
Bar. 

during the present year when on 28rd April the Admiral on shore wirelessed 
to the Zeebrugge raiding force: " England and St. George ". To this was 
returned the reply : " We'll give a twist to the dragon's tail ". 

1 Since writing I find this surmise to be well founded. At the present 
moment there is a Persian cannon (A.D. 1547) captured at Bagdad, now on 
exhibition in London. It bears an inscription to the effect :— 
" ' Succour is from God, and victory is at hand." 

The Commander of Victory and Help, the Shah, 

Desiring to blot out all trace of the Turks, 

Ordered Dgiev to make this gun. 

Wherever it goes it burns up lives, 

It spits forth fiâmes like a dragon. 

It sets the world of the Turks on fire." 


VI.] 


PUCK 


275 


In the reign of Elizabeth an injunction was issued that 
" there shall be neither George nor Margaret," an impli 
cation that Margaret was once the recognised Consort of 
St. George, and the expression " riding of the George," 
points to the probability that the White Horse, even if 
riderless, was known as " the George ". The White Horse 
of Kent with its legend INVICTA implies—unless Heraldry 
is weak in its grammar—not a horse but a mare : George 
was Invictus or the Unconquerable, and, as will be seen, 
there are good reasons to suppose that the White Horse and 
White Mare were indigenous to Britain long before the 
times of the Saxon Hengist and Horsa. It is now gener 
ally accepted that Hengist, which meant horse, and Horsa, 
which meant mare, were mythical characters. With the 
coming of the Saxons no doubt the worship of the White 
Horse revived for it was an emblem of Hanover, and in 
Hanover cream-coloured horses were reserved for the use 
of royalty alone. With the notorious Hanoverian Georges 
may be connoted the fact that opposite St. George's Island 
at Looe (Cornwall) is a strand or market-place named 
Hannaf ore : at Hinover in Sussex a white horse was 
carved into the hillside. 

The White Horse—which subsequently became the 
Hobby Horse, or the Hob's Horse, of our popular revels— 
has been carved upon certain downs in England and 
Scotland for untold centuries. That these animals 
were designedly white is implied by an example on 
the brown heather hills of Mormond in Aberdeenshire : 
here the subsoil is black and the required white has 
been obtained by filling in the figure with white felspar 
stones.1 It will be noticed that the White Horse at 
TJffington as reproduced overleaf is beaked like a bird, 
1 Wise, Τ. Α., History of Paganism in Caledonia, p. 114. 


 .< ill -I 


i IH" 


276 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


and has a remarkable dot-and-circle eye : iii Figs. 110 
to 113 the animal is similarly beaked, and in Fig. Ill 


FIG. 108.—From The Scouring of tlie Wliite Horse (Hughes, T ). 


FIG. 109.—British. From A New Description of England (1724). 


FIGS. 110 to 113.—British No. 110 from Camden. No. 112 from Aker- 
man. No. 113 from Evans. 

the object in the bill is seemingly an egg. The de 
signer of Fig. 109 has introduced apparently a goose 
or swan's head, and also a sprig or branch. The word 


vi.] 


PUCK 


277 


BODUOC may or may not have a relation to Boudicca or 
Boadicea of the Ikeni—whose territories are marked by the 


FIG. 114.—Iberian. From Akennan. 


FIGS. 115 and 116.—British. From Akermau. 


FIG. 117.—Iberian. From Akerman. 


FIG. 118.—British. From 
Evaus. 


FIG. 119.—British. From Akerman. 


Ichnield Way of to-day-but in any case Boufog in Welsh 
meant victory or Victorina, whence the "very peculiar 
horse" on this coin may be regarded as a prehistoric 
Tnvicta. The St. George of Persia there known as Mithras 


 278 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


was similarly worshipped under the guise of a white horse, 
and Mithras was similarly ' ' Invictus ' '. The winged genius 
surmounting the horse on Fig. 114, a coin of the Tarragona, 
Tarchon, or dragon district—is described as " Victory fly 
ing," and there is little doubt that the idea of White Horse 
or Invictus was far spread. At Edgehill there used to be 
a Red Horse carved into the soil, and the tenancy of the 
neighbouring Eed Horse Farm was held on the condition 
that the tenant scoured the Red Horse annually on Palm 
Sunday : the palm is the emblem of Invictus, and it will 
be noticed how frequently the palm branch appears in 
conjunction with the horse on our British coinage. 


FIG. 120.—Gaulish. From Akerman. 

The story of St. George treading on the Padstow Rock, 
and the subsequent gush of water, is immediately sugges 
tive of the Pegasus legend. Pegasus, the winged steed of 
the Muses, which, with a stroke of its hoof, caused a foun 
tain to gush forth, is supposed to have been thus named 
because he made his first appearance near the sources— 
Greek pegai—of Oceanus. It is obvious, however, from the 
coins of Britain, Spain, and Gaul, that Pegasus—occasion 
ally astral-winged and hawk-headed—was very much at 
home in these regions, and it is not improbable that pegasits 
was originally the Celtic Peg Esus. The god Esus of 
Western Europe—one of whose portraits is here given— 
was not only King Death, but he is identified by De Jubain- 
ville with Cuchulainn, the Achilles or Young Sun God of 


VI-] 


PUCK 


279 


Ireland.1 Esus, the counterpart of Isis, was probably the 
divinity worshipped at Uzes in Gaul, a coin of which town, 
representing a seven-rayed sprig springing from a brute, is 
here reproduced, and that King Esus or King Osis was the 
Lord of profound speculation, is somewhat implied by 


FIG. 121. 

gnosis, the Greek word for knowledge. Tacitus mentions 
that the neighing of the sacred white horse of the Druids 
was regarded as oracular ; the voice of a horse is termed 
its neigh, from which it would seem horses were regarded 
as super-intelligent animals which knew? The inscription 
CUN or CUNO which occurs so frequently on the horse coins 
of Western Europe is seemingly akin to ken, the root of 

1 Irish Mytho. Cycle, p. 229. 

2 The Norwegian for neigh is feneggya, the Danish, ginegge.. 


 Il 


280 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


know, knew, canny, and cunning. In India the elephant 
Ganesa—seemingly a feminine form of Genesis and Gnosis 
—was deemed to be the Lord of all knowledge. 

In connection with Pegasus may be noted ~Bukephalus, 
the famed steed of Alexander. The Inscriptions BPPILLUS 
and BPPI l occur on the Kentish coins, Figs. 122 and 123 ; 
hipha or hippa was the Phoenician for a mare ; in Scotland 
the nightmare is known as ephi&ltus ; a hippodrome is a 
horse course, whence, perhaps, Bukephalus may be trans 
lated Big Bppilus. The little elf or elve under a bent sprig 
is presumably Bog or Puck, and in connection with the 
Eagle-he&aeâ Pegasus of Fig. 164 may be noted the 


PIGS. 122 and 123.—British. Prom Akerman. 

Puckstone by the megalithic Aggie Stone at Pvxbeck, 
where is a St. Alban's Head.2 

Whether or not Pegasus was Big Bsus or Peg or Puck 
Esus is immaterial, but it is quite beyond controversy that 
the animals now under consideration are Elphin Steeds 
and that they are not the " deplorable abortions " which 
numismatists imagine. The recognised authorities are 
utterly contemptuous towards our coinage, to which they 
apply terms such as " very rude," " an attempt to repre 
sent a horse," " barbarous imitation," and so forth ; but I 

1 There is no evidence to support the supposition that Eppillus may have 
been an English Mug. 

2 An omniscient eagle was associated with Achill (Ireland). 


VI.] PUCK 281 

am persuaded that the craftsmen who fabricated these 
archaic coins were quite competent to draw straightfor 
ward objects had such been their intent. Akerman is 


PIGS. 124 to 127.—Iberian. Prom Barthélémy. 


seriously indignant at the indefiniteness of the object which 
resembles a fishbone and " has been called a fern leaf," and 
he sums up his feelings by opining that this uncouth repre- 


Pios. 128 and 129. — Iberian. Prom Akerman. 
aentation may be as much the result of incompetent work 
manship as of successive fruitless attempts at imitation.1 

Incompetent comprehension would condemn Figs. 124 
to 129, particularly the draughtsmanship of the head : it is 
hardly credible, yet, says Akerman, the small winged elf 


1 Ancient Coins of the Romans Relating to Britain, p. 


197. 


 ., lili 


282 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


vi-] 


PUCK 


283 


in these coins " apparently escaped the observation of M. 
de Saulcy ". They emanated from the Tarragonian town 
of Ana or Ona, and are somewhat suggestive of the mythic 
tale that Minerva sprang from the head of Jove : the 
horses on the Gaulish coin illustrated in Fig. 130, which is 
attributed either to Verdun or Vermandois, are inscribed 
VEBO IOVE and that Jou was the White Horse is, to some 
extent, implied by our elementary words Gee and Geho. 
According to Hazlitt " the exclamation Geho ! Geho ! 
which carmen use to their horses is not peculiar to this 
country, as I have heard it used in France " :1 it is probable 


FIG. 180.—Gaulish. From Akerman. 

that the iJehu who drove furiously was a memory of the 
solar charioteer ; it is further probable that the story of Io, 
the divinely fair daughter of Inachus, who was said to have 
been pursued over the world by a malignant gadfly, origin 
ated in the lumpish imagination of some one who had in 
front of him just such elfin emblems as the pixy horse now 
under consideration. That in reality the gadfly was a good 
inouche is implied by the term gad : the inscription Kio 
on Fig. 74 (p. 253) reads Great Io or Great Eye, and in con 
nection with the remarkable optic of the White Horse at 
Uffington may be connoted the place-name Horse Eye 
near Bexhill. The curious place-name Beckjay in Shrop 
shire is suggestive of Big Jew or Joy: the blue-crested 

1 Faiths and Folklore, vol. i., p. 329. 


monarch of the woods we call a jay (Spanish, gayo, " of 
doubtful origin ") was probably the bird of Jay or Joy—just 
Skspicus or the crested woodpecker was admittedly Jupiter's 
bird—and the Jaye's Park in Surrey, which is in the imj 
mediate neighbourhood of Godstone, Gadbrooke, and Kit- 
lands, was seemingly associated at some period with Good 
Jay or Joy. 

We speak ironically to-day of our " Jehus," and the word 
liack still survives : in Chaucer's time English carters 
encouraged their horses with the exclamation Heck !1 the 
Irish for horse was ech, and the inscription beneath the effigy 
on Fig. 131, a Tarragonian coin, reads, according to Aker 
man, EKK. That the hack was connected in idea with the 
oak is somewhat implied by a horse ornament in my posses 
sion, the eye or centre of which is represented by an oak 
corn or acorn. In the North of England the elves seem 
to have been known as hags, for fairy rings are there 
known as hag tracks. The word hackney is identical with 
Boudicca's tribe the Ikeni, and it is believed that Cœsar's 
reference to the Cenimagni or Cenomagni refers to the 
Ikeni : whence it is probable that the Ikeni, like the Cantii, 
were worshippers of Invicta, the Great Hackney, the Ceni 
Magna or Hackney Magna. 

The water horse which figures overleaf may be connoted 
with the Scotch kelpie, which is radically ek Elpi or Elfi : 
the kelpie or water horse of Scotch fairy lore is a ghastly 
spook, just as Alpa in Scandinavia is a ghoul and Ephialtes 
in Albany or Scotland is a nightmare: but there must 
almost certainly have been a White Kelpie, for the Greeks 
held a national horse race which they termed the Calpe, 
and Calpe is the name of the mountain which forms the 
1 Faiths and Folklore, vol. i., p. 329. 


 <'„·,. 


284 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


European side of the Pillars of Hercules. From the sur 
names Killbye and Gilbey one may perhaps deduce a tribe 
who were followers of 'K Alpe the Great All Feeder : that 
the kelpie was regarded as the fourfold feeder is obvious 
from the four most unnatural teats depicted on the Pixtil 
coin of Fig. 133. 


FIG. 181.—Iberian. From Akerman. 

The Welsh form of Alphin is Elphin, and the Cornish 
height known as Godolphin—whence the family name 
Godolphin—implies, like Eobin Goodfellow, Good Elphin. 
With Elphin, Alban, and Hobany may be connected the 
Celtic Goddess Epona, " the tutelar deity of horses and 


FIG. 


182.—British. 
Akerm'an. 


From 


FIG. 133.—Channel Islands, 
From Barthélémy. 


probably originally a horse totem ". To Epona may safely 
be assigned the word pony ; Irish poni ; Scotch powney, 
all of which the authorities connect with pullus, the Latin 
for foal : it is quite true there is a p in both. We have 
already traced a connection between neighing, knowing, 
kenning, and cunning, and there is seemingly a further 
connection between Epona, the Goddess of Horses, and 


vi.] 


PUCK 


285 


opine, for according to Plato the horse signified " reason 
and opinion coursing about through natural things ",1 

British horses used to be known familiarly as Joan, and 
the term jennet presumably meant Little Joan: the 
Italian for a liackney is chinea. At Hackney, which now 
forms part of London, there is an Abney Park which was 
once, it may be, associated with Hobany or Epona : the 
main street of Hackney or Haconey (which originally con 
tained the Manor of Hoxton) is Mare Street ; and this 
mare was seemingly the ~K.eG.mure whose traces are per 
petuated in Kenmure Boad, Hackney. At the corner of 
Seven Sisters Boad is the church of St. Olave, and the 
neighbouring Alvington Street suggests that this Kingsland 
Boad district was once a town or down of Alvin the Elphin 
King. Godolphin Hill in Cornwall was alternatively 
known as Godolcan, and there is every reason to suppose 
that Elphin was the good old king, the good all-king, 
and the good holy king. 

Hackney was seemingly once one of the many congre 
gating " Londons," and we may recognise Elen or Ollan 
in London Fields, London Lane, Lyne Grove, Olinda (or 
Good Olin) Boad, Londesborough Boad, Ellingfort (or 
Strong Ellin) Boad, Lenthall (or Tall Elen) Boad. In 
Linscott Street there stood probably at one time a Cot, 
Cromlech, or " Kit's Coty," and at the neighbouring Dais- 
ton 2 was very possibly a Tallstone, equivalent to the Cornish 
tal earn or high rock. 

The adjective long or lanky is probably of Hellenic 
origin, and the giants or long men sometimes carved in 

1 Madeley, E., The Science of Correspondence, p. 194. 

2 Dalston in Cumberland is assumed to have been a town in the dale or 
dale's tato*· But surely '" towns " were never thus anonymous ? 


 Jl 


286 


AßCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAI5. 


hill-sides (as at Cerne Abbas) were like all Longstones once 
perhaps representations of Helen. 


FIG. 134.—"Metal ornaments found on horse trappings (North 
Lincolnshire, 1907). NOB. 1-8 represent forms of the orescent amulet ; 
Nos. 8-11, the horseshoe. No. 12 is a well-known mystic symbol. 
No. 15 shows the cross potencee, and No. 16 the cross pâtée : these 
seem to denote Christian influence. NOB. 18 and 14 indicate the decay _ 
of folk-uiBuHtay concerning amulets, though the heart pattern was 
originally talismanic. Nos. 7 and 8 form bridle ' plumes,' No. 6 is a 
hook for a bearing-rein ; the remainder are either forehead medallions 
or breeching decorations. The patterns 1-4, 9, 11, 13, 14, and 16, are 
fairly common in London." 

From Folk Memory (Johnson, W.). 

The Town Hall at Hackney stands on a plot of ground 
known as Hackney Grove, and the neighbouring Mildmay 


VI.] 


PUCK 


287 


Park and Mildmay Grove suggest a grove or sanctuary of 
the Mild May or Mary. That Pegasus was known familiarly 
in this district is implied by the White Horse Inn on 
Hackney Marshes and by its neighbour " The Flying 
Horse " : Hackney neighbours Homerton, and that the 
national Hackney or mare was Homer or Amour is obvious 
from Fig. 135, where a heart, the universal emblem of amour, 
is represented at its Hub, navel, or bogel. According to 
Sir John Evans the " principal characteristic " of Fig. 136 is 
" the heart-shaped figure between the forelegs of the horse, 
the meaning of which I am at a loss to discover " :* but 


FIG. 135.—Iberian. From 
Akerman. 


FIG. 186.—British. From Evans. 


any yokel could have told Sir John the meaning of the 
heart or hearts which are still carved into tree trunks, and 
were rarely anything else than the emblems of Amor. The 
observant Londoner will not fail to notice particularly on 
May Day—the Mary or Mother Day—when our Cockney 
horses parade in much of their immemorial finery and 
pomp—that golden hearts, stringed in long sequences over 
the harness, are conspicuous among the half-moons, stars, 
and other prehistoric emblems of the Bona dea or pre- 
Christian Mary. 

Hackney includes the churches of St Mary, St. Michael, 
and St. Jude : Jude is the same word as good, and the St. 

1 P. 299. 


 M 


L 


! 


288 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


Jude of Scripture who was surnamed Thadee, and was 
said to be the son of Alpheus, is apparently Good Tadi or 
Daddy, alias St. Alban the All Good, the Kaadman. St. 
Jude is also St. Chad, and there was a celebrated Chadwell l 
at the end of the Marylebone Eoad now known as St. 
Paneras or King's Cross : at King's Cross there is a locality 
still known as Alpha Place. 

At Hackney is a Gayhurst Eoad, which may imply an 
erstwhile hurst or wood of Gay or Jay, and " at the south 
end of Springfield Eoad there is a curious and interesting 
little hamlet lying on the water's edge. The streets are 
very steep, and some of them extremely narrow—mere 
passages like the wynds in Edinburgh."2 This little 
hamlet is "encircled" by Mount Pleasant Lane, whence 
one may assume that the eminence itself was known at 
some time or other as Mount Pleasant. 

The "Mount Pleasant" at Hackney may be connoted 
with the more famous " Mount Pleasant " at Dun Ainy, 
Knock Ainy, or the Hill of Aine in Limerick. The 
"pleasant hills "of Ireland were defined as "ceremonial 
hills," and it was particularly on the night of All Hallows 
that the immemorial ceremonies were there observed. 
To this day Aine or Ana, a beautiful and gracious water- 
spirit, " the best-natured of women," is reverenced at 
Knockainy, and the legend persists that " Aine promised to 
save bloodshed if the hill were given to her till the end of 
the world ".3 That Mount Pleasant at Hackney or Hack- 
oney was similarly dedicated to High Aine or Ana is an 
inference to which the facts seem clearly to point. 

1 Compare also Shad-well in East London, " said to be St. Chad's Well ". 
2Mitton, G. E., Hackney, p. 11. 

3 Cf. Westropp, T. J., Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy, vol. xxxiv., 
Sec. C., No's. 8 and 4. 


VI·] 


PUCK 


289 


It would also be permissible to interpret Hackney as 
Oaken Island, in which light it may be connoted with 
Glastonbury, the word glaston being generally supposed to 
be glasten, the British for oak. Glastonbury, the celebrated 
Avalon, Apple Island, Apollo Island, or Isle of Eest, was 
a world-famous " Mount Pleasant," and on its most ele 
vated height there stands St. Michael's Tower. Glaston 
bury itself,1 " its two streets forming a perfect cross," is 
almost engirdled by a little river named the Brue. The 
French town Bray is in the so-called Santerre or Holy- 
land district : the remains of a megalithic santerre, sain- 
tuarie or sanctuary are still standing at Abury or Aubury 
in Wiltshire, and we may equate this place-name with abri, 
a generic term in French, " origin unknown," for sanctuary 
or refuge. 

Near Bray, Santerre, is Auber's Kidge, which may be 
connoted with Aubrey Walk, the highest spot in Kensing 
ton, and it would seem that Abury's, abris, or " Mount 
Pleasants " were once plentiful in the bundle of communi 
ties, townships, parishes, and lordships which have now 
merged into the Greater London : Ebury Square in the 
South-West may mark one, and Highbury in the North, 
with its neighbouring " Mount Pleasant," another. 

The immortal Mount Pleasant of the Muses was named 
Helicon, and from here sprang the celebrated fountains 
Aganippe and Hippocrene. At Holywell in Wales there 
is a village called Halkin lying at the foot of a hill named 
Helygen : there is a Heligan Hill in Cornwall, and a river 
Olcan in Hereford : there is an Alconbury in Hunts, and 
an Elkington (Domesday Alchinton) at Louth. An Elk 
is a gigantic buck whose radiating antlers are so fern-like 

'Walters, J. Cuming, The Lost Land, of King Arthur, p. 219. 
19 


 •Il 


290 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


vi.] 


PUCK 


291 


that a genus has appropriately been designated the Elk 
fern. Ilkley in Yorkshire is thought to be the Olicana of 
Ptolemy, and there is standing to-day at Eamsgate a Holy 
Cone or Helicon modernised into " Hallicondane ". The 
dane here probably implies a dun or hill-fort, and the 
Hallicon itself consists of a peak crossed by four roads.1 
This Eamsgate Hallicondane, which stands by Allington 
Park, may have been a dun of the Elle or Elf King : in 
France Hellequin is associated with Columbine, and the 
little figure labelled CTJIN (infra, p. 397 Fig. 336), may be 
identified with this virgin. The Alcantara district to 
which this Cuin coin has been attributed was, it may 
safely be assumed, a tara, tre, or troy of Alcan. 

On the top of Tory Hill in Kilkenny, i.e., Kenny's Church, 
stood a pagan altar: the more famous Tara or Temair 
is associated primarily with a " son of Ollcain " ; it is said 
next to have passed into the possession of a certain Cain, 
and to have been known as Druim Cain or " Cain's 
Eidge ".« 

Halcyon days mean blissful, pleasant, radiant, ideal, 
days, and of the Holy King or All King the blue jewelled 
King-fisher or Halcyon seems to have been a symbol. 
Whether there be any connection between Elgin and the 
Irish Hooligans, or whether these trace their origin to the 
" son of Ollcain," I do not know. From the colossal Kinia 
and Acongagua down to the humblest peg, every peak 
seems to have been similarly named. The pimple is a 
diminutive hill 01 pock, and thepykes of Cumberland are 

1 One of these has been slightly diverted by the exigencies of the railway 
station. 

2Macalister, B. A. S., Temair Breg : A Study of the Remains and Tra 
ditions of Tara, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, sec. G., Nos. 10 
and 11, p. 284. 


the peaks of Derbyshire. At the summit of the Peak 
District stands Buxton, claiming to be the highest market- 
town in England : around Buxton, formerly written 


" Bawkestanes," still stand cromlechs and other Poukelays 


~«/ 

or Buk stones: Backhouse is a surname in the Buxton 
district, and the original Backhouses may well -have wor 
shipped either Bacchus, i.e., St. Bacche, or the gentle 
Baucis who merged into a Linden tree. 


 lili 


292 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


VI.] 


PUCK 


293 


Near Buxton are the sources of the river Wye, and by 
Wye in Kent, near Kennington, we find Olantigh Park, St. 
Alban's Court, Mount Pleasant, Little London, and Trey 
Town : by the church at Wye are two inns, named re 
spectively "The Old Flying Horse," and "The New 
Flying Horse " ; Wye races are still held upon an egg- 
shaped course, and close to Kennington Oval—which I am 
unable to trace beyond its earlier condition of a market- 
garden—stands a celebrated '" White Horse Inn ". At 
Kennington by Wye a roadside inn sign is " The Golden 
Ball," which once presumably implied the Sun or Sol, for 
in the immediate neighbourhood is Soles Court. 


FIG. 138,—Iberian. From Akerman. 

The horse was a constantly recurring emblem in the 
coins of Hispania, and the object on the Iberian coin 
here illustrated is defined by Akerman as " an apex " : 
the appearance of this symbol, seemingly a spike or peg 
posed upon a teathill, on an Iberian or Aubreyan coin is 
evidence of its sanctity in West Europe. Theologians of 
the Dark Ages have been ridiculed for debating the num 
ber of angels that could stand upon a pin-point, but it is 
more than probable that the question was a subject of 
discussion long before their time : the Chinese believe 
that "at the beginning of Creation the chaos floated as a 
fish skims along the surface of a river ; from whence arose 
something like a thorn or pickle, which, being capable of 
motion and variation, became a soul or spirit ",1 The fairy 
1 Picard, Orwowww of Idolatrous People, vol. iv., p. 291. 


sanctity of the thorn bush would therefore seem to have 
arisen from its spikes, and the abundance of these emblems 
would naturally elevate it into the house or abode of 
spooks: the burning bush, in which form the Almighty 
is said to have appeared before Moses, was, according to 
Rabbinical tradition, a thorn bush : the Elluf and the 
Alvah trees—the aleph or the alpha trees ?—are described 
as large thorned species of Acacia ; and the spiky acacia, 
Greek Âkakia, is related to akis, a point or thorn. 

One of the attributes of the Man-in-the-Moon is a Thorn 
Bush, whence Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Moon 
shine, " This thorn bush is my thorn bush ; and this dog 
my dog ". The Man-in-the-Moon being identified with 
Cain, it becomes interesting to note that the surname 
Kennett is accepted as a Norman diminutive of chien,· a 
dog.1 On p. 149—a mediseval papermark—the Wanderer 
is surmounted by a bush ; a bush is a little tree, and the 
word bush (of unknown origin) is a variant of Bogie—also 
of bougie, the French for candle : bushes and briars were 
the acknowledged haunts of Bogie, alias Hobany or Hob- 
with-a-caristick or bougie. 

Bouche used to be an English word meaning meat and 
drink, whence Stow, referring to the English archers, says 
they had bouch of court (to wit, meat and drink) and great 
wages of sixpence by the day.2 In Borne and elsewhere 
ι suspended bush was the sign of an inn, whence the 
ìxpression " Good wine needs no bush " : the bouche or 
mouth is where meat and drink goes in, similarly mouth 
may be connoted with the British meath, meaning nourish- 

1 Weekley, E., Romance of Names, p. 224. 

" Survey of London (Everyman's Library), p. 41C. 


 294 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


vi-] 


PUCK 


295 


ment. Peck is also an old word for provender, and we still 
speak of feeling peckish.1 

The word bucket—allied to Anglo-Saxon bue, meaning a 
pitcher—implies that this variety of large can or mug was 
used for peck purposes : the illustration herewith, repre 
senting the decoration on a bronze bucket found at Lake 
Maggiore, consists of speck-centred circles, and dotted, 
spectral, or maculate geese, bucks, and horses. 


Pio. Ì39.—Bronze from bucket, Sesto Calende, Lake Maggiore. Prom the 
British Museum's Guide to tlie Antiquities of tjie Early Iron Age. 

It is unnecessary to dilate on the great importance 
played in civic life by inns : numberless place-names are 
directly traceable to inn-signs ; and the brewing of church 
ales, considered in conjunction with facts which will be 
noted in a subsequent chapter, inake it almost certain that 
churches once dispensed food and drink and that inn was 
originally an earlier name for church. Among the inscrip- 

1 The Peck family may have been inn-keepers or dealers ill peck or 
lodder, but more probably, like the Bucks and the Boggs, they may trace 
their descent much farther. 


tions of the catacoinbs is one which the authorities believe 
marks the sepulchre of a brewer: but these pictographs 
are without exception emblems, and it is more likely that 
the design in question (Fig. 140) stands for " that Brewer,"l 
the Lord of the Vineyard, or the Vinedresser. The Green 
Man with his Still implies a brewer ; the distilling of Bene 
dictine is still an ecclesiastical occupation, and the word 
brew suggests that brewing was once the peculiar privilege 
of the pères or priests who brewed the sacred ales. The 


FIG. 140._From Christian Iconography (Didron). 

word keg is the same as the familiar Black Jack, and under 
jug Skeat writes : " Drinking vessels of all kinds were 
formerly called jocks, Jills, and. jugs, all of which represent 
Christian names. Jug and Judge were usual as pet female 
names, and equivalent to Jenny or Joan." 

The Hackney inn known as " The Flying Horse " may 
possibly owe its foundation and sign to the Templars, who 
possessed property in Hackney: the Templars' badge of 
Pegasus still persists in the Temple at Whitefriars, and the 
circular churches of the Templars had certainly some 

'"See infra, p. 689. 


 296 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


symbolic connection with Sun or Golden Ball. At Jeru 
salem, the ideal city which was always deemed to be the 
hub, bogel, or navel of the world, there are some extra 
ordinary rock-hewn water tanks, known as the stables of 
King Solomon : Jerusalem was known as Hierosolyma or 
Holy Solyma, and that Solyma, Salem, or Peace was as 
sociated in Europe with the horse is clear from the coin of 
the Gaulish tribe known as the Solmariaca (Fig. 141). The 
animal here represented is treading under foot a dragon or 
scorpion, and the Solmariaca, whose city is now Soulosse, 
were seemingly followers of Solmariak, the Sol Mary, or 


FIG. 141.—Gaulish. Prom 
Akerman. 


FIG. 142.—Iberian. From Akerman. 


Fairy. The aim of the .Freemasons is the rebuilding of 
the Temple of Solomon or Wisdom, and it is quite evident 
that the front view of a temple on Fig. 142 is not the 
representation of a material building such as the Houses 
of Parliament now depicted on our modern paper-money. 
The centre of Fig. 142 is a four-specked cross, the centre 
piece of Fig. 143 is the six-breasted Virgin, and Fig. 144 
is a very elaborated pantheon, hierarchy, or habitation of 
All Hallows: the inscription reads BASILICA ULPIA, i.e., 
The Church Ulpia. 

Abdera, now Adra, is a Spanish town on the shores of 
the Mediterranean, founded, according to Strabo, by the 
Tyrians, and the name thus seems to connote a tre of A b 


vi-] 


PUCK 


297 


or Hob. I have elsewhere endeavoured to prove that 
King Solomon, the Mighty Controller of the Jinns, was the 
Eye of Heaven or the Sun, and this emblem appears in 
the triangle or delta of Fig. 145 : the corresponding in- 


FIG. 143.—From Barthélémy. 


FIG. 144.—From 
Barthélémy. 


scription on Fig. 145 are Phoenician characters, reading 
THE SUN,1 and the curious fish-pillars are almost certainly 
a variant of the deddu. In Ireland a Salmon of Wisdom 
enters largely into Folklore : the word salmon is Solomon 


\ 


FIG. 145.—Iberian. From Akerman. 

or Wisdom, as also is solemn: in Latin solemn is solenni*, 
upon which Skeat comments: " Annual, occurring yearly, 
like a religious rite, religious, solemn, Latin sollus, entire, 
3omplete: annue, a year. Hence soUmn—returning 
at the end of a complete year. The old Latin sollus is 

1 Akerman, J. Y., Ancient Coins, p. 17. 


 298 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


cognate with Welsh Jiott, whole, entire.'' The cognomen 
Solomon occurs several times in ths lists of British Kings, 
and one may see it figuring to-day on Cornish shop-fronts 
in the form of variants such as Sleeman, Slyman, etc. 
Solomon may be resolved into the Sol man, the Seul man, 
the Silly1 (innocent) man, or the Sly man, the Cunning 
man, or Magus. The " Seahorse " to the right, illustrated 
by Akerman on Plate XX, No. 8, is a coin of the Gaulish 
Magusa, and bears the inscription Magus which, as will 
be remembered, was a title of the Wandering Jew. 

Maundrell, the English traveller, describing his journey 
in the seventeenth century to Jerusalem, has recorded that, 
" Our quarters, this first night, we took up at the Honey- 
khan, a place of but indifferent accommodation, about one 
hour and a half west of Aleppo ". He goes on to say : 
" It must here be noted that, in travelling this country, a 
man does not meet with a market-town and inns every 
night, as in England. The best reception you can find 
here is either under your own tent, if the season permit, 
or else in certain public lodgments, founded in charity for 
the use of travellers. These are called by the Turks khani ; 
and are seated sometimes in the towns and villages, some 
times at convenient distances upon the open road. They 
are built in fashion of a cloister, encompassing a court of 
30 or 40 yards square, more or less, according to the 
measure of the founder's ability or charity. At these 
places all comers are free to take shelter, paying only a 
small fee to the khan-keeper (khanji), and very often with 
out that acknowledgment ; but one must expect nothing 
here but bare walls. As for other accommodations of meat, 

1 There is a river Slee or Slea in Lincolnshire. 


vi.] PUCK 299 

drink, bed, fire, provender, with these it must he every 
one's care to furnish himself." l 

The main roads of Britain were once seemingly furnished 
with similar shelters which were known as Coldharbours, 
and the Coldharbour Lanes of Peckham and elsewhere 
mark the sites of such refuges. 

The Eastern khans, " built in fashion of a cloister,'7 find 
their parallel in the enclosed form of all primitive shelters, 
and the words dose and cloister are radically eccles, eglos, 
or église. Whence the authorities suppose Beccles in Silly 
Suffolk to be a corruption of beau église or Beautiful 
Church : but to whom was this " beautiful church " first 
reared and dedicated, and by what name did the inhabi 
tants of Beccles know their village ? The surname Clowes, 
which may be connoted with Santa Claus, is still prevalent 
at Beccles, a town which belonged anciently to Bury Abbey. 
The patron saint of English inns, travellers, and cross 
roads, was the Canaanitish Christopher, and the earliest 
block prints representing Kit were " evidently made for 
pasting against the walls in inns, and other places fre 
quented by travellers and pilgrims.2 Kit's intercession was 
thought efficacious against all dangers, either by fire, flood, 
or earthquake, hence his picture was sometimes painted in 
colossal size and occupied the whole height of the building 
whether church or inn. The red cross of St. John of 
Jerusalem was the Christopher ; travellers carried images 
of Cuddy as charms, and the equation of St. John with 
Canaanitish Christopher will account for Christopher's 
Houses being entitled Inns,8 or Johns, or Khans. Under 

1 Travels in the East (Bolm's Library), p. 384. 
Larwood & Hotten, The History of Signboards, p. 285. 
It is simply futile to refer the word inn to "within, indoors" (see 
akeat). 


 300 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


the travellers' images of Christopher used to be printed the 
inscription, " Whosoever sees the image of St. Christopher 
shall that day not feel any sickness," or alternatively, " The 
day that you see St. Christopher's face, that day shall you 
not die an evil death". The emblem on page 262, was, I 
think, wrongly guessed by Didron as " the spirit of youth " : 
it is more probably a variant of Christopher, or the Spirit 
of Love, helping the palmer or pilgrim of life. 

Fig. 146, a coin of the Turones, whose ancient capital is 
now Tours, consists of a specky or spectral horse accom 
panied by an urn : this urn was the symbol of the Virgin, 


FIGS. 14C and 147.—Gaulish. From Akerman. 

and the reader will be familiar with a well-known modern 
picture in which La Source is ambiguously represented 
as a maiden standing with a pitcher at a spring. Yver 
is Norse for a warm bubbling spring, and on the coins of 
Vergingetorix we find the pitcher and the horse: the 
word virgin is equivalent to Spring Queen, and as ceto 
figures largely in British mythology as the ark, box, or 
womb of Ked, it is probable that Virgingetorix may be 
interpreted King Virgin Keto. In Gaul rex meant King 
or Queen, but this word is less radical than the Spanish 
rey, French roi, British rhi : according to Sir John Bhys, 
" the old Irish ri, genitive rig, king, and rigan queen 
would be somewhat analogous, although the "Welsh rhian, 


vi·] 


PUCK 


301 


the equivalent of the Irish rigan, differs in being mostly a 
poetic term for a lady who need not be royal",1 The 
name Maria, which in Spain is bestowed indiscriminately 
upon men .and women, would therefore seem to be Mother 
Queen, and Ehea, the Great Mother of Candia, might be 
interpreted as the Princess or the Queen. 

j&n Urn -found tvît" 
tiatit Itetfdtam Xarf 
Got* ΛΤJtork.. 


FIG. 148.—Egyp 
tian. 


FIG. 149.—Etrurian. From 
Cities mid Cemeteries of 
Etruria (Dennis, G.). 


FIG. 150. — British. 
From A New De 
scription of England 
and Wales (Anon, 
1724). 

Among inscriptions to the Gaulish Apollo the most 
common are those in which he is entitled Albiorix and 
Toutiorix: these are understood by the authorities as 
having meant respectively " King of the World," and 
" King of the People ". 

With the Cornish Well known as Joan's Pitcher may be 

1 Celtic Britain, p. 66. It is therefore feasible that Wrens Park, by 
Mildmay Park, Hackney, was primarily reines Park. 


 302 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


connoted the variety of large bottle called a demijohn : 
according to Skeat this curious term is from the French 
damejeanne, Spanish damajuana—" Much disputed but not 
of Eastern origin. The French form is right as it stands 
though often much perverted. From French dame (Spanish 
dama}, lady; and Jeanne (Spanish Juana), Joan, Jane." 
In our word pitcher the t has been wrongly inserted, the 
French picher is the German bêcher, Greek bikos, and all 
these terms including beaker are radically Peggy, Puck or 
Big. Pitchers are one of the commonest sepulchral offer 
ings, and we are told that the Iberian bronze-working 
brachycephalic invaders of Britain introduced the type of 
sepulchral ceramic known as the beaker or drinking cup : 
"This vessel," says Dr. Munro, "was almost invariably 
deposited beside the body, and supposed to have contained 
food for the soul of the departed on its way to the other 
world." 1 

The German form of Peggy or Margaret is Gretchen, 
which resolves into Great Chun or Great Mighty Chief: 
Margot and Marghet may be rendered Big God or Fairy 
God or Mother Good. 

That the pitcher, demijohn, or jug was regarded in some 
connection with the Big Mother or Great Queen is obvious 
from the examples illustrated, and the apparition of this 
emblem on the coins of Tours may be connoted with the 
female-breasted jugs which were described by Schliemann 
as " very frequent " in the ruins of Troy. Similar objects 
were found at Mykenœ in connection with which Schlie- 
mann'observes : " With regard to this vase with the female 
breasts similar vases were found on the islands of Thera 
(Santorin) and Therassia in the ruins of the prehistoric 

1 Prehistoric Britain, p. 247. 


VI-] 


PUCK 


303 


cities which, as before stated, were covered by an eruption 
of tha,t great central volcano which is believed by competent 
geologists to have sunk and disappeared about 1700 to 
1800 B.c.".1 It is peculiarly noticeable that the dame 
Jeanne or jug is thus associated in particular with Troy, 
Etruria, Therassia, Thera (Santorin), the Turones, and 
Tours. 

The centre stone of megalithic circles constituted the 
speck or dot within the circle of the feeder or pap, and 
not infrequently one finds a Longstone termed either The 
Fiddler or The Piper. The incident of the Pied Piper 
is said to have occurred at Hamelyn on June 26th, 1284, 
during the feast of St. John and St. Paul. The street 
known as Bungen Strasse through which the Piper went 
followed by the enraptured children is still sacred to the 
extent that bridal and other processions are compelled to 
cease their music as they traverse it : Bungen of Bungen 
Street may thus seemingly be equated with bon John or 
St. John on whose feast day the miracle is said to have 
happened. The Hamelyn Piper who— 

. . . blew three notes, such sweet 

Soft notes as never yet musician's cunning 

Gave to the enraptured air, 

may be connoted with Pan or Father An, and the 
mountain now called Koppenberg, into which the Hamelyn 
children were allured, was obviously Arcadia or the happy 
land of Pan : the berg of Koppenberg is no doubt relatively 
modem, and the original name, Koppen, resolves into cop, 
kopje, or hill-top of Pan. The Land of the Pied Piper 
was manifestly Himmel, which is the German for heaven, 
and it may also be the source of the place-name Hamelyn. 

1 MykenrB, p. 293. 


 304 AKCHAIC ENGLAND [CHAP. 

He led us, he said, to a joyous land 
Joining the town and just at hand, 
Where waters gushed and fruit trees grew, 
And flowers put forth a fairer hue, 
And everything was strange and new. 

The story of the Piper and the children is found also in 
Abyssinia, and likewise among the Minussinchen Tartars : 
the word Minnusinchen looks very like small Sinchen or 
beloved Sinchen, and with this Sinchen or bungen may be 
connoted the Tartar panshen or pope, and also Gian Ben 
Gian, the Arabian name for the All Euler of the Golden 
Age. That Cupid was known among the Tartars is some 
what implied by the divinity illustrated on p, 699. 

The Tartar story makes the mysterious Piper a foal 
which courses round the world, and with our pony may be 
connoted tarpon, the Tartar word for the wild horse of the 
Asiatic steppes. Cano is the Latin for / sing, and on 
Figs. 152 and 153 the Great Enchantress or Incantatrice is 
represented with the Pipes of Pan: among the wonders 
in the land of Hamelyn's Piper were horses with eagles' 
wings and these, together with the celestial foal and other 
elphin marvels, are to be found depicted on the tokens of 
prehistoric Albion. The tale of the Pied Piper may be 
connoted with the emblem of Ogmius leading his tongue- 
tied willing captives, and in Fig. 158 the mighty Muse is 
playing in human form upon his lute. In Fig. 160 the 
story of St. Michael or St. George is being played by a 
Pegasus, and in Fig. 158 CUNO is represented as a radiant 
elf. The arrow on Fig. 163 connects the exquisitely exe 
cuted little figure with Cupid, Eros, or Amor—the oldest of 
the Gods—and probably this particular cherub was known 
as Puck, for his coin was issued in the Channel Islands by 


VI.] 


PUCK 


305 


a people who inscribed their tokens Pooctika, JBwcato, 
Piatii, and Pichtil, i.e., Pich tall or chief (?). 


Pros. 151 to 158.—British. No. 151 from Whitaker's Manchester. No. 152 
from Evans. Nos. 153 to 157 from Akerman. No. 158 from A New 
Descrìphoìi of England and Wales. 

It is not improbable that this young sprig was known 
as the Little Leaf Man, for in Thuringia as soon as the 

trees began to bud out, the children used to assemble on a 
20 


 306 


A&CHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


Sunday and dress one of their playmates with shoots and 
sprigs: he-was covered so thoroughly as to be rendered 


\ 


FIGS. 159 to 169.—Channel Islands. From Akerman. 


Fios. 164 to 167.—British. From Akerman. 

blind, whereupon two of his companions, taking him by the 
hand lest he should stumble, led him dancing and singing 
from home to home. Amor, like Homer, was reputed blind, 


VI.] 


PUCK 


307 


and the what-nots on Fig. 167 may possibly be leaves, the 
symbols of the living, loving Elf, or Life—" this senior- 
junior, giant-dwarf Dan Cupid ". 

It was practically a universal pagan custom to celebrate 
the return of Spring by carrying away and destroying a 
rude idol of the old Dad or Death :— 

Now carry we Death out of the village, 
The new Summer into the village, 
Welcome, dear Summer, 
Green little corn. 


FIG. 168.—From The Everyday Book (Hone, W.). 
In other parts of Bohemia—and the curious reader will 
find several Bohemias on the Ordnance maps of England 
—the song varies ; it is not Summer that comes back but 
Life : - 


 . 'I 


308 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 

We have carried away Death, 
And brought back Lite.1 


[CHAP. vi. 


At the feast of the Ascension in Transylvania, the image 
of Death is clothed gaudily in the dress of a girl : having 
wound throughout the village supported by two girls the 
image is stripped of its finery and flung into the river ; the 
dress, however, is assumed by one of the girls and the 
procession returns singing a hymn. " Thus," says Miss 
Harrison, " it is clear that the girl is a sort of resuscitated 
Death." In other words, like the May Queen she sym 
bolised the Virgin or Fairy Queen—Vera or Una, the 
Spirit, Sprout, or Spirit of the Universe, the Fair Ovary of 
Everything who is represented on the summit of the 
Christmas Tree : in Latin virgo means not only a virgin 
but also a sprig or sprout. 

1 Ancient Art and EUvial, pp. 70 and 71. 


CHAPTEE VII 

OBEEON 

" O queen, whom Jove hath willed 
TO found this new-born city, here to reign, 
And stubborn tribes with justice to refrain, 
We, Troy's poor fugitives, implore thy grace, 
Storm-tost and wandering over every main,— 
Forbid the flames our vessels to deface, 
Mark our afflicted plight, and spare a pious race. 

" We come not hither with the sword to rend 
Your Libyan homes, and shoreward drive the prey. 
Nay, no such violence our thoughts intend." 

—VIRGIL, ΙΕηΜ, I., Ixix., 57. 

THE old Welsh poets commemorate what they term Three 
National Pillars of the Island of Britain, to wit: "First 
—Hu, the vast of size, first brought the nation of the 
Cymry to the Isle of Britain ; and from the summer land 
called Deffrobani they came (namely, the place where Con 
stantinople now is), and through Mor Tawch, the placid 
or pacific sea, they came up to the Isle of Britain and 
Armorica, where they remained. Second—Prydain, son of 
Aedd the Great, first erected a government and a kingdom 
over Ynys Prydain, and previous to that time there was 
but little gentleness and ordinance, save a superiority of 
oppression. Third—Dyfnwal Moelmud—and he was the 
first that made a discrimination of mutual rights and 
statute law, and customs, and privileges of land and nation, 

309 


 310 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


VII.] 


OBERON 


311 


and on account of these things were they called the three 
pillars of the Cymry." * 

The Kymbri of Cambria claim themselves to be of the 
same race as the Kimmeroi, from whom the Crimea takes 
its name, also that Cumberland is likewise a land of the 
Cumbers. The authorities now usually explain the term 
Kymbri as meaning fellow countrymen, and when occur 
ring in place-names such as Kemper, Quimper, Comber, 
Kember, Cymner, etc., it is invariably expounded to mean 
confluence : the word would thus seem to have had im 
posed upon it precisely the same meaning as synagogue, i.e., 
a coming together or congregation, and it remains to in 
quire why this was so. 

The Kynibïï were also known as Cynbm, and the inter- 
changeability of kym and kin is seemingly, universal : the 
Khan of Tartary was synonymously the Chain of Tartary ; 
our Cambridge is still academically Ccmtabrigia, a compact 
is a contract, and the identity between cum and can might 
be demonstrated by innumerable instances. This being 
so, it is highly likely that the Kymbri were followers of 
King Bri, otherwise King Aubrey, of the Iberii or Iberian 
race. In Celtic aber or ebyr—as at Aberdeen, Aberysiwrith, 
etc.—meant a place of confluence of streams, burns, or 
brooks; and aber seems thus to have been synonymous 
with camber. 

Ireland, or Ibernia, as it figures in old maps, now Hibernia, 
traces its title to a certain Heber, and until the time of 
Henry VII., when the custom was prohibited, the Hiber 
nians used to rush into battle with perfervid cries of A ber !2 
It is a recognised peculiarity of the Gaelic language to 

1 Cf. Thomas, 3. 3., Brit. Antiquissima, p. 29. 

2 Hone, W., Everyday Book, i., 502. 


stress the first of any two syllables, whereas in Welsh the 
accent falls invariably upon the second: given therefore 
one and the same word "Aubrey," a Welshman should 
theoretically pronounce it 'Brey, and an Irishman Aubr' ; 
that is precisely what seems to have happened, whence 
there is a probability that the Heber and "St. Ibar" of 
Hibernia and the Bri of Cambria are references to one and 
the same immigrants. 

Having " cambred " Heber with Bri, or Bru, and finding 
them both assigned traditionally to the ^gean, it is per 
missible to read the preliminary vowels of Heber or Huber, 
as the Greek eu, and to assume that Aubrey was the soft, 
gentle, pleasing, and propitious Brey. Britain is the 
Welsh Pryaain, Hu was pronounced He, and it is thus 
not improbable that Pry was originally Pere He, or Father 
Hu, and that the traditions of Hu and Bru referred ori 
ginally to the same race. 

Hyper, the Greek for upper, is radically the same word 
as lupiter or lu pere, and if it be true that the French 
pere is a phonetically decayed form of pater, then again, 
'Pry or 'Bru may be regarded as a corrosion of lupiter. 

Hu the Mighty, the National Pillar or ded, who has 
survived as the "I'll"be He " of children's games, was in 
dubitably the Jupiter of Great Britain, and he was pro 
bably the " Hooper " of Hooper's Blind, or Blind Man's 
Buff. According to the Triads, Hu obtained his dominion 
over Britain not by war or bloodshed, but by justice and 
peace : he instructed his people in the art of agriculture ; 
iivided them into federated tribes as a first step towards 
3ÌVÌ1 government, and laid the foundations of literature 
and history by the institution of Bardism.1 In Celtic, 
1 Squire, C., Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland, p. S3. 


 312 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


VII.] 


OBEEON 


313 


barra meant a Court of Justice, in which sense it has sur 
vived in London, at iiothbury and Aldermanfcwg/. The 
pious Trojans claimed "the stubborn tribes with justice to 
refrain," and it is possible that barri the Cornish for 
divide or separate also owes its origin to Eri or pere He, 
who was the first to divide them into federated tribes. 
Among the Iberians berri meant a city, and this word is 
no doubt akin to our borough. 

In Hibernia, the Land of Heber, Aubrey or Oberon, it is 
said that every parish has its green and thorn, where the 
little people are believed to hold their merry meetings, and 
to dance in frolic rounds.1 A parish, Greek paroiica, is 
an orderly division, and as often as not the civic centre 
was a fairy stone : according to Sir Laurence Gomme, 
who made a special study of the primitive communities, 
when and where a village was established a stone was 
ceremoniously set up, and to this pierre the headman of the 
village made an offering once a year.2 

Situated in Fore Street, Totnes, there stands to-day the 
so-called Brutus Stone, from which the Mayor of Totnes 
still reads official proclamations. At Brightlingsea we 
have noted the existence of a Broadmooi : there is a Brad- 
stone in Devon, a Bradeston in Norfolk, and elsewhere 
these Brude or Brutus stones were evidently known as 
pre stones. The innumerable " Prestons " of this country 
were originally, I am convinced, not as is supposed " Priests 
Towns," but Pre Stones, i.e., Perry or Fairy Stones. 
King James in his book on Demonology spells fairy— 
Phairy; in Kent the cirrhus cloudlets of a summer day 
are termed the "Perry Dancers," and the phairies of 

1 Hazlitt, W. Carew, Faiths and Folklore, ii., 338. 

2 Cf. Johnson, W., Folk Memory, p. 143. 


Britain probably differed but slightly, if at all, from the 
perii or peris of Persia.1 

Among the Greeks every town and village had its so- 
called " Luck," or protecting Goddess who specially con 
trolled its fortunes, and by Pindar this Presiding Care is 
entitled pherepolis, i.e., the peri or phairy of the city. 

The various Purleys and Purtons of England are as 
signed by the authorities to perù a pear, and supposed to 
have been pear-tree meadows or pear-tree hills, but I 
question whether pear-growing was ever the national in 
dustry that the persistent prevalence of perù in place- 
names would thus imply. 

Around the pre-stones of each village our forerunners 
indubitably used to pray, and in the memoirs of a certain 
St. Sampson we have an interesting account of an inter 
rupted Pray-meeting—" Now it came to pass, on a certain 
day as he journeyed through a certain district which they 
call Tricurius (the hundred of Trigg), he heard, on his left 
hand to be exact, men worshipping (at) a certain shrine, 
after the custom of the Bacchantes, by means of a play in 
honour of an image. Thereupon he beckoned to his 
brothers that they should stand still and be silent while 
he himself, quietly descending from his chariot to the 
'ground, and standing upon his feet and observing those 
who worshipped the idol, saw in front of them, resting on 
the summit of a certain hill an abominable image. On 
this hill I myself have been, and have adored, and with 

1 Among the many Prestons I have enquired into is one with which I 
am conversant near Faversham. Here the Manor House is known as Perry 
Court ; similarly there is a Perry Court at a second Preston situated a few 
miles distant. In the neighbourhood are Perry woods. There is a modern 
" Purston " at Pontefraot, which figured in Domesday under the form 
" Prestun ". 


 .314 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


my hand have traced the sign of the cross which St. 
Sampson, with his own hand, carved by means of an iron 
instrument on a standing stone. When St. Sampson saw 
it (the image), selecting two only of the brothers to be 
with him, he hastened quickly towards them, their chief, 
Guedianus, standing at their head, and gently admonished 
them that they ought not to forsake the one God who 
created all things and worship an idol. And when they 
pleaded as an excuse that it was not wrong to keep the 
festival of their progenitors in a play, some being furious, 
some mocking, but some being of saner mind strongly 
urging him to go away, straightway the power of God was 
made clearly manifest. For a certain boy driving horses 
at full speed fell from a swift horse to the ground, and 
twisting his head under him as he fell headlong, remained, 
just as he was flung, little else than a lifeless corpse." 
The " corpse " was seemingly but a severe stun, for an 
hour or so later, St. Sampson by the power of prayer suc 
cessfully restored the patient to life, in view of which 
miracle G.uedianus and all his tribe prostrated themselves 
at St. Sampson's feet, and "utterly destroyed the idol".1 

The idol here mentioned if not itself a standing stone, 
was admittedly associated with one, and happily many of 
these Aubrey or Bryanstones are still standing. One of 
the most celebrated antiquities of Cornwall is the so-named 
men scry fa or " inscribed rock,' and the inscription running 
from top to bottom reads—EIALOBBAN CUNOVAL FIL. 

As history knows nothing of any " Eialobran, son of 
Cunoval," one may suggest that Bialobran was the Ryall 
or Royal Obran, Obreon or Oberen, the Iren or Prince of 
Phairyland who figures so largely in the Eomance of 
r, Bev. T., Celtic Christianity of Cornwall, p. 33. 


VII.] OBEEON 315 

mediaeval Europe. The Eialobran stone of Cornwall may 
be connoted with the ceremonial perron du roy still stand 
ing in the Channel Islands, and with the numerous Browny 
stones of Scotland. In Cornwall the phairy brownies seem 


^iG. 169.—From SyiriboUsm of the East and West. (Aynsley, Mrs. 

Murray.) 

to have been as familiar as in Scotland1 : in the Hebrides 

—and as the Saint of this neighbourhood is St. Bride, the 

word Hebrides may perhaps be rendered eu Bride—every 

family of any importance once possessed a most obliging 

1 Courtney, Miss M. L., Cornish Feasts and Folklore, p. 123. 


 ι ill 


316 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


VII.] 


OBEEON 


317 


household Browny. Martin, writing in the eighteenth 
century, says : "A spirit by the country people called 
Browny was frequently seen in all the most considerable 
families in these Isles and North of Scotland in the shape 
of a tall man, but within these twenty or thirty years past 
he is seen but rarely." As the cromlechs of Brittany are 
termed poukelays or " puck stones," it is possible that the 
dolmens or tolmens of there and elsewhere were associated 
with the fairy tall man. Still speaking of the Hebrides 
Martin goes on to say : " Below the chapels there is a flat 
thin stone called Brownie's stone, upon which the ancient 
inhabitants offered a cow's rnilk every Sunday, but this 
custom is now quite abolished ' '. The official interpretation 
of dolmen is daul or table stone, but it is quite likely that 
the word tolmen is capable of more than one correct 
explanation. 

The Cornish Eialobran was in all probability originally 
the same as the local St. Perran or St. Piran, whose 
sanctuary was marked by the parish of Lanòyora or Larn- 
borne. There is a Cornish circle known as Perran Bound 
and the celebrated Saint who figures as, Perran, Piran, 
Bron, and Borne,1 is probably the same as Perun the Slav 
Jupiter. From a stone held in the hand of Perun's image 
the sacred fire used annually to be struck and endeavours 
have been made to equate this Western Jupiter with the 
Indian Varuna. That there was a large Perran family is 
obvious from the statement that " till within the last fifty 
years the registers of the parish from the earliest period 
bear the Christian name of ' Perran/ which was transmitted 
from father to son ; but now the custom has ceased ".2 
Thus possibly St. Perran was not only the original of the 
1 Haslam, Wm., Perranzabuloe. 2 Ibid., p. 60. 


modern Perrin family, but also of the far larger Byrons and 
Brownes. Further inquiry will probably permit the equa 
tion of Eialobran or St. Bron or Borne with St. Bruno, and 
as Oberon figures in the traditions of Kensington it is 
possible that the Bryanstone Square in that district, into 
which leads Brawn Street, marks the site of another 
Brownie or Rialobran stone. This Bryanstone district was 
the home of the Byron family, and the surname Brinsrnead 
implies the existence here or elsewhere a Erin's rnead or 
meadow. 

The Brownies are occasionally known as " knockers," 
whence the " knocking stone " which still stands in Brahan 
Wood, Dingwall, might no doubt be rightly entitled a 
Brahan, Bryan, or Brownie Stone.1 

Legend at Kensington—in which neighbourhood is not 
only Bryanstone Square but also on the summit of Carnp- 
den Hill an Aubrey Walk—relates that Kenna, the fairy 
princess of Kensington Gardens, was beloved by Albion 
the Son of Oberon ; hence we may probably relate young 
Kenna with Morgana the Fay, or big Gana, the alleged 
Mother of Oberon.2 Mediaeval tales represent the radiant 
Oberon not only as splendid, as a meteor, and as a raiser 
of storms, but likewise as the childlike God of Love and 
beauteous as an angel newly born. 

1 " Mr. W. Mackenzie, Procurator Fiscal of Cromarty, writes me from 
Dingwall (10th September, 1917), as follows : ' We are not without some 
traces and traditions of phallic worship here. There is a stone in the Brahan 
Wood which is said to be a " knocking stone ". Barren women sat in close 
contact upon it for the purpose of becoming fertile. It serves the purpose 
of the mandrake in the East. I have seen the stone. It lies in the 
Brahan Wood about three miles from Dingwall.' "—Frazer, Sir J. G., quoted 
from Folklore, 1918, p. 219. 

2 Guerber, Η. Α., Myths m\d Legends of the Middle Ages, p. 219. 


 • t 


318 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


m.] 


OBEBON 


319 


At once the storm is fled ; serenely mild 
Heav'n smiles around, bright rays the sky adorn 
While beauteous as an angel newly born 
Beams in the roseate day spring, glow'd the chila 
A lily stalk his graceful limbs, sustain'd 
Bound his smooth neck an ivory horn was chain'd 
Yet lovely as he was on all around 
Strange horror stole, for stern the fairy frown'd.1 

It is not unlikely that the Princess Kenna was Ken new 
or the Crescent Moon, and the consociation at Kensington 
of Kenna with Oberon, permits not only the connotation 
of Oberon with his Fay mother Morgana, but also permits 
the supposition that Cuneval, the parent of Bialobran, was 
either Cune strong or valiant. It is obvious that the most 
valiant and most valorous would inevitably become rulers, 
whence perhaps why in Celtic bren became a generic term 
for prince : the words bren and prince are radically the 
same, and stand in the same relation to one another as St. 
Bron to his variant St. Piran. 

Oberon or Obreon, the leader of the Brownies, Elves, or 
Alpes, may I think be further traced in Cornwall at Cam 
Galva, for this Cam of Galva, Mighty Elf or Alva, was, 
it is said, once the seat of a benignant giant named Holifotrw. 
The existence of Alva or Ellie-stones is implied by the 
fairly common surnames Alvastone, Allistone, and Elli- 
stone, and it is probable that Livingstone was originally 
the same name as Elphinstone. 

Frern the Aubry, Obrean, Peron stones, or Brownlows 
were probably promulgated the celebrated Brehon laws :2 

1 Guerber, Η. Α., Myths and Legends of the Middle Ages, p. 221. 

2 " The Brehon laws are the most archaic system of law and jurispru 
dence of Western Europe. This was the code of the ancient Gaels, or 
Keltic-speaking Irish, which existed in an unwritten form long before it 
was brought into harmony with Christian sentiments. ... It is impossible 


as is well known the primitive Prince or Baron sat or 
stood in the centre of his barrow, burra, or bury, and ranged 
around him each at his particular stone stood the subor 
dinate peers, brehons (lawyers), and barons of the realm. 
A peer means an equal, and it is therefore quite likely that 
the Prestons of Britain mark circles where the village 
peers held their parish or parochial meetings. 

With the English Preston the Rev. J. B. Johnston con 
notes Presteign, and he adds: "In Welsh Presteign is 
Llanandras, or Church of St. Andrews ",1 This illuminat 
ing fact enables us to connect the Perry stones with the 
cross of St. Andrew or Ancient Troy, and as Troy was an 
offshoot of Khandia we may reasonably accept Crete as 
the starting-point of Aubrey's worldwide tours. That 
Candia was the home of the gentle magna mater is im 
plied by the ubiquitous dove : in Hibernia the name Caindea 
is translated as being Gaelic for gentle goddess, and we 
shall later connect this lady with " Kate Kennedy," whose 
festival is still commemorated at St. Andrews. 

To the East of Cape Khondhro in Crete, and directly op 
posite the town of Candia or Herakleion, lies the islet of 
Dhia : in Celtic dia, dieu, or duw meant God,2 .and as in 

o study these laws and the manners and customs of the early Irish, to- 
ether with their land tenure, and to compare them with the laws of Manu, 
and with the light thrown on the Aryans of India by the Sanskrit writings 
without coming to the conclusion that they had a common origin."— 
Macnamara, N. C., Origin and Character of the British People, p. 94. 
1 Place-names of England and Wales, p. 406. 

a Of the Teutonic Tiw, Dr. Taylor observes : " This word was used as 
he name of the Deity by all the Aryan nations. The Sanskrit deva, the 
Jreek tkeos, the Latin deus, the Lithuanian dewas, the Erse dia, and the 
Welsh dew are all identical in meaning. The etymology of the word seems 
Ό point to the corruption of a pure monotheistic faith." In Chaldaic and 
u Hebrew di meant the Omnipotent, in Irish de meant goddess, and in 


 Ill 


320 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


Celtic Hugh meant mind, we may translate dieu as having 
primarily implied good Hu, the good Mind or Brain. In 
a personal sense the Brain is the Lord of Wits, whence 
perhaps why Obreon—as Keightley spells Oberon—was 
said to be the Emperor of Fairyland, attended by a court 
and special courtiers, among whom are mentioned Perri- 
wiggen, Periwinkle, and Puck. 

At the south-eastern extremity of Dhia is a colossal spike, 
peak, or pier, entitled Cape Apiri, and we may connote 
Apiri with the Iberian town named Ipareo. The coinage 
of Ipareo pòurtrays " a sphinx walking to the left," at other 
times it depicted the Trinacria or walking legs of Sicily 
and the Isle of Man. The Three Legs of Sicily were re 
presented with the face of Apollo, as the hub or bogel, and 
the ancient name of Sicily was Hyperei&. On the Feast 
Day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the 
Sicilians or Hypereians hold what they still term the 
" Festival of the Bara ". An immense machine of about 
50 feet high is constructed, designing to represent heaven ; 
and in the midst is placed a young female personating the 
Virgin, with an image of Jesus on her right hand ; round 

Cornish da «r to meant good. From the elementary form de, di, or da, 
one traces ramifications such as the Celtic dia or duw meaning a god. 
In Sanskrit Dya was the bright heavenly deity who may be equated with 
the Teutonic Tin, whence our Tuesday, and with the Sanskrit Dyaus, 
which is equivalent to the Greek Zeus. The same radical d' is the base of 
dies, and of dieu ; of dm the Armenian for day ; of div the Sanskrit for 
shine ; of Dim the Sanskrit for day. Our ancestors used to believe that 
the river Deva or Dee sprang from two sources, and that after a very short 
course its waters passed entire and umnixed through a large lake carrying 
out the same quantity of water that it brought in. 

The word " Dee " seems widely and almost universally to have meant 
good or divine, and it may no doubt be equated with the " Saint Day " who 
figures so prominently in place-names, and the Christian Calendar. 


VII.] 


OBEBON 


321 


the Virgin twelve little children turn vertically, represent 
ing so many seraphim, and below them twelve more 
children turn horizontally, as cherubim; lower down in 
the machine a sun turns vertically, with a child at the 
extremity of each of the four principal radii of his circle, 
who ascend and descend with his rotation, yet always in 
an erect posture ; and still lower, reaching within about 7 
feet of the ground, are placed twelve boys who turn hori 
zontally without intermission around the principal figure, 
designing thereby to exhibit the twelve apostles, who were 
collected from all corners of the earth, to be present at the 
decease of the Virgin, and witness her miraculous assump 
tion. This huge machine is drawn about the principal 
streets by sturdy monks, and it is regarded as a particular 
favour to any family to admit their children in this divine 
exhibition, although the poor infants themselves do not 
seem long to enjoy the honours they receive as seraphim, 
cherubim, and apostles ; the constant twirling they receive 
in the air making some of them fall asleep, many of them 
sick, and others more grievously ill.1 

Not only this Hypereian Feast but the machine itself 
ns termed the Bara, whence it is evident that, like St. 
Michael, Aubrey or Aber the Confluence, was regarded as 
the Camber, Synagogue, Yule or Holy Whole, and the fact 
that the Sicilian Bara is held upon the day of St. Alipius 
indicates some intimate connection with St. Alf or Alpi. 
The Walking Sphinx of the Iparean coins is identified by 
M. Lenormant as the Phoenician deity Aion, and according 
;o Akerman the type was doubtless chosen in compliment 
to Albinus, who was born at Hadrumetum, a town not 


2t 


1 Hone, W., Everyday Book, i., 1118. 


 322 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


VII.] 


OBERON 


323 


far from Carthage.1 What was the precise connection be 
tween this Aion and Albinus I am unaware. 

Among the coins of Iberia some bear the inscriptions 
ILIBERI, ILIBEEEKBN, and ILIBEEINBKEN, which accord 
with Pliny's reference to the Iliberi or Liberini. Liber 
was the Latin title of the God of Plenty, whence liberal, 
liberty, labour, etc., and seemingly the Elibers or Liberine 
deified these virtues as attributes of the Holy Aubrey or 
the Holy Brain-King. 

Directly opposite Albania, the country of the Epirotes 
—known anciently as Epirus—is Cantabria at the heel of 


FIG. 170.—Iberian. From Akerman. 

Italy, and we meet again with the Cantabares in Iberia 
where they occupied Cantabria which comprised Alava. 
It may be noted in passing that in Epirus the olive was 
a stipersacred tree : according to Miss Harrison—some 
of whose words I have italicised—this Moria, or Fate 
Tree, was the very life of Athens ; the life of the olive 
which fed her and lighted her was the very life of the city. 
When the Persian host sacked the Acropolis they burnt 
the holy olive, and it seemed that all was over. But next 
day it put forth a new shoot and the people knew that the 
city's life still lived. Sophocles sang of the glory of the 
wondrous life-tree of Athens :— 

1 Amient Coins, p. 3. 


The imtended, the self-planted, self-defended from the foe, 

Sea-grey, children-nurturing olive tree that here delights to grow, 

None may take nor touch nor harm it, headstrong youth nor age grown bold 

For the round of Morian Zeus has been its watcher from of old ; 

He beholds it, and, Athene, thy own sea-grey eyes behold. 

From Epirus one is attracted to the river Iberus or Ebro 
which is bounded by the Pyrenees, and had the town of 
Hibera towards its mouth. Of the Iberian people in 
general Dr. Lardner states : " They are represented as 
tenacious of freedom, but those who inhabited the coasts 
were probably still more so of gain ". I am at a loss to know 
why this offensive suggestion is gratuitously put forward, 
as the Iberians are said to have been remarkably slender 
and active and to have held corpulency in much abhor 
rence.1 Of the Spanish Cantabres we are told that the 
»nsciousness of their strength gave them an air of calm 
dignity and a decision in their purposes not found in any 
other people of the Peninsula. " Their loud wailings at 
funerals, and many other of their customs strongly resemble 
those of the Irish."" 

Pere and parent are radically the same word, and that 

the Iberians reverenced their peres is obvious from the fact 

that parricides were conducted beyond the bounds of the 

Kingdom and there slain ; their very bones being con- 

idered too polluted to repose in their native soil.3 

Lardner refers to the unbending resolution, persevering 
nergy, and native grandeur of the Cantabrians, but he con- 
emptuously rejects Strabo's " precious information " that 
ome of the Spanish tribes had for 6000 years possessed 
rating, metrical poems, and even laws. In view of the 

Lardner, D., History of Spain and Portugal, vol. i, p. 18. 
! Ibid., p. 13. :ilbid., p. 6. 


 324 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


XCHAP. 


superior number of Druidical remains which are found in 
certain parts of Spain it is not improbable that the Barduti 
of Iberia corresponded with the Bards or Boreadse of 
Britain. 

There are many references in the classics to certain so- 
called Hyperboreans, in particular the oft-quoted passage 
from Diodorus of Sicily or Hypereia : " Hecataeus and 
some other ancient writers report that there is an island 
about the bigness of Sicily, situated in the ocean, opposite 
to the northern coast of Celtica (Gaul), inhabited by a 
people called Hyperboreans, because they are ' beyond the 
north wind '. The climate is excellent, and the soil is 
fertile, yielding double crops. The inhabitants are great 
worshippers of Apollo, to whom they sing many, many 
hymns. To this god they have consecrated a large terri 
tory, in the midst of which they have a magnificent round 
temple, replenished with the richest offerings. Their very 
city is dedicated to him, and is full of musicians and 
players on various instruments, who every day celebrate 
his benefits and perfections." 

Claims to being the original Hyperborea have been put 
in by scholars from time to time on behalf of Stonehenge, 
the Hebrides, Hibernia, Scythia, Tartary, and Muscovy, 
" stretching quite to Scandinavia or Sweden and Norway " : 
the locality is still unsettled and will probably remain so, 
for there is some reason to suppose that the Hyperboreans 
were a sect or order akin perhaps to the Albigenses, Cathari, 
Bridge Builders, Comacine Masters, Templars, and other 
Gnostic organizations of the Dark Ages. 

The chief Primary Bard of the West was entitled 
Taliesin, which Welsh scholars translate into Radiant 
Brow; the broio is the seat of the brain, and the two 


VII.] 


OBEBON 


325 


words stand to each other in the same relation as Aubrey 
to Auberon. 

Commenting upon the Elphin bairn, illustrated in Fig. 
162, Akerman observes that it is supposed to illustrate the 
Gaulish myth of the Druid Abaris to whom Apollo is said 
to have given an arrow on which he travelled magically 
through the air. It is an historic fact that a physical 
Abaris visited Athens "where he created a most favourable 
impression ; it is likewise a fact that Irish literature pos 
sesses the account of a person called Abhras, which perfectly 
agrees with the description of the Hyperborean Abaris 
of Diodorus and Himerius. The classic Abaris went to 
Greece to whip up subscriptions for a temple : the Irish 
Abhras is said to have gone to distant parts in quest of 
knowledge, returning by way of Scotland where he re 
mained seven years and founded a new system of religion. 
In Irish Abar means " God the first Cause," and as in 
Ireland cad (which is our good) meant holy, the magic 
word Abracadabra may be reasonably resolved into Abra, 
Good Abra. As already mentioned the Irish cried Aber ! 
when rushing into battle, and the word was no doubt used 
likewise at peaceful feasts and festivals. The inference 
would thus seem that the title of Abaris was assumed by 
the chief Druid or High Priest who personified during his 
tenure of office the archetypal Abaris. It is well known 
that the priest or king enacted in his own person the 
mysteries of the faith ; and it is not improbable that chief 
Guedianus, whose sacred play was so rudely disturbed by 
St. Sampson, was personifying at the time the Good Janus 
>r Genius. 

If my suggestion that Taliesin or Radiant Brow was a 
generic title assumed by every Primary-Chief-Bard in 


 li 


326 


ARCHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAR 


/IL] 


oBEBolsr. 


327 


.1 


I« 


Britain for the time being be correct, it is likely that the 
same principle applied elsewhere than in Wales. The first 
bard mentioned in Ireland was Amergin, which resolves 
into Love King, and may thus be equated with Homer the 
blind old man of Chios. The supposedly staid and gloomy 
Etrurians attributed all their laws and wisdom to an elphin 
child who was unexpectedly thrown up from the soil by a 
plough. As the Etrurian name for Cupid was Epeur, in 

all probability the aged child on 
Fig. 171 represents this elphin 
high-brow, and with Epeur may 
be connoted the Etrurian Per 
ugia—probably the same word 


PIG. 171.—Prom Barthélémy. 


as Phrygia. The local saint of Perula, the land of 
Peru (?) was known as Good John of Perugia: in Hi- 
bernia St. Tbar is mentioned as being " like John the 
Baptist ",1 

It was the custom in Etruria to represent good genii as 
birds : birds sporting amid foliage are even to-day accepted 
and understood as symbolic of good genii in Paradise, and 
birds or brids, as we used to spell them, are of course 
Nature's little singing men, i.e., bards or boreadœ. A 
percipient observer of the Pictish inscriptions found in 
Scotland has recently pointed out that, " With the exception 
of the eagle which conveys a special meaning, shown in 
many early Scottish stones, the image of a bird is a sign 
of good omen. Winged creatures, 'indeed, almost always 
stand for angelic and spiritual things, whether in pagan or 
Christian times. The bird symbol involved the conception 
of ethereality or spirituality. The bird motif occurs in the 
decoration of metallic objects in the British Islands during 

1 Macalister, B. A. S., Proc. Boy. It: Acad., xxxiv., C., 10-11. 


the early centuries in this era. I have found in Wigtown 
shire the image of a bird in bronze. It belongs to a time 
ìarly in this era. It occurs within the pentade symbol 
engraved on a pebble from the Broch of Burrian, Orkney. 
Birds are shown within the pedestal of a cross at Farr. 
Birds with a similar symbolism are found on the Shand- 
wick stone, and on a stone at St. Vigeans. They are of 
frequent occurrence in foliageous work, often with the 
three-berried branch or with the three-lobed leaf, as at 
Closeburn. The pagan conception, absorbed into the early 
Christian ideas, was that the bird represented the disem 
bodied spirit which was reputed to voyage here and there 
with a lightning celerity, like the flash of a swallow on the 
wing." 1 

The Bards of Britain attributed the foundation of their 
order to Hu the First Pillar of the Island, and to unravel 
the personality of the early Bards will no doubt prove as 
impracticable as the disclosure of Homer, Amergin, Old 
Moore, and Old Parr. 

No bird has ever uttered note 
That was not in some first bird's throat, 
Since Eden's freshness and man's fall 
No rose has been original. 

As St. Bride, whose name may be connoted with brid or 
bird, was the goddess of eloquence and poetry, the Welsh 
term Prydain is no doubt cognate with prydu the Welsh for 
" to compose poetry ". Probably prate, mediaeval praten, 
meant originally to preach in a fervid, voluble, and senten 
tious manner, but in any case it is impossible to agree with 
Skeat that prate was "of imitative origin " Imitative of 
what—a parrot ? 

1 Mann, L. M., Archaic Sculpturings, p. 34. 


 328 


AECHAIC ENGLAND 


[CHAP. 


vn.] 


OBEEON 


329 


The hyper of Hyperborean is our word upper ; over, 
German über, means aloft, which is radically alof, and 
exuberant and exhuberance resolve into, from or out of 
Auberon: the bryony is a creeper of notoriously exuber 
ant growth, in Greek bruein means to teem or grow 
luxuriantly. 

With the river Ebro may be connoted the South Spanish 
town of Ebora or Epora which is -within a few miles of 
Andura. The coins of this city are inscribed EPOEA, 
AIPOBA, and IIPOEA, and the " bare bearded head to the 
right within a laurel garland" may here no doubt be 


FIG. 172.—From Barthélémy. 

identified with Hyperion, the father of Helios the Sun. In 
Homer, Helios himself is alluded to as Hyperion, which is 
the same name as our Auberon : the coins of the Tarra- 
gonensian town of Pria, which has been sometimes con 
fused with B aria, in the south of Spain, figure a bull and 
are inscribed Prianen. 

There are in existence certain coins figuring an ear of 
corn, a pellet, a crescent, the head of Hercules, and a club, 
inscribed ABBA: the site of this city is unknown, but is 
believed to have been near Cadiz. 

On the banks of the Tagus there was a city named 
Libora and its coins pourtrayed a horse: in the opinion 
of Akerman the unbridled horse was the symbol of liberty, 


and it is quite likely that among other interpretations this 
was one, for it is b