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Title: Archaic England
an essay in deciphering prehistory from megalithic monuments,
earthworks, customs, coins, place-names, and faerie superstitions

Author: Harold Bayley

Release date: January 5, 2013 [eBook #41785]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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ARCHAIC ENGLAND
AN ESSAY IN DECIPHERING PREHISTORY FROM
MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS, EARTHWORKS,
CUSTOMS, COINS, PLACE-NAMES, AND
FAERIE SUPERSTITIONS

BY

HAROLD BAYLEY

AUTHOR OF “THE SHAKESPEARE SYMPHONY,” “A NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE,”
“THE LOST LANGUAGE OF SYMBOLISM,” ETC.

“One by one tiny fragments of testimony accumulate
attesting such a survival and continuance of folk memory as
few men of to-day have suspected.”—Johnson

LONDON
CHAPMAN & HALL LTD.
11 HENRIETTA STREET
1919

TO
W. L. GROVES
WHO HAS GREATLY AIDED ME

CONTENTS

CHAP PAGE
I. Introductory 1
II. The Magic of Words 34
III. A Tale of Troy 78
IV. Albion 124
V. Gog and Magog 186
VI. Puck 230
VII. Oberon 309
VIII. Scouring the White Horse 389
IX. Bride’s Bairns 455
X. Happy England 522
XI. The Fair Maid 593
XII. Peter’s Orchards 663
XIII. English Edens 710
XIV. Down Under 764
XV. Conclusions 832
Appendix 871
Appendix A: Ireland and 871
Phœnicia.
Appendix B: Perry-Dancers and 873
Perry Stones.
Appendix C: British Symbols. 874
Appendix D: Glastonbury. 875
Appendix E: The Druids and 875
Crete.
Index 877

“Of all the many thousands of earthworks of various kinds to
be found in England, those about which anything is known
are very few, those of which there remains nothing more to
be known scarcely exist. Each individual example is in itself
a new problem in history, chronology, ethnology, and
anthropology; within every one lie the hidden possibilities of
a revolution in knowledge. We are proud of a history of
nearly twenty centuries: we have the materials for a history
which goes back beyond that time to centuries as yet
undated. The testimony of records carries the tale back to a
certain point: beyond that point is only the testimony of
archæology, and of all the manifold branches of archæology
none is so practicable, so promising, yet so little explored, as
that which is concerned with earthworks. Within them lie
hidden all the secrets of time before history begins, and by
their means only can that history be put into writing: they are
the back numbers of the island’s story, as yet unread, much
less indexed.”—A. Hadrian Allcroft.
“It is a gain to science that it has at last been recognised that
we cannot penetrate far back into man’s history without
appealing to more than one element in that history. Some day
it will be recognised that we must appeal to all elements in
that history.”—Gomme.
“History bears and requires Authors of all sorts.”—Camden.

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it
is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the
music which he hears, however measured or far away.”—H.
D. Thoreau.
This book is an application of the jigsaw system to certain archæological
problems which under the ordinary detached methods of the Specialist have
proved insoluble. My fragments of evidence are drawn as occasion warrants from
History, Fairy-tale, Philosophy, Legend, Folklore—in fact from any quarter
whence the required piece unmistakably fulfils the missing space. It is thus a
mental medley with all the defects, and some, I trust, of the attractions, of a
mosaic.
Ten years ago I published a study on Mediæval Symbolism, and subsequent
investigation of cognate subjects has since put me in possession of some curious
and uncommon information, which lies off the mainroads of conventional
Thought.
The consensus of opinion upon A New Light on the Renaissance,[1] was to the
effect that my theories were decidedly ingenious and up to a point tenable, yet
nevertheless at present they could only be regarded as non-proven. In 1912[2] I
therefore endeavoured to substantiate my earlier propositions, pushing them
much further to the point of suggesting an innate connection between Symbolism
and certain words—such, for example, as psyche, which means a butterfly, and
psyche the anima or soul which was symbolised or represented by a butterfly. Of
course I knew only too well the tricky character of the ground I was exploring
and how open many of my propositions would be to attack, yet it seemed
preferable rather to risk the Finger of Scorn than by a superfluity of caution
ignore clues, which under more competent hands might yield some very
interesting and perhaps valuable discoveries.
In the present volume I piece together a mosaic of visible and tangible evidence
which is supplementary to that already brought forward, and the results—at any
rate in many instances—cannot by any possibility be written off as due merely to
coincidence or chance. That they will be adequate to satisfy the exacting

requirements of modern criticism is, however, not to be supposed. Referring to
The Lost Language, one of my reviewers cheerfully but disconcertingly
observed: “He must deal as others of his school have done with all the possible
readings of the history of the races of men”.[3] To sweeping and magnanimous
advice of this character one can only counter the untoward experiences of the
hapless “Charles Templeton,” as recounted by Mr. Stephen McKenna: “At the
age of three-and-twenty Charles Templeton, my old tutor at Oxford, set himself
to write a history of the Third French Republic. When I made his acquaintance,
some thirty years later, he had satisfactorily concluded his introductory chapter
on the origin of Kingship. At his death, three months ago, I understand that his
notes on the precursors of Charlemagne were almost as complete as he desired.
‘It is so difficult to know where to start, Mr. Oakleigh,’ he used to say, as I picked
my steps through the litter of notebooks that cumbered his tables, chairs, and
floor.”[4]
But Mr. Templeton’s embarrassments were trifling in comparison with mine.
Templeton was obviously a man of some leisure, whereas my literary hobbies
have necessarily to be indulged more or less furtively in restaurants, railway
trains, and during such hours and half-hours of opportunity as I can snatch from
more pressing obligations. Moreover, Mr. Templeton could concentrate on one
subject—History—whereas the scope of my studies compels me to keep on as
good terms as may be with the exacting Muses of History, Mythology,
Archæology, Philosophy, Religion, Romance, Symbolism, Numismatics,
Folklore, and Etymology. I mention this not to extenuate any muzziness of
thought, or sloppiness of diction, but to disarm by confession the charge that my
work has been done hurriedly and here and there superficially.
With the facilities at my disposal I have endeavoured to the best of my abilities to
concentrate a dozen rays on to one subject, and to mould into an harmonious and
coherent whole the pith of a thousand and one items culled during the past seven
years from day to day and noted from hour to hour. Differing as I do in some
respects from the accepted conclusions of the best authorities, it is a further
handicap to find myself in the position of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah, who
was constrained by force of circumstance to build with a sword in one hand and a
trowel in the other.
To the heretic and the wayfarer it is, however, a comfortable reflection that what
Authority maintains to-day it generally contradicts to-morrow.[5] Less than a
century ago contemporary scholarship knew the age of the earth with such
exquisite precision that it pronounced it to a year, declaring an exact total of 6000
years, and a few odd days.

When the discoveries in Kent’s Cavern were laid before the scientific world, the
authorities flatly denied their possibility, and the proofs that Man in Britain was
contemporary with the mammoth, the lion, the bear, and the rhinoceros[6] were
received with rudeness and inattention. Similarly the discovery of prehistoric
implements in the gravel-beds at Abbeville was treated with inconsequence and
insult, and it was upwards of twenty years before it was reluctantly conceded
that: “While we have been straining our eyes to the East, and eagerly watching
excavations in Egypt and Assyria, suddenly a new light has arisen in the midst of
us; and the oldest relics of man yet discovered have occurred, not among the
ruins of Nineveh or Heliopolis, not on the sandy plains of the Nile or the
Euphrates, but in the pleasant valleys of England and France, along the banks of
the Seine and the Somme, the Thames and the Waveney.”[7]
The fact is now generally accepted as proven by both anthropologists and
archæologists, that the most ancient records of the human race exist not in Asia,
but in Europe. The oldest documents are not the hieroglyphics of Egypt, but the
hunting-scenes scratched on bone and ivory by the European cave-dwelling
contemporaries of the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros. Human implements
found on the chalk plateaus of Kent have been assigned to a period prior to the
glacial epoch, which is surmised to have endured for 160,000 years, from,
roughly speaking, 240,000 to 80,000 years ago.
It is now also an axiom that the races of Europe are not colonists from
somewhere in Asia, but that, speaking generally, they have inhabited their present
districts more or less continuously from the time when they crept back gradually
in the wake of the retreating ice.
“Written history and popular tradition,” says Sir E. Ray Lankester, “tell us
something in regard to the derivation and history of existing ‘peoples,’ but we
soon come to a period—a few thousand years back—concerning which both
written statement and tradition are dumb. And yet we know that this part of the
world—Europe—was inhabited by an abundant population in those remote times.
We know that for at least 500,000 years human populations occupied portions of
this territory, and that various races with distinguishing peculiarities of feature
and frame, and each possessed of arts and crafts distinct from those characteristic
of others, came and went in succession in those incredibly remote days in
Europe. We know this from the implements, carvings, and paintings left by these
successive populations, and we know it also by the discovery of their bones.”
Anthropology, however, while admitting this unmeasurable antiquity for
mankind, takes no count of the possibility of an amiable or cultured race in these
islands prior to the coming of the Roman legions. It traces with equanimity the

modern Briton evolving in unbroken sequence from the primitive cave-dweller,
and it points with self-complacency to the fact that even as late as the Battle of
Hastings some of Harold’s followers were armed with stone axes. There has,
however, recently been unearthed near Maidstone the skull of a late palæolithic
or early neolithic man, whose brain capacity was rather above the average of the
modern Londoner. The forehead of this 15,000 year-old skull is well formed,
there are no traces of a simian or overhanging brow, and the individual himself
might well, in view of all physical evidence, have been a primeval sage rather
than a primeval savage.
The high estimation in which the philosophy of prehistoric Briton was regarded
abroad may be estimated from the testimony of Cæsar who states: “It is believed
that this institution (Druidism) was founded in Britannia, and thence transplanted
into Gaul. Even nowadays those who wish to become more intimately acquainted
with the institution generally go to Britannia for instruction’s sake.”
It has been claimed for the Welsh that they possess the oldest literature in the
oldest language in Europe. Giraldus Cambrensis, speaking of the Welsh Bards,
mentions their possession of certain ancient and authentic books, but whether or
not the traditionary poems which were first committed to writing in the twelfth
century retain any traces of the prehistoric Faith is a matter of divided opinion.
To those who are not experts in archaisms and are not enamoured of ink-spilling,
the sanest position would appear to be that of Matthew Arnold, who observes in
Celtic Literature: “There is evidently mixed here, with the newer legend, a
detritus, as the geologists would say, of something far older; and the secret of
Wales and its genius is not truly reached until this detritus, instead of being called
recent because it is found in contact with what is recent, is disengaged, and is
made to tell its own story.”[8]
The word “founded,” as used by Cæsar, implies an antiquity for British
institutions which is materially confirmed by the existence of such monuments as
Stonehenge, and the more ancient Avebury. Whether these supposed “appendages
to Bronze age burials” were merely sepulchral monuments, or whether they ever
possessed any intellectual significance, does not affect the fact that Great Britain,
and notably England, is richer in this class of monument than any other part of
the world.[9]
Circles being essentially and pre-eminently English it is disappointing to find the
most modern handbook on Stonehenge stating: “In all matters of archæology it is
constantly found that certain questions are better left in abeyance or bequeathed
to a coming generation for solution”.[10] Every one sympathises with that weary
feeling, but nevertheless the present generation now possesses quite sufficient

data to enable it to shoulder its own responsibilities and to pass beyond the
stereotyped and hackneyed formula “sepulchral monument”. I hold no brief on
behalf of the Druids—indeed one must agree that the Celtic Druids were much
more modern than the monuments associated with their name—nevertheless the
theory that these far-famed philosophers were mere wise men or witch doctors,
with perhaps a spice of the conjuror, is a modern misapprehension with which I
am nowise in sympathy. Valerius Maximus (c. A.D. 20) was much better informed
and therefore more cautious in his testimony: “I should be tempted to call these
breeches-wearing gentry fools, were not their doctrine the same as that of the
mantle-clad Pythagoras”.
Druids or no Druids there must at some period in our past have been interesting
and enterprising people in these islands. At Avebury, near Marlborough, is
Silbury Hill, an earth mound, which is admittedly the vastest artificial hill in
Europe. Avebury itself is said to constitute the greatest megalithic monument in
Europe, and nowhere in the world are tumuli more plentiful than in Great Britain.
On the banks of the Boyne is a pyramid of stones which, had it been situated on
the banks of the Nile, would probably have been pronounced the oldest and most
venerable of the pyramids. In the Orkneys at Hoy is almost the counterpart to an
Egyptian marvel which, according to Herodotus, was an edifice 21 cubits in
length, 14 in breadth, and 8 in height, the whole consisting only of one single
stone, brought thither by sea from a place about 20 days’ sailing from Sais. The
Hoy relic is an obelisk 36 feet long by 18 feet broad, by 9 feet deep. “No other
stones are near it. ’Tis all hollowed within or scooped by human art and industry,
having a door at the east end 2 feet square with a stone of the same dimension
lying about 2 feet from it, which was intended no doubt to close the entrance.
Within, there is at the south end of it, cut out, the form of a bed and pillow
capable to hold two persons.”[11]
Sir John Morris-Jones has noted remarkable identities between the syntax of
Welsh and that of early Egyptian: Gerald Massey, in his Book of the Beginnings,
gives a list of 3000 close similarities between English and Egyptian words; and
the astronomical inquiries of Sir Norman Lockyer have driven him to conclude:
“The people who honoured us with their presence here in Britain some 4000
years ago, had evidently, some way or other, had communicated to them a very
complete Egyptian culture, and they determined their time of night just in the
same way that the Egyptians did”.
It used to be customary to attribute all the mysterious edifices of these islands,
including stones inscribed with lettering in an unknown script, to hypothetical
wanderers from the East. Nothing could have been more peremptory than the

manner in which this theory was enunciated by its supporters, among whom were
included all or nearly all the great names of the period. To-day there is a complete
volte face upon this subject, and the latest opinion is that “not a particle of
evidence has been adduced in favour of any migration from the East”.[12] When
one remembers that only a year or two ago practically the whole of the academic
world gave an exuberant and unqualified adherence to the theory of Asiatic
immigration it is difficult to conceive a more chastening commentary upon the
value of ex cathedra teaching.
Happily it was an Englishman[13] who, seeing through the futility of the Asiatic
theory, first pointed out the now generally accepted fact that the cradle of Aryan
civilisation, if anywhere at all, was inferentially in Europe. The assumption of an
Asiatic origin was, however, so firmly established and upheld by the dignity of
such imposing names that the arguments of Dr. Latham were not thought worthy
of reply, and for sixteen years his work lay unheeded before the world. Even
twenty years after publication, when the new view was winning many adherents,
it was alluded to by one of the most learned Germans as follows: “And so it came
to pass that in England, the native land of fads, there chanced to enter into the
head of an eccentric individual the notion of placing the cradle of the Aryan race
in Europe”.
The whirligig of Time has now once again shifted the focus of archæological
interest at the moment from Scandinavia to Crete, where recent excavations have
revealed an Eldorado of prehistoric art. It is now considered that the civilisation
of Hellas was a mere offshoot from that of Crete, and that Crete was veritably the
fabulous Island of Atlantis, a culture-centre which leavened all the shores of the
Mediterranean.
According to Sir Arthur Evans: “The high early culture, the equal rival of that of
Egypt and Babylon, which began to take its rise in Crete in the fourth millennium
before our era, flourished for some 2000 years, eventually dominating the Ægean
and a large part of the Mediterranean basin. The many-storeyed palaces of the
Minoan Priest-Kings in their great days, by their ingenious planning, their
successful combination of the useful with the beautiful and stately, and last but
not least, by their scientific sanitary arrangements, far outdid the similar works,
on however vast a scale, of Egyptian or Babylonian builders.”
The sensational discoveries at Crete provide a wholly new standpoint whence to
survey prehistoric civilisation, and they place the evolution of human art and
appliances in the last Quaternary Period on a higher level than had ever
previously been suspected.

Not only have the findings in Crete revolutionised all previously current ideas
upon Art, but they have also condemned to the melting-pot the cardinal article of
belief that the alphabet reached us from Phœnicia. Prof. Flinders Petrie has now
clearly demonstrated that even in this respect, “Beside the great historic
perspective of the long use of signs in Egypt, other discoveries in Europe have
opened entirely new ground. These signs are largely found used for writing in
Crete, as a geometrical signary; and the discovery of the Karian alphabet, and its
striking relation to the Spanish alphabet, has likewise compelled an entire
reconsideration of the subject. Thus on all sides—Egyptian, Greek, and Barbarian
—material appears which is far older and far more widespread than the Græco-
Phœnician world; a fresh study of the whole material is imperatively needed,
now that the old conclusions are seen to be quite inadequate.”
The striking connection between the Karian and the Spanish alphabet may be
connoted with the fact that Strabo, mentioning the Turdetani whom he describes
as the most learned tribe of all Spain, says they had reduced their language to
grammatical rules, and that for 6000 years they had possessed metrical poems
and even laws. Commenting upon this piece of precious information, Lardner
ironically observed that although the Spaniards eagerly seized it as a proof of
their ancient civilisation, they are sadly puzzled how to reconcile these 6000
years with the Mosaic chronology. He adds that discarding fable, we find nothing
in their habits and manners to distinguish them from other branches of that great
race, except, perhaps, a superior number of Druidical remains.[14]
This “except” is noteworthy in view of the fact that the Celtiberian alphabet of
Spain is extremely similar to the Bardic or Druidic alphabet of Britain, and also
to the hitherto illegible alphabet of Ancient Crete.
Cæsar has recorded that the Druids thought it an unhallowed thing to commit
their lore to writing, though in the other public and private affairs of life they
frequently made use of the Greek alphabet. That the Celts of Gaul possessed the
art of writing cannot be questioned, and that Britain also practised some method
of communication seems a probability. There are still extant in Scotland
inscriptions on stones which are in characters now totally unknown. In Ireland,
letters were cut on the bark of trees prepared for that purpose and called poet’s
tables. The letters of the most ancient Irish alphabet are named after individual
trees, and there are numerous references in Welsh poetry to a certain secret of the
twigs which lead to the strong inference that “written” communication was first
accomplished by the transmission of tree-sprigs.
The alphabets illustrated on pages 14 and 15 have every appearance of being
representations of sprigs, and it is a curious fact that not only in Ireland, but also

in Arabia, alphabets of which every letter was named after trees[15] were once
current.
BRITISH ALPHABET.

Fig. 1.—From Celtic Researches (Davies, E.).

CELTIBERIAN ALPHABET, SHEWING THE DESCRIPTION OF
CHARACTERS FOUND ON THE COINS OF TARRACONENSIS
AND BÆTICA.

Fig. 2.—From Ancient Coins (Akerman, J. Y.).
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 Phœnicians. The sea traders of the Mediterranean were at the
time the Cretans. Whether or not their merchants visited England we have no
means of knowing.”[16]
The material which I shall produce establishes a probability that the Cretans
systematically visited Britain, and further that the tradition of the peopling of this
island by men of Trojan race are well founded.
According to the immemorial records of the Welsh Bards: “There were three
names imposed on the Isle of Britain from the beginning. Before it was inhabited
its denomination was Sea-Girt Green-space; after being inhabited it was called

the Honey Island, and after it was formed into a Commonwealth by Prydain, the
Son of Aedd Mawr, it was called the Isle of Prydain. And none have any title
therein but the nation of the Kymry. For they first settled upon it, and before that
time no men lived therein, but it was full of bears, wolves, beavers, and
bisons.”[17]
In the course of these essays I shall discuss the Kymry, and venture a few
suggestions as to their cradle and community of memories and hopes. But behind
the Kymry, as likewise admittedly behind the Cretans, are the traces of an even
more primitive and archaic race. The earliest folk which reached Crete are
described as having come with a form of culture which had been developed
elsewhere, and among these neolithic settlers have been found traces of a race 6
feet in height and with skulls massive and shapely. Moreover Cretan beliefs and
the myths which are based upon them are admittedly older than even the
civilisation of the Tigro-Euphrates valley: and they belong, it would appear, to a
stock of common inheritance from an uncertain culture centre of immense
antiquity.[18]
The problem of Crete is indissolubly connected with that of Etruria, which was
flourishing in Art and civilisation at a period when Rome was but a coterie of
shepherds’ huts. Here again are found Cyclopean walls and the traces of some
most ancient people who had sway in Italy at a period even more remote than the
national existence of Etruria.[19]
We are told that the first-comers in Crete ground their meal in stone mortars, and
that one of the peculiarities of the island was the herring-bone design of their
wall buildings. In West Cornwall the stone walls or Giants’ Hedges are
Cyclopean; farther north, in the Boscastle district, herring-bone walls are
common, and in the neighbourhood of St. Just there are numerous British villages
wherein the stone mortars are still standing.
The formula of independent evolution, which has recently been much over-
worked, is now waning into disfavour, and it is difficult to believe otherwise than
that identity of names, customs, and characteristics imply either borrowing or
descent from some common, unknown source.
That the builders of our European tumuli and cromlechs were maritime arrivals is
a reasonable inference from the fact that dolmens and cromlechs were built
almost invariably near the sea.[20] These peculiar and distinctive monuments are
found chiefly along the Western coasts of Britain, the Northern coast of Africa, in
the isles of the Mediterranean, in the isolated, storm-beaten Hebrides, and in the
remote islands of Asia and Polynesia.

By whom was the Titanic art of cromlech-building brought alike to the British
Isles and to the distant islands of the Pacific? By what guidance did frail barques
compass such terrifying sea space? How were these adequately victualled for
such voyages, and why were the mainlands ever quitted? How and why were the
colossal stones of Stonehenge brought by ship from afar, floated down the broad
waters of the prehistoric Avon, and dragged laboriously over the heights of Oare
Hill? Who were the engineers who constructed artificial rocking stones and
skilfully poised them where they stand to-day? “To suspend a stupendous mass of
abnormous shape in such an equilibrium that it shall oscillate with the most
trivial force and not fall without the greatest, is a problem unsolved so far as I
know by modern engineers.”[21]
Who were the indefatigable people who, prior to all record, reclaimed the
marshes of the Thames-mouth by an embankment which is intact to-day all round
the river coast of Kent and Essex? Who were the horticulturists who evolved
wheat and other cereals from unknown grasses and certain lilies from their
unknown wild? And who were the philosophers who spun a delicate gossamer of
fairy-tales over the world, and formulated the cosmic ideas which are in many
extraordinary respects common alike to primitive and more advanced peoples?
And why is the symbol generally entitled the Swastika cross found not only
under the ruins of the most ancient Troy but also in the Thames at Battersea, and
elsewhere from China to Zimbabwe? How is it that Ireland, that remote little
outpost of Europe, possesses more Celtic MSS. than all the rest of Celtic Europe
put together?
The most rational explanation of these and similar queries is seemingly a
consideration of the almost world-wide tradition of a lost island, the home of a
scientific world-wandering race. The legend of submerged Atlantis was related to
Solon by an Egyptian priest as being historic fact, and the date of the final
catastrophe was definitely set down by Plato from information given to Solon as
having been about 9000 B.C. Solon was neither a fool himself nor the man to
suffer fools gladly. It is admitted by geology that there actually existed a large
island in the Atlantic during tertiary times, but this we are told is a pure
coincidence and it is impossible to suppose any tradition existing of such an
island or land.
Science has very generally denied the credibility of tradition, yet tradition has
almost invariably proved truer than contemporary scholarship. Scholarship
denied the possibility of finding Troy, notwithstanding the steady evidence of
tradition to the mound at Hissarlik where it was eventually disclosed. Even when
Schliemann had uncovered the lost city the scientists of every European capital

ridiculed his pretensions, and it was only gradually that they ungraciously yielded
to the irresistible evidence of their physical senses. Science similarly denied the
possibility of buried cities at the foot of Vesuvius, yet popular tradition always
asserted the existence of Pompeii and Herculaneum; indeed, contemporary
science has so consistently scouted the possibility of every advance in discovery
that mere airy dismissal is not now sufficient to discredit either the Atlantean, or
any other theory. From China to Peru one finds the persistent tradition of a
drowned land, a story which is in itself so preposterous as unlikely to arise
without some solid grounds of reality. Thierry has observed that legend is living
tradition, and three times out of four it is truer than what we call history. Sir John
Morris Jones would seemingly endorse this proposition, for he has recently
contended that tradition is itself a fact not always to be disposed of by the hasty
assumption that all men are liars.[22]
The Irish have their own account of the Flood, according to which three ships
sailed for Ireland, but two of them foundered on the way. The Welsh version runs
that the first of the perilous mishaps which occurred in Britain was “The outburst
of the ocean ‘Torriad lin lion,’ when a deluge spread over the face of all lands, so
that all mankind were drowned with the exception of Duw-van and Duw-ach, the
divine man and divine woman, who escaped in a decked ship without sails; and
from this pair the island of Prydain was completely re-peopled”.
Correlated with this native version is a peculiar and, so far as my information
goes, a unique tradition that previous disasters had taken place, causing the
destruction of animals and vegetables then existing, of which whole races were
irrevocably lost. This tradition, which is in complete harmony with the
discoveries of modern geology, is thus embodied in the thirteenth Triad: “The
second perilous mishap was the terror of the torrent-fire, when the earth was
cloven down to the abyss, and the majority of living things were destroyed”.
It is a singular coincidence that evidence of a prehistoric torrent-fire exists
certainly in Ireland, where bog-buried forests have been unearthed exhibiting all
the signs of a flowing torrent of molten fire or lava. According to the author of
Bogs and Ancient Forests, when the Bog of Allen in Kildare was cut through,
oak, fir, yew, and other trees were found buried 20 or 30 feet below the surface,
and these trees generally lie prostrated in a horizontal position, and have the
appearance of being burned at the bottom of their trunks and roots, fire having
been found far more powerful in prostrating those forests than cutting them down
with an axe; and the great depth at which these trees are found in bogs, shows
that they must have lain there for many ages.[23]

No ordinary or casual forest fire is capable of prostrating an oak or fir tree, and
the implement which accomplished such terrific devastation must have been
something volcanic and torrential in its character.
I am, however, not enamoured of the Atlantean or any other theory. My purpose
is rather to collate facts, and as all theorising ends in an appeal to self-evidence, it
is better to allow my material, for much of which I have physically descended
into the deeps of the earth, to speak for itself:—we must believe the evidence of
our senses rather than arguments, and believe arguments if they agree with the
phenomena.[24]
Although my concordance of facts is based upon evidence largely visible to the
naked eye, in a study of this character there must of necessity be a disquieting
percentage of “probablys” and “possiblys”. This is deplorable, but if license be
conceded in one direction it cannot be withheld in another. The extent to which
guess-work is still rampant in etymology will be apparent in due course; the
extent to which it is allowed license in anthropology may be judged from such
reveries as the following: “Did any early members of the human family commit
suicide? Probably they did; the feeble, the dying, the maimed, the weak-headed,
the starving, the jealous, would be tired of life; these would throw themselves
from heights or into rivers, or stab themselves or cut their throats with large and
keen-edged knives of flint.”[25]
Although my own inquiries deal intimately with graves and names and epitaphs,
it still seems to me a possibility that the brains which fashioned exquisitely
barbed fish-hooks out of flint, and etched vivid works of art upon pebble, may
also have been capable of poetic and even magnanimous ideas. It is quite certain
that the artistic sense is superlatively ancient, and it is quite unproven that the
lives of these early craftsmen were protracted nightmares.
Although not primarily written with that end, the present work will inter alia
raise not a few doubts as to the accuracy of Green’s dictum: “What strikes us at
once in the new England is that it was the one purely German nation that rose
upon the wreck of Rome”. In the opinion of this popular historian the holiest spot
in all these islands ought in the eyes of Englishmen to be Ebbsfleet, the site
where in Kent the English visitors first landed, yet inconsequently he adds: “A
century after their landing the English are still known to their British foes only as
‘barbarians,’ ‘wolves,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘whelps from the kennel of barbarism,’ ‘hateful to
God and man’. Their victories seemed victories for the powers of evil,
chastisement of a divine justice for natural sin.”[26]

It is an axiom among anthropologists that race characteristics do not change and
that tides of immigration are more or less rapidly absorbed by the aboriginal and
resident stock. Assuredly the characteristics of the German tribes have little
changed, and it is extraordinary how from the time of Tacitus they have
continued to display from age to age their time-honoured peculiarities. Invited
and welcomed into this country as friends and allies, “in a short time swarms of
the aforesaid nations came over into the island, and they began to increase so
much that they became terrible to the natives themselves who had invited them”.
[27]

According to Bede the first symptoms of the frightfulness which was to come
were demands for larger rations, accompanied by the threat that unless more
plentiful supplies were brought them they would break the confederacy and
ravage all the island. Nor were they backward in putting their threats in
execution. Just as the Germans ruined Louvain so the Angles razed Cambridge,
[28]
and in the words of Layamon “they passed to and fro the country carrying off
all they found”. Already in the times of Tacitus famous for their frantic Hymns of
Hate, so again we find Layamon recording “they breathed out threatenings and
slaughter against the folk of the country”. Indeed Layamon uses far stronger
expressions than any of those quoted by Green, and the British chronicler almost
habitually refers to the alien intruders as “swine,” and “the loathest of all things”.
Instead, therefore, of being thrilled into ecstasy by the landing of the Germans at
Ebbsfleet, one may more reasonably regard the episode as untoward and
discreditable. It is more satisfactory to contemplate the return in the train of Duke
William of Normandy of those numerous Britons who “with sorrowful hearts had
fled beyond the seas,” and to appreciate that by the Battle of Hastings the
temporary ascendancy of Germanic kultur was finally and irrevocably destroyed.
It is observed by Green that the coins which we dig up in our fields are no relics
of our English fathers but of a Roman world which our fathers’ sword swept
utterly away. This is sufficiently true as regards the Saxon sword, but as some of
the native coins in question are now universally assigned to a period 200 to 100
years earlier than the first coming of the Romans, it is obvious that there must
have been sufficient civilisation then in the country to require a coinage, and that
the native Britons cannot have been the poor and backward barbarians of popular
estimation.
A coin is an excessively hard fact, and should be of just as high interest to the
historian as a well-formed skull or any other document. To Englishmen our
prehistoric coinage—a national coinage “scarcely if at all inferior to that of
contemporary Rome”—[29] ought to possess peculiar and special interest, for it is

practically in England alone that early coins have been discovered, and neither
Scotland, Wales, nor Ireland can boast of more than very few. It is, however, an
Englishman’s peculiarity that possessing perhaps the most interesting history, and
some of the most fascinating relics in the world, he is either too modest or too
dull to take account of them. The plate of coins illustrated on page 364,
represents certain sceattae which, according to Hawkins, may have been struck
during the interval between the departure of the Romans and the arrival of the
Saxons. One would at least have thought that such undated minor-monuments
would have possessed per se sufficient interest to ensure their careful
preservation. Yet, according to Hawkins, these rude and uncouth pieces are
scarce, “because they are rejected from all cabinets and thrown away as soon as
discovered”.[30]
It is the considered opinion of certain British numismatists that not only all
English but also Gaulish coins are barbarous and degraded imitations of a famous
Macedonian original which at one time circulated largely in Marseilles. This
supposititious model is illustrated on page 394, and the reader can form his own
opinion as to whether or not the immense range of subjects which figure on our
native money could by any possibility have unconsciously evolved from
carelessness. Sir John Evans, by whom this theory was, I believe, first put
forward, is himself at times hard-driven to defend it; nevertheless he does not
hesitate to maintain: “The degeneration of the head of Apollo into two boars and
a wheel, impossible as it may at first appear, is in fact but a comparatively easy
transition when once the head has been reduced into a form of regular pattern”.
[31]

My irregularity carries me to the extent of contending that our native coins, crude
and uncouth as some of them may be, are in no case imitations but are native
work reflecting erstwhile national ideas. The weird designs and what-nots which
figure on these tokens almost certainly were once animated by meanings of some
sort: they thus constitute a prehistoric literature expressed in hieroglyphics for the
correct reading of which one must, in the words of Carlyle, consider History with
the beginnings of it stretching dimly into the remote time, emerging darkly out of
the mysterious eternity, the true epic poem and universal divine scripture.
According to Tacitus the British, under Boudicca, brought into the field an
incredible multitude; that Cæsar was impressed by the density of the inhabitants
may be gathered from his words: “The population is immense; homesteads
closely resembling those of the Gauls are met with at every turn, and cattle are
very numerous”.[32] That the handful of Roman invaders eliminated the customs
and traditions of a vast population is no more likely than the supposition that

British occupation has eradicated or even greatly interfered with the native faiths
of India.
It is generally admitted that the Romans were most tolerant of local sensibilities,
and there is no reason to assume that existing British characteristics were either
attacked or suppressed. To assume that some hundreds of years later the advent of
a few boat-loads of Anglo-Saxon adventurers wiped out the Romano-British
inhabitants and eradicated all customs, manners, and traditions is an obvious
fallacy under which the evidence of folklore does not permit us to labour. The
greater probability is that the established culture imposed itself more or less upon
the new-comers, more particularly in those remote districts which it was only
after hundreds of years that the Saxons, by their conventional policy of peaceful
penetration, punctuated by flashes of frightfulness, succeeded in dominating.
Even after the Norman Conquest there are circumstances which point to the
probability that the Celtic population was much larger and more powerful than is
usually supposed. Of these the most important is the fact that the signatures to
very early charters supply us with names of persons of Celtic race occupying
positions of dignity at the courts of Anglo-Saxon kings.[33]
The force of custom and the apparently undying continuance of folk-memory are
among the best attested phenomena of folklore. It was remarked by the elder
Disraeli that tradition can neither be made nor destroyed, and if this be true in
general it is peculiarly true of the stubborn and pig-headed British. Our churches
stand to-day not only on the primeval inconvenient hill-sites, but frequently
within the time-honoured earthwork, or beside the fairy-well. On Palm Sunday
the villagers of Avebury still toil to the summit of Silbury Hill, there to consume
fig cakes and drink sugared water; and on the same festival the people even to-
day march in procession to the prehistoric earthwork on the top of Martinshell
Hill. Our country fairs are generally held near or within a pagan earthwork, and
instance after instance might be adduced all pointing to the immortality of
custom and the persistent sanctity of pagan sites.
In the sixth century of our era the monk Gildas referred complacently but
erroneously to the ancient British faith as being dead. “I shall not,” he says,
“enumerate those diabolical idols of my country, which almost surpassed in
number those of Egypt, and of which we still see some mouldering away within
or without the deserted temples, with stiff and deformed features as was
customary. Nor will I cry out upon the mountains, fountains, or hills, or upon the
rivers, which now are subservient to the use of men, but once were an
abomination and destruction to them, and to which the blind people paid divine
honour.”

Notwithstanding the jeremiads of poor Gildas[34] the folk-faith survived; indeed,
as Mr. Johnson says, the heathen belief has been present all the time, and need
not greatly astonish us since the most advanced materialist is frequently a victim
of trivial superstitions which are scouted by scientific men as baseless and
absurd.
The Augustine of Canterbury, who is recorded to have baptised on one day
10,000 persons in the river Swale, recommended with pious ingenuity that the
heathen temples should not be destroyed, but converted to the honour of Christ
by washing their walls with holy water and substituting holy relics and symbols
for the images of the heathen gods. This is an illuminating sidelight on the
methods by which the images of the heathen idols were gradually transformed
into the images of Christian saints, and there is little doubt that as the
immemorial shrines fell into ruin and were rebuilt and again rebuilt, the sacred
images were scrupulously relimned.
Even to-day, after 2000 years of Christian discipline, the clergy dare not in some
districts interfere with the time-honoured tenets of their parishioners. In
Normandy and Brittany the priests, against their inclination, are compelled to
take part in pagan ceremonials,[35] and in Spain quite recently an archbishop has
been nearly killed by his congregation for interdicting old customs.[36]
The earliest British shrines were merely stones, or caves, or holy wells, or sacred
trees, or tumuli, preferably on a hill-top or in a wood. The next type is found in
the monastery of St. Bride, which was simply a circular palisade encircling a
sacred fire. This was in all probability similar to the earliest known form of the
Egyptian temple, a wicker hut with tall poles forming the sides of the door; in
front of this extended an enclosure which had two poles with flags on either side
of the entrance. In the middle of the enclosure or court was a staff bearing the
emblem of the God.
Later came stone circles and megalithic monuments in various forms, whence the
connection is direct to cathedrals such as Chartres, which is said to be built
largely from the remains of the prehistoric megaliths which originally stood
there. There are chapels in Brittany and elsewhere built over pagan monoliths;
indeed no new faith can ever do more than superimpose itself upon an older one,
and statements about the wise and tender treatment of the old nature worship by
the Church are euphemisms for the bald fact that Christianity, finding it
impracticable to wean the heathen from their obdurate beliefs, made the best of
the situation by decreeing its feasts to coincide with pre-existing festivals.

Fig. 3.—Section of the Dolmen Chapel of the Seven Sleepers
near Plouaret.
It has long been generally appreciated that the lives of saints are not only for the
most part mythical, but that even documentary evidence on that subject is equally
suspect.[37] There is, indeed, no room to doubt that the majority of the ancient
saint-stories are Christianised versions of such scraps and traditions of prehistoric
mythology as had continued to linger among the folk. To the best of my belief I
am the first folklorist who has endeavoured to treat The Golden Legend in a
sympathetic spirit as almost pure mythology.
It is usually assumed that at any rate the Christian Church tactfully decanted the
old wine of paganism into new bottles; but Christianity, as will be seen, more
often did not trouble to provide even new bottles, and merely altered a stroke
here and there on the labels, transforming San tan, the Holy Fire, into St. Anne,
Sin clair, the Holy Light, into St. Clare, and so forth.
The first written record of Christianity in Britain is approximately A.D. 200,
whence it is claimed that the Christian religion must have been introduced very
near to, if not in, apostolic times. In 314 three British bishops, each accompanied
by a priest and a deacon, were present at the Council at Arles, and it is commonly
maintained by the Anglican Church that only a relatively small part of England
owes its conversion to the Roman mission of the monk Augustine in 597.
We have it on the notable authority of St. Augustine that: “That very thing which
is now designated the Christian religion was in existence among the ancients, nor

was it absent even from the commencement of the human race up to the time
when Christ entered into the flesh, after which true religion, which already
existed, began to be called Christian”.
We should undoubtedly possess more specific evidences of the ancient faith but
for the edicts of the Church that all writings adverse to the claims of the Christian
religion, in the possession of whomsoever they should be found, should be
committed to the fire. It is claimed for St. Patrick that he caused to be destroyed
180—some say 300—volumes relating to the Druidic system. These, said a
complacent commentator, were stuffed with the fables and superstitions of
heathen idolatry and unfit to be transmitted to posterity.
Mr. Westropp considers that much of value escaped destruction, for Christianity
in Ireland was a tactful, warm-hearted mother, and learned the stories to tell to
her children. This is true to some extent, but in Britain there are extant many
bardic laments at the intolerance with which old ideas were eradicated, e.g.,
“Monks congregate like wolves wrangling with their instructors. They know not
when the darkness and the dawn divide, nor what is the course of the wind, or the
cause of its agitation; in what place it dies away or on what region it expands.”
And implying that although one may be right it does not follow that all others
must be wrong the same bard exclaims, “For one hour persecute me not!” and he
pathetically asks: “Is there but one course to the wind, but one to the waters of
the sea? Is there but one spark in the fire of boundless energy?”
In the same strain another bard, in terms not altogether inapplicable to-day,
alludes to his opponents as “like little children disagreeing on the beach of the
sea”.
Although bigotry and materialism have suppressed facts, stifled testimony,
misrepresented witnesses, and destroyed or perverted documents, the prehistoric
fairy faith was happily too deeply graven thus to be obliterated, and it is only a
matter of time and study to reconstruct it. Most of the suggestions I venture to put
forward are sufficiently documented by hard facts, but some are necessarily
based upon “hints and equivocal survivals”.[38] At the threshold of an essay of the
present character one can hardly do better than appropriate the words of Edmund
Spenser:—I do gather a likelihood of truth not certainly affirming anything, but
by conferring of times, language, monuments, and such like, I do hunt out a
probability of things which I leave to your judgment to believe or refuse.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Dent, 1909.
[2] The Lost Language of Symbolism: An inquiry into the origin of certain letters,
words, names, fairy-tales, folklore, and mythologies. 2 vols. London, 1912 (Williams
& Norgate).
[3] Manchester Guardian, 23rd December, 1912.
[4] Sonia.
[5] “Topographical comment—I will not say criticism—has been equally inefficient. A
theory is not refuted by saying ‘all the great antiquarians are against you,’ ‘the Psalter
of Tara refutes that,’ or ‘O’Donovan has set the question past all doubt’. These remarks
only prove that we have hardly commenced scientific archæology in this
country.”—;Westropp, Thos. J., Proc. of Royal Irish Acad., vol. xxxiv., C., No. 8, p.
129.
[6] We found precisely the same things as were found by our predecessors, remains of
extinct animals in the cave earth, and with them flint implements in considerable
numbers. You want, of course, to know how the scientific world received these latter
discoveries. They simply scouted them. They told us that our statements were
impossible, and we simply responded with the remark that we had not said that they
were possible, only that they were true.—Pengally, W., Kent’s Cavern. Its Testimony to
the Antiquity of Man, p. 12.
[7] Lubbock, J., Prehistoric Times.
[8] In the course of his criticism the same writer pertinently observes:—
“Why, what a wonderful thing is this! We have, in the first place, the most weighty and
explicit testimony—Strabo’s, Cæsar’s, Lucan’s—that this race once possessed a
special, profound, spiritual discipline, that they were, to use Mr. Nash’s words, ‘Wiser
than their neighbours’. Lucan’s words are singularly clear and strong, and serve well
to stand as a landmark in this controversy, in which one is sometimes embarrassed by
hearing authorities quoted on this side or that, when one does not feel sure precisely
what they say, how much or how little. Lucan, addressing those hitherto under the
pressure of Rome, but now left by the Roman Civil War to their own devices, says:—
“‘Ye too, ye bards, who by your praises perpetuate the memory of the fallen brave,
without hindrance poured forth your strains. And ye, ye Druids, now that the sword
was removed, began once more your barbaric rites and weird solemnities. To you only
is given the knowledge or ignorance (whichever it be) of the gods and the powers of
heaven; your dwelling is in the lone heart of the forest. From you we learn that the
bourne of man’s ghost is not the senseless grave, not the pale realm of the monarch
below; in another world his spirit survives still.’”
[9] “Circles form another group of the monuments we are about to treat of.... In France
they are hardly known, though in Algeria they are frequent. In Denmark and Sweden
they are both numerous and important, but it is in the British Islands that circles
attained their greatest development.”—;Fergusson, J., Rude Stone Monuments, p. 47.
Referring to Stanton Drew the same authority observes: “Meanwhile it may be well to
point out that this class of circles is peculiar to England. They do not exist in France or
Algeria. The Scandinavian circles are all very different, so too are the Irish.”—Ibid., p.
153.
[10] Stevens, F., Stonehenge To-day and Yesterday, 1916, p. 14.
[11] Toland, History of the Druids, p. 163.
[12] Schrader, O., cf. Taylor, Isaac, The Origin of the Aryans, p. 48.
[13] Latham, Dr. R. G.

[14] Spain and Portugal, vol. i., p. 16.
[15] Mr. Hammer, a German who has travelled lately in Egypt and Syria, has brought,
it seems, to England a manuscript written in Arabic. It contains a number of alphabets.
Two of these consist entirely of trees. The book is of authority.—Davies, E., Celtic
Researches, 1804, p. 305.
[16] The Cretans were rulers of the sea, and according to Thucydides King Minos of
Crete was “the first person known to us in history as having established a navy. He
made himself master of what is now called the Hellenic Sea, and ruled over the
Cyclades, into most of which he sent his first colonists, expelling the Carians and
appointing his own sons governors; and thus did his best to put down piracy in those
waters.”
[17] Jones, J. J., Britannia Antiquissima, 1866.
[18] Mackenzie, D. A., Myths of Crete, p. xxix.
[19] Gray, Mrs. Hamilton, The Sepulchres of Etruria, p. 223.
[20] This might be due to the coasts being less liable to the plough. See, however, the
map of distribution, published by Fergusson, in Rude Stone Monuments.
[21] Herbert, A., Cyclops Britannica, p. 68.
[22] Taliesin, p. 23.
[23] Connellan, A. F. M., p. 337.
[24] Aristotle.
[25] Smith, Worthington, G., Man the Primeval Savage, p. 53.
[26] Short History, p. 15.
[27] Bede.
[28] The cities which had been erected in considerable numbers by the Romans were
sacked, burnt, and then left as ruins by the Anglo-Saxons, who appear to have been
afraid or at least unwilling to use them as places of habitation. An instance of this may
be found in the case of Camboritum, the important Roman city which corresponded to
our modern Cambridge, which was sacked by the invaders and left a ruin at least until
the time of the Venerable Bede, 673-735.—Windle, B. C. A., Life in Early Britain, p.
14.
[29] Hearnshaw, F. J. C., England in the Making, p. 14.
[30] Hawkins, E., The Silver Coins of England, p. 17.
[31] Coins of the Ancient Britons, p. 121.
[32] Bello Gallico, Bk. v., 12, § 3.
[33] Smith, Dr. Wm., Lectures on the English Language, p. 29.
[34] The Americans would describe Gildas as a “Calamity-howler”.
[35] Le Braz, A., The Night of Fires.
[36] A Cantanzaro, dans la Calabre, la cathédrale fut le théâtre de scènes de désordre
extraordinaires. Le nouvel archevêque avait dernièrement manifesté l’intention de
mettre un terme à certaines coutumes qu’il considérait comme entachées de
paganisme. Ses instructions ayant été méprisées, il frappa d’interdit pour trois jours un
édifice religieux. La population jura de se venger et, lorsque le nouvel archevêque fit
son entrée dans la cathédrale, le jour de Pâques pour célébrer la grand’ messe, la foule,
furieuse, manifesta bruyamment contre lui. Comme on craignait que sa personne fût

l’objet de violences, le clergé le fit sortir en hâte par une porte de derrière. Les troupes
durent être réquisitionnées pour faire évacuer le cathédrale.—La Dernière Heure,
April, 1914.
[37] There is a story told of a certain Gilbert de Stone, a fourteenth century legend-
monger, who was appealed to by the monks of Holywell in Flintshire for a life of their
patron saint. On being told that no materials for such a work existed the litterateur was
quite unconcerned, and undertook without hesitation to compose a most excellent
legend after the manner of Thomas à Becket.
[38] “Ireland being ‘the last resort of lost causes,’ preserved record of a European
‘culture’ as primitive as that of the South Seas, and therefore invaluable for the history
of human advance; elsewhere its existence is only to be established from hints and
equivocal survivals. Our early tales are no artificial fiction, but fragmentary beliefs of
the pagan period equally valuable for topography and for mythology.”—Westropp,
Thos. J., Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xxxiv. sec. C, No. 8, p. 128.

CHAPTER II
THE MAGIC OF WORDS
“As the palimpsest of language is held up to the light and
looked at more closely, it is found to be full of older forms
beneath the later writing. Again and again has the most
ancient speech conformed to the new grammar, until this
becomes the merest surface test; it supplies only the latest
likeness. Our mountains and rivers talk in the primeval
mother tongue whilst the language of men is remoulded by
every passing wave of change. The language of mythology
and typology is almost as permanent as the names of the hills
and streams.”—Gerald Massey.

It is generally admitted that place-names are more or less impervious to time and
conquests. Instances seemingly without limit might be adduced of towns which
have been sacked, destroyed, rebuilt, and rechristened, yet the original names—
and these only—have survived. Dr. Taylor has observed that the names of five of
the oldest cities of the world—Damascus, Hebron, Gaza, Sidon, and Hamath—
are still pronounced in exactly the same manner as was the case thirty, or perhaps
forty centuries ago, defying oftentimes the persistent attempts of rulers to
substitute some other name.[39]
As another instance of the permanency of place-names, the city of Palmyra is
curiously notable. Though the Greek Palmyra is a title of 2000 years’ standing,
yet to the native Arab it is new-fangled, and he knows the place not as Palmyra
but as Tadmor, its original and infinitely older name. Five hundred years B.C. the
very ancient city of Mykenæ was destroyed and never rose again to any
importance: Mykenæ was fabulously assigned to Perseus, and even to-day the
stream which runs at the site is known as the Perseia.[40]
If it be possible for local names thus to live handed down humbly from mouth to
mouth for thousands of years, for aught one knows they may have endured for
double or treble these periods; there is no seeming limit to their vitality, and they
may be said to be as imperishable and as dateless as the stones of Avebury or
Stonehenge.

History knows nothing of violent and spasmodic jumps; the ideas of one era are
impalpably transmitted to the next, and the continuity of custom makes it difficult
to believe that the builders of Cyclopean works such as Avebury and Stonehenge,
have left no imprint on our place-names, and no memories in our language. Even
to-day the superstitious veneration for cromlechs and holy stones is not defunct,
and it is largely due to that ingrained sentiment that more of these prehistoric
monuments have not been converted into horse-troughs and pigsties.
If, as now generally admitted, there has been an unbroken and continuous
village-occupation, and if, as is also now granted, our sacred places mostly
occupy aboriginal and time-honoured sites, it is difficult to conceive that place-
names do not preserve some traces of their prehistoric meanings. In the case of
villages dedicated to some saintly man or sweetest of sweet ladies, the
connection is almost certainly intact; indeed, in instances the pagan barrows in
the churchyard are often actually dedicated to some saint.[41]
That memories of the ancient mythology sometimes hang around our British
cromlechs is proved by an instance in North Wales where there still stands a table
stone known locally as Llety-y-filiast, or the stone of the greyhound bitch. “This
name,” says Dr. Griffith, “was given in allusion to the British Ceres or Keridwen
who was symbolised by the greyhound bitch”.[42] I shall have much to say about
Keridwen—“the most generous and beauteous of ladies”—meanwhile it is
sufficient here to note that her symbol, the greyhound bitch, is found
unmistakably upon our earliest coinage.

British.
Fig. 4.—From Evans. Fig. 5.—From
Akerman.
All place-names of any real antiquity are generally composed of various
languages, and like compound rocks contain fragments in juxtaposition which
belong properly to different ages. The analysis of these is not difficult, as the
final -hill, -ton, -ville, -ham, and so forth is usually the comparatively modern
work of newcomers. Frequently the later generations forgot the original meanings
of the ancient terms; and thus, for instance, at Brandon Hill in Suffolk there is the
curious phenomenon of Hill Hill Hill—in three languages, i.e., bran, don, and

hill. On this site the flint knappers are still at work, using practically the same
rude tool as their primitive woad-painted ancestors. At Brandon not only has the
art of flint-making survived, but anthropologists have noted the persistence of a
swarthy and most ancient type—a persistence the more remarkable as Suffolk
was supposed to be a district out of which the Britons had been wholly and
irretrievably eradicated. Whether there is anything in the world to parallel the
phenomenon of the Brandon flint knappers I do not know, and it may well be
questioned. In the words of Dr. Rice Holmes:—The industry has been carried on
since neolithic times, and even then it was ancient: for Brandon was an abode of
flint makers in the Old Stone Age. Not only the pits but even the tools show little
change: the picks which the modern workers use are made of iron, but here alone
in Britain the old one-sided form is still retained, only the skill of the workers has
degenerated: the exquisite evenness of chipping which distinguished the neolithic
arrow heads is beyond the power of the most experienced knapper to reproduce.
[43]

At Brandon is Broomhill; the words bran and broom will be subsequently shown
to be radically the same, and I shall suggest reasons why this term, even possibly
in Old Stone times, meant hill.
During recent years the study of place-names has been passing through a period
of spade-work, and every available document from Doomsday Book to a Rent
Roll has been scrupulously raked. The inquirer now therefore has available a
remarkably interesting record of the various forms which our place-names have
passed through, and he can eliminate the essential features from the non-
essential. Although the subject has thus considerably been elucidated, the
additional information obtained has, however, done nothing to solve the original
riddle and in some cases has rendered it more complex.
The new system which is popularly supposed to have eliminated all guesswork
has in reality done nothing of the kind. In place of the older method, which, in
the words of Prof. Skeat, “exalted impudent assertions far above positive
evidence,” it has boldly substituted a new form of guesswork which is just as
reckless and in many respects is no less impudent than the old. The present
fashion is to suppose that the river x or the town of y may have been the property
of, or founded by, some purely hypothetical Anglo-Saxon. For example: the river
Hagbourne of Berkshire is guessed to have been Hacca’s burn or brook, which
possibly it was, but there is not a scintilla of real evidence one way or the other.
If one is going to postulate “Hacca’s” here and there, there is obviously a space
waiting for a member of the family on the great main road entitled Akeman
Street. As this ancient thoroughfare traverses Bath we are, however, told that it

“received in Saxon times the significant name of Akeman Street from the
condition of the gouty sufferers who travelled along it”.[44] One would prefer
even a phantom Hacca to this aching man, nor does the alternatively suggested
aqua, water, bring us any nearer a solution.
There sometimes appears to be no bottom to the vacuity of modern guesswork. It
is seriously and not pour rire suggested that Horselydown was where horses
could lie down; that Honeybrook was so designated because of its honey-sweet
water, and that the name Isle of Dogs was “possibly because so many dogs were
drowned in the Thames here”.[45] In what respect do these and kindred
definitions, which I shall cite from standard authors of to-day, differ from the
“egregious” speculations, the “wild guesses,” and the “impudent assertions” of
earlier scholars?
There is in Bucks a small town now known as Kimball, anciently as Cunebal.
Tradition associates this site with the British King Cymbeline or Cunobelin, and
as the place further contains an eminence known as Belinsbury or Belinus Castle,
the authorities can hardly avoid accepting the connection and the etymology. But
for Kimbolton, which stands on a river named the Kym, the authorities—
notwithstanding the river Kym—provide the purely supposititious etymology
“Town of Cynebald”. There were, doubtless, thousands of Saxons whose name
was Cynebald, but why Kimbolton should be assigned to any one of these
hypothetical persons instead of to Cymbeline is not in any way apparent. The
river name Kym is sufficient to discredit Cynebald, and the greater probability is
that not only the Kym but also all our river and mountain names are pre-Saxon.
It will be seen hereafter that the name Cunobelin or Cymbeline, which the
dictionaries define as meaning splendid sun, was probably adopted as a dynastic
title of British chiefs, and that the effigies of Cymbeline on British coins have no
more relation to any particular king than the mounted figure on our modern
sovereign has to his Majesty King George V. The prefix Cym or Cuno will
subsequently be seen to be the forerunner of the modern Konig or King. Hence
like Kimball or Cunebal, Kimbolton on the Kym was probably a seat of a
Cymbeline, and the imaginary Saxon Cynebald may be dismissed as a usurper.
Kimbolton used at one time to be known as Kinnebantum, whence it is evident
that the essential part of the word is Kinne or Kim, and as another instance of the
perplexing variations which are sometimes found in place-names the spot now
known as Iffley may be cited. This name occurs at various periods as follows:
Gifetelea, Sifetelea, Zyfteleye, Yestley, Iveclay and Iftel. This is a typical
instance of the extraordinary variations which have perplexed the authorities, and
is still causing them to cast vainly around for some formula or law of sound-

change, which shall account satisfactorily for the problem. “We are at present,”
says Prof. Wyld, “quite unable to formulate the laws of the interchange of stress
in place-names, or of the effects of these in retaining, modifying, or eliminating
syllables.... Until these laws are properly formulated, it cannot be said that we
have a scientific account of the development of place-names. The whole thing is
often little better than a conjuring trick.”[46]
No amount of brainwork has conjured any sense from Iffley, and the etymology
has been placed on the shelf as “unknown”. I shall venture to suggest that the
initial G, S, Z, or Y, of this name, and of many others being adjectival, the radical
Ive or Iff, as being the essential, has alone survived. It will be seen that Iffley was
in all probability a lea or meadow dedicated to “The Ivy Girl” or May Queen, and
that quite likely it was one of the many sites where, in the language of an old poet
—
Holly and his Merry men they dawnsin and they sing,
Ivy and her maydons they wepen and they wryng.
I shall connote with Ivy and her maidens, not only Mother Eve, but also the
clearly fabulous St. Ive. We shall see that the Lady Godiva of Coventry fame was
known as Godgifu, just as Iffley was once Gifetelea, and we shall see that St. Ives
in Cornwall appears in the registers alternatively as St. Yesses, just as Iffley was
alternatively Yestley. Finally we shall trace the connection between Eve, the
Mother of all living, and Avebury, the greatest of all megalithic monuments.
If it be objected that my method is too meticulous, and that it is impossible for
mere farm- and field-names to possess any prehistoric significance, I may refer
for support to the Sixth Report of the Royal Commission appointed to inventory
the ancient monuments of Wales and Monmouthshire.[47] In the course of this
document the Commissioners write as follows:—
“The Tithe Schedules, unsatisfactory and disappointing though many of them are,
contain such a collection of place-names, principally those of fields, that the
Commissioners at the outset of their inquiry determined upon a careful
investigation of them. The undertaking involved in the first place the examination
of hundreds of documents, many of them containing several thousands of place-
names; secondly, in the case of those names which were noted for further inquiry,
the necessity of discovering the position of the field or site upon the tithe map;
and, thirdly, the location of the field or site on the modern six-inch ordnance
sheet. This prolonged task called for much patience and care, as well as ingenuity
in comparing the boundaries of eighty years ago with those of the present time.

“Of the value of this work there can be no doubt. We do not venture to express
any opinion on the question whether, or to what extent, farm and field names are
of service to the English archæologist; but with regard to their importance to the
Welsh archæologist there can be no two opinions. The fact that the Welsh place-
names are being rapidly replaced by English names, so that the local lore which
is often enshrined in the former is in danger of being lost, was in itself a
sufficient reason for the undertaking. The results have more than justified our
decision. There is hardly a parish, certainly not one of the ancient parishes, of the
principality, where the schedule of field names has not yielded some valuable
results. Scores of small but in some cases important antiquities would have
passed unrecorded, had it not been for the clue to their presence given by the
place-name which was to be found only in the schedule to the Tithe Survey.”
In Cornwall almost every parish is named after some saintly apostle, and many of
these saints are alleged to have travelled far and wide in the world founding
towns and villages. It is almost a physical impossibility that this was literally
true, and it becomes manifestly incredible on consideration of the miracles
recorded in the lives of the travellers. As already suggested the greater
probability is that the lives of the saints enshrine almost intact the traditions of
pre-Christian divinities. Of the popular and most familiar St. Patrick, Borlase (W.
C.), writes: “Of the reality of the existence of this Patrick, son of Calporn, we
feel not the shadow of a doubt. But he was not the only Patrick, and as time went
on traditions of one other Patrick at least came to be commingled with his own.
We have before us the names of ten other contemporary Patricks, all
ecclesiastics, and spread over Wales, Ireland, France, Spain, and Italy. The name
appears to be that of a grade or order in the Church rather than a proper name in
the usual sense. Thus Palladius is called also Patrick in the ‘Book of Armagh’ and
the Patrick (whichever he may have been) is represented as styling Declan ‘the
Patrick of the Desii,’ and Ailbhe ‘the Patrick of Munster’. When Patrick
sojourned in a cave in an island in the Tyrrhene Sea he found three other Patricks
there.” Precisely: and there is little doubt that our London Battersea or Patrixeye
was originally an ea or island where the patricks or padres of St. Peter’s at
Westminster once congregated.
The arguments applied to St. Patrick apply equally to, say, St. Columba, or the
Holy Dove, and similarly to St. Colman, a name also meaning Dove. In Ireland
alone there are 200 dedications to St. Colman, and evidence will be brought
forward that the archetype of all the St. Colmans and all the St. Columbas and all
the Patricks was Peter the Pater, who was symbolised by petra, the stone or rock.

The so-called Ossianic poems of Gaeldom, although of “a remarkably heathenish
character,” preserve the manners of and opinions of what the authorities describe
as “a semi-barbarous people who were endowed with strong imagination, high
courage, childlike tenderness, and gentle chivalry for women,”[48] and that the
ancients were tinctured through and through with mysticism and imagination,
finding tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and
good in everything, is a fact which can be denied. When our words were framed
and our ancient places, hills, and rivers named, I am persuaded that the world
was in its imaginative childhood, and hence that traces of that state of mind may
reasonably be anticipated. It is remarkable that the skulls found in the first or
oldest Troy exhibit the most intellectual characteristics,[49] and in many quarters
seemingly the remoter the times the purer was the theology whether in Phrygia,
Egypt, India, Persia, or Great Britain. Among the Cretans “religion entered at
every turn” of their social system; in Egypt even the very games and dances had
a religious significance, and the evidence of folklore testifies to the same effect in
Britain. It was one among the many grievances of the pessimistic Gildas that the
British were “slaves to the shadows of things to come,” and this usually
overlooked aspect of their character must, I think, be recognised in relation to
their place-names. To a large degree the mystical element still persists in Brittany,
where even to-day, in the words of Baring-Gould:—At a Pardon one sees and
marvels at the wondrous faces of this remarkable people: the pure, sweet, and
modest countenances of the girls, and those not less striking of the old folk. “It
is,” says Durtal, “the soul which is everything in these people, and their
physiognomy is modelled by it. There are holy brightnesses in their eyes, on their
lips, those doors to the borders of which the soul alone can come, from which it
looks forth and all but shows itself. Goodness, kindness, as well as a cloistral
spirituality, stream from their faces.”[50]
What is still true of Brittany was once equally true of Britain, and although the
individuality of the Gael has now largely been submerged by prosaic Anglo-
Saxondom, the poetic temperament of the chivalrous and dreamy Celt was
essentially a frame of mind that cared only for the heroic, the romantic, and the
beautiful.
The science of etymology as practised to-day is unfortunately blind to this poetic
element which was, and to some extent still is, an innate characteristic of
“uncivilised” and unsophisticated peoples. Archbishop Trench, one of the
original planners and promoters of The New English Dictionary, was not
overstating when he wrote: “Let us then acknowledge man a born poet.... Despite
his utmost efforts, were he mad enough to employ them, he could not succeed in

exhausting his language of the poetical element which is inherent in it, in
stripping it of blossom, flower, and fruit, and leaving it nothing but a bare and
naked stem. He may fancy for a moment that he has succeeded in doing this, but
it will only need for him to become a little better philologer to go a little deeper
into the study of the words which he is using, and he will discover that he is as
remote from this consummation as ever.”
Nevertheless, current etymology has achieved this inanity, and has so completely
dismissed the animate or poetic element from its considerations that one may
seek vainly the columns of Skeat and Murray for any hint or suggestion that
language and imagination ever had anything in common. According to modern
teaching language is a mere cluster of barbaric yawps: “No mystic bond linked
word and thought together; utility and convenience alone joined them”.[51]
Words, nevertheless, were originally born not from grammarians but amid the
common people, and pace Mr. Clodd they enshrine in many instances the
mysticism and the superstitions of the peasantry. How can one account, for
instance, for the Greek word psyche, meaning butterfly, and also soul, except by
the knowledge that butterflies were regarded by the ancients as creatures into
which the soul was metamorphosised? According to Grimm, the German name
for stork means literally child-, or soul-bringer; hence the belief that the advent
of infants was presided over by this bird. But why “hence”? and why put the cart
before the horse? If one may judge from innumerable parallels of word-
equivocation the legends arose not from the accident of similar words, nor from
“misprision of terms,” or from any other “disease of language,” but the creatures
were named because of the attendant legend. It is common knowledge that in
Egypt the animal sacred to a divinity was often designated by the name of that
deity; similarly in Europe the bee, a symbol of the goddess Mylitta, was called a
mylitta, and a bull, the symbol of the god Thor, was named a thor. We speak to-
day of an Adonis, because Adonis was a fabulously lovely youth, and parallel
examples may be found on almost every hand. Irish mythology tells of a certain
golden-haired hero named Bress, which means beautiful, whence we are further
told that every beautiful thing in Ireland whether plain, fortress, or ale, or torch,
or woman, or man, was compared with him, so that men said of them “That is a
Bress”. Elsewhere and herein I have endeavoured to prove that this principle was
of worldwide application, and that it is an etymological key which will open the
meaning of many words still in common use. It is a correlative fact that the
names of specific deities such as Horus, Hathor, Nina, Bel, etc., developed in
course of time into generic terms for any Lord or God.

Very much the same principles are at work with us to-day, whence a dreadnought
from the prime “Dreadnought,” and the etymologer of the future, who tries by
strictly scientific methods to unravel the meaning of such words as mackintosh,
brougham, Sam Browne, gladstone, boycott, etc., will find it necessary to
investigate the legends attendant on those names rather than practice a formal
permutation of vowels and consonants.
By common consent the quintessence of the last fifty years’ philological progress
is being distilled into Sir James Murray’s New English Dictionary, and in a
conciser form the same data may be found in Prof. Skeat’s Concise Etymological
Dictionary of the English Language. Both these indispensable works are high
watermarks of English scholarship, and whatever absurdities they contain are
shortcomings not of their compilers but of the Teutonic school of philology
which they exemplify. If these two standard dictionaries were able to answer
even the elementary questions that are put to them it would be both idle and
presumptuous to cavil, but one has only to refer to their pages to realise the
ignorance which prevails as to the origin and the meaning of the most simple and
everyday words.
It is unfortunately true that “in philology as in all branches of knowledge it is the
specialist who most strongly opposes any attempt to widen the field of his
knowledge”.[52] Hence, as was only to be expected, one of the reviewers of my
Lost Language of Symbolism deemed it quite insufferable that I should throw to
the winds the laborious work on the science of phonetics built up by generations
of careful research.
But in point of fact I discarded none of the sound work of my predecessors; I
only tried to supplement it and fished deeper. My soundings do not begin until I
am well beyond the limits of modern etymology, and they are no more affected
by the cross-currents of historic languages than the activities of a deep-water
fisherman are interrupted or affected by the tide eddies on the shore. The defect
of official philology is that it offers no explanation for radicals. It does not, for
example, attempt to explain why the word ap was the Sanscrit for water, why pri
was the Sanscrit for love, or why pat was the Sanscrit for fly. It refers the word
oak to the Anglo-Saxon ac, Dr. Murray merely describing it as “a consonantal
stem, ulterior meaning obscure”. Etymology to-day is in fact very much in the
situation of an insolvent bank which, unable to satisfy its creditors with cash on
demand, blandly endeavours to satisfy them with corresponding cheques of
equally uncashable face value. Words can never properly be interpreted merely
by parallel words: originally they must have expressed ideas, and it is these
underlying ideas that I am in search of. My previous work was a pioneer, and in

many respects bungling attempt to pick up the threads where at present philology
is content to lose them. Using the same keys as hitherto, I shall attempt to explore
further the darkness which is at present the only achieved goal of the much
trumpeted Science of Language.
In a moment of noteworthy frankness Prof. Skeat has admitted that “Scientific
etymology is usually clumsy and frequently wrong”. Similarly, Prof. Sayce issues
the warning: “Comparative philology has suffered as much from its friends as
from its opponents; and now that it has at last won its way to general recognition
and respect, there is a danger that its popularity may lead to the cessation of
sound and honest work, and to an acquiescence in theories which, however
plausible, are not yet placed upon a footing of scientific certainty. It is much
easier for the ordinary man to fill in by patient elaboration what has already been
sketched for him in outline, than to venture upon a new line of discovery, in
which the sole clue must be the combinative powers of his own imagination and
comprehensive learning. And yet, now as much as ever, comparative philology
has need at once of bold and wide-reaching conceptions, of cautious verification,
and of a mastery of facts. It is true the science is no longer struggling for mere
life, and the time is gone by for proving the possibility of its existence. But it is
still young, scarcely, indeed, out of its nursery; a small portion only of its
province has hitherto been investigated, and much that is at present accepted
without hesitation will have to be subjected to a searching inquiry, and possibly
be found baseless after all.”[53]
The value of any system must be measured by its results, and the fruits of
philology as formulated only a year or so ago were unquestionably false. Where
now are the “successes” of the Max Müller school which were advertised in such
shrill and penetrating tones? Sanscrit is deposed from its pride of place, it being
now recognised that primitive sounds are preserved more faithfully in Europe
than elsewhere. Who to-day admits there is any basis for the Disease of
Language theory, or that all fairy-tales and myths are resolvable into the Sun
chasing the Dawn?[54] What anthropologist accepts the theory of Aryan overland
immigration from somewhere in Asia? The archæologists of the last generation
were, in the light of modern findings, quite justified when, contrary to the then
stereotyped idea, they maintained that skulls were harder things than consonants.
In short, large sections of the card-castle of German philology have more or less
crumbled, and in the cruel words of a modern authority on Crete: “Happily,
archæology has emerged from the slough into which the philologists had led
her”.

For the causes of this fiasco it is unnecessary to seek further than the fundamental
fallacy upon which the “Science of Language” has been erected. According to
Max Müller, “etymology is indeed a science in which identity, or even similarity,
whether of sound or meaning, is of no importance whatever. Sound etymology
has nothing to do with sound. We know words to be of the same origin which
have not a single letter in common, and which differ in meaning as much as black
and white.”
To maintain that “sound etymology has nothing to do with sound,” is tantamount
to the contention that language is not sound, which is obviously absurd. In the
saner view of Dr. Latham: “language begins with voice, language ends with
voice”. The Germans, Poles, and Russians had no acquaintance with letters until
the ninth century, and speech, which certainly existed for unnumbered centuries
before either writing or spelling was evolved, must, primarily and essentially,
have been a system of pure and simple phonetics, spreading, as a mother teaches
her child, syllable by syllable, word upon word, and line upon line. To rule sound
out of language, is, indeed, far more fatal than to purge Hamlet out of Hamlet.
One may prove by super-ingenious logic and an elaborate code of cross
references that black is white and white black, yet common sense knows all the
time that it is not so. There are, I am aware, certain races who are unable to
vocalise certain sounds and accordingly modify them. The obscure causes
governing these phonetic changes must be taken into account, and as far as
possible formulated into “laws,” but the pages of Skeat and Murray demonstrate
beyond refutation two very simple but very certain fundamental, universal facts,
to which hitherto wholly insufficient attention has been given. These elementary
and seemingly never-varying facts are: (1) That originally vowel sounds were of
no importance whatever, for in the same word they vary to the utmost limits, not
only in different areas and in different eras, but contemporaneously in different
grades of society; (2) that heavy and light consonants such as b and p, d and t, f
and v, g and k, etc., are always interchangeable. Whether in place-names, words,
or proper names, the changes are found always to occur, and they are precisely
those variations which common sense would suggest must occur in every case
where words travel viva voce and not via script or print. A man suffering from
what Shakespeare would term “a whoreson rheum,” says, for instance, did vor
dad instead of tit for tat, and there is, so far as I can discover, not a single word or
a solitary place-name in which a similar variation of thin and thick consonants is
not traceable.
The formidable Grimm’s Law, any violation of which involves summary and
immediate condemnation, is merely a statement of certain phonetic facts which

happen invariably—unless they are interfered with by other facts. The
permutations of sound codified by Grimm are as follows:—
Greek p Gothic f Old High b(v)
German
" b " p " f
" ph " b " p
" t " th " d
" d " t " z
" th " d " t
" k " (h) " g(h)
" g " k " ch
" kh " g " k
It is said that the causes which brought about the changes formulated in Grimm’s
Law are “obscure” (they may have been due to nothing more obscure than a
prevalence to colds in the head), and that they were probably due to the
settlement of Low German conquerors in Central and Southern Germany. The
changes above formulated all fall, however, within the wider theory I am now
suggesting, with the exception of d and t becoming in High German z. This
particular syllabic change was, I suggest, due to z at one time being synonymous
with d or t, and not to any inability of certain tribes to vocalise the sound t.
Max Müller observes that “at first sight the English word fir does not look very
like the Latin word quercus, yet it is the same word”. Fir certainly does not look
like quercus, nor, of course, is it any more the “same word” than six is the same
word as half a dozen. There are a thousand ways of proving six to be radically
and identically the same as half a dozen, and the ingenious system of
permutations by which philologists identify fir with quercus, and alphana with
equus,[55] are parallel to some of the methods by which common sense, by cold
gradation and well-balanced form, would quite correctly equate six with half a
dozen.
The term “word” I understand not in the loose sense used by Max Müller, but as
the dictionary defines it—“an oral or written sign expressing an idea or notion”.
Thus I treat John as the same word as Jane or Jean, and it is radically the same
word as giant, old English jeyantt, French geante, Cornish geon. Jean is also the
same word as chien, a dog, Irish choin; Welsh chin or cyn, and all these terms by
reason of their radical an are cognate with the Greek kuon, a dog, whence
cynical. The Gaelic for John is Jain, the Gaelic for Jean or Jane is Sine, with

which I equate shine, shone, and sheen, all of which have respect to the sun, as
also had the Arabic jinn, genii, and “Gian Ben Gian,” a title of the fabulous
world-ruler of the Golden Age. Among the Basques Jaun means Lord or Master,
and the Basque term for God, Jainko, Jeinko, or Jinko, is believed to have meant
“Lord or Master on High”. The Irish Church attributes its origin to disciples of
St. John—Irish Shaun, and one may detect the pre-Christian Sinjohn in the
British divinity Shony, and evolving from the primeval Shen at Shenstone near
Litchfield. Here, a little distance from the church, was a well, now called St.
John’s Well, after the saint in whose honour the parish church is dedicated. In all
probability the present-day church of St. John was built on the actual site of the
original Shen stone or rock; and that John stones were once plentiful in Scotland
is probably implied by the common surname Johnstone. Near the Shannon in
Ireland, and in close proximity to the church and village of Shanagolden, is
“castle” Shenet or Shanid, attached to which is a rath or earthwork of which the
ground-plan, from Mr. Westropp’s survey, is here reproduced. As it is a matter of
common knowledge that the worldwide wheel cross was an emblem of the sun, I
should therefore have no scruples in connoting Castle Shenet with the primeval
jeyantt or the Golden Shine; and suggesting that it was a sanctuary originally
constructed by the Ganganoi, a people mentioned by Ptolemy as dwelling in the
neighbourhood of the Shannon. The eponymous hero of the Ganganoi was a
certain Sengann,[56] who is probably the original St. Jean or Sinjohn to whom the
fires of St. Jean and St. John have been diverted.
We shall see that Giant Christopher was symbolically represented as chien
headed, that he was a personification of the Shine or Sheen of the Sun, and that he
was worshipped as the solar dog at the holy city of Cynopolis or dog-town. We
have already noted English “chien” or cyn coins inscribed cun, which is
seemingly one of the innumerable puns which confront philology.

Fig. 6.—From Proc. of the Royal Irish Acad., xxxiii.,
C., No. 2.
Years ago Bryant maintained that “the fable of the horse certainly arose from a
misprision of terms, though the mistake be as old as Homer”. There was nothing
therefore new in the theories of the Max Müller school that all mythologies
originated from a “disease of language”. Dr. Wilder, alluding to symbolism,
speaks of the punning so common in those days, often making us uncertain
whether the accident of similar name or sound led to adoption as a symbol or was
merely a blunder. It was, I think, neither, and many instances will be adduced in
favour of the supposition, that words originated from symbolic ideas, and not
vice versa. That symbolism existed before writing is evident from the
innumerable symbols unearthed at Mykenæ, Troy, and elsewhere, where few
traces of script or inscriptions have been found. By symbolism, primitive man

unquestionably communicated ideas, and, as has already been pointed out, the
roots of language bear traces of the rudimentary symbolism by which our savage
forefathers named the objects around them as well as the conceptions of their
primitive religion.[57] Faced by the “curiosity” that the Greek and Latin words for
archaic, arch, ark, arc, are all apparently connected in an intricate symbolism in
which there is more than a suspicion that there is an etymological as well as a
mystical interconnection, a writer in The Open Court concludes: “it would seem
as though the roots of such words derived their meaning from the Mysteries
rather than that their mystical meaning was the result of coincidence”.[58]
That the Mysteries—or in other words dramatised mythology—Symbolism, and
Etymology, are all closely connected with each other is a certitude beyond
question. The theory, so pertinaciously put forward by Max Müller, was that
myths originated from a subsequent misunderstanding of words. Using the same
data as Max Müller, I suggest that words originated from the mysteries and not
myths from the words.
In The Holy Wells of Cornwall, Mr. T. Quiller Couch observes that Dr. Borlase,
learned, diligent, and excellent antiquary as he was, to whom we are all indebted
in an iconoclastic age for having copied for us fair things which time had blurred,
seems to have had little sympathy with the faiths of the simple, silly, country folk
(I use these adjectives in their older meaning), and to have passed them with
something like contempt. At present the oral traditions of a people, their seeming
follies even, have become of value as indicating kinship between nations shunted
off by circumstances, to use the most modern term, in divergent ways.
Dr. Johnson would not admit fun into his Dictionary as he deemed it a “low
word”: I turn up my nose at nothing, being convinced that it is to low origins that
the great lexicographers will eventually have to stoop. In truth, the innate
strength of the English language, which is becoming more and more the Master
Tongue of the world, lies in its homely, trivial, and democratic origin.[59] This
origin, as I have elsewhere endeavoured to show, is due largely to symbolism,
which is merely another term for metaphor. We used to be taught that every
language was a dictionary of faded metaphor, and such an origin is undoubtedly
more true than the current theory of barbaric yawps. The essence of symbolism is
its simplicity. Who, for instance, does not understand that the Lion is the symbol
of High Courage, and the Bull-dog of Tenacity, or holding on? At the present day
the badge of one of His Majesty’s warships is the picture of a butting goat,
accompanied by the words “Butt in”. This, as the authorities rightly describe it, is
“pure symbolism,” but to a symbolist the legend “Butt in” is superfluous, as the
mere butting goat adequately carries the idea. As Prof. Petrie has well said: “To

understand the position and movement of thought in a primitive age, it must be
approached on a far simpler plane than that of our present familiarity with
writing. To reach the working of the childhood of our races we should look to the
minds of children. If the child passes through ancestral changes in its bodily
formation, so certainly it passes through such stages in the growth and capacity
of its brain.”[60] I shall push the childish and extremely simple theory of
symbolism to its logical conclusions, and shall show, for instance, that the Boar,
because it burrowed with its plough-like snout, was the emblem of the
ploughman, and that thus, boar and boer are the same word. Or, to take another
instance, I shall show that probably because the cat sits washing herself, and is a
model of cleanliness in sanitary respects, the cat who figures on the head of the
Magna Mater of Crete was elevated into a symbol of the Immaculate or Pure
One, and that the word cat, German kater, is identical with the name Kate or
Caterina which means purity. The Sanscrit word for cat means literally the
cleanser, whence it is obvious that the cleanly habits of the cat strongly
impressed the Aryan imagination.
Whether or not my theories are right, it is undeniable that the etymologies of
Skeat and Murray are very often painfully wrong. The standard explanation, for
instance, of the word haha, meaning a sunk fence, is that it is from the French ha-
ha, “an interjection of laughter, hence a surprise in the form of an unexpected
obstacle that laughs at one”. This may be so, but it is a far wilder guess than
anything to be found in my pages, or that I should ever dare to venture. In 1913 I
suggested in Notes and Queries that the word ha-ha or haw-haw was simply a re-
duplication or superlative of the French haie, a fence or hedge, old English haw.
In the new edition of Skeat I am glad to find this suggestion accepted, and that
ha-ha! has been expunged. It still figures in Dr. Murray.
In his Canons of Etymology, Prof. Skeat observes:—“The history of a nation
accounts for the constituent parts of its language. When an early English word is
compared with Hebrew or Coptic, as used to be done in the old editions of
Webster’s Dictionary, history is set at defiance; and it was a good deed to clear
the later editions of all such rubbish”.
This is curiously parochial, yet it seems to have been seriously accepted by
etymologers. But what would Science say nowadays to that geologist or
anthropologist who committed the foul deed of discarding or suppressing a vast
body of facts simply because they clashed with, or “set at defiance,” the
“historic” assertions of the Pentateuch? It is true that the history of a nation, if it
were fully known, must account for the constituent parts of its language, but how
much British history do we pretend to know? To suggest that philology must

limit its conclusions by the Roman invasion, or bound its findings by the pages of
Mrs. Markham, is ludicrous, yet, nevertheless, these fictitious boundaries are the
mediæval and pre-Darwinian limits within which the Science of Language is now
coffined. Prof. Skeat was reluctantly compelled to recognise a Semitic trace in
words such as bad and target, but was unable to accept the connection owing to
the absence of any historic point of contact between Syria and this country prior
to the Crusades! So, too, M. Sebhlani observed numerous close similarities
between Arabic and English, but was “unable to press them for lack of a theory
as to how they got into English!”
As history must be constructed from facts, and facts must not be peremptorily
suppressed simply because at present they clash with the meagre record of
historians, I shall have no scruples in noting a word from Timbuctoo if it means
precisely what it does in English, and proves reasonably to be a missing piece. As
Gerald Massey thirty or forty years ago very properly observed: “We have to dig
and descend mine under mine beneath the surface scratched with such
complacent twitterings over their findings by those who have taken absolute
possession of this field, and proceeded to fence it in for themselves, and put up a
warning against everybody else as trespassers. We get volume after volume on
the ‘science of language’ which only make us wonder when the ‘science’ is going
to begin. At present it is an opera that is all overture. The comparative
philologists have not gone deep enough, as yet, to see that there is a stage where
likeness may afford guidance, because there was a common origin for the
primordial stock of words. They assume that Grimm’s Law goes all the way
back. They cling to their limits, as the old Greek sailors hugged the shore, and
continually insist upon imposing these on all other voyagers, by telling terrible
tales of the unknown dangers beyond.”[61]
As soon as etymologists appreciate the value of the comparative method it is
undeniable that a marked advance will be made in the “Science of Language,”
but during the last few decades it must be confessed that that science—pace the
bombastic language of some of its adherents—has retrogressed rather than
moved forward.
Prof. Skeat was admittedly a high authority on early English, and his Dictionary
of the English Language is thus almost inevitably conspicuous for its Anglo-
Saxon colouring. Had, however, the influence of the Saxons been as marked and
immediate as he assumes, the language of Anglo-Saxondom would have
coincided exactly or very closely with the contemporary German. But, according
to Dr. Wm. Smith, “There is no proof that Anglo-Saxon was ever spoken
anywhere but on the soil of Great Britain; for the ‘Heliend,’ and other remains of

old Saxon, are not Anglo-Saxon, and I think it must be regarded, not as a
language which the colonists, or any of them, brought with them from the
Continent, but as a new speech resulting from the fusion of many separate
elements. It is, therefore indigenous, if not aboriginal, and as exclusively local
and national in its character as English itself.”[62]
That modern English contains innumerable traces of pure Celtic words used to be
a matter of common acceptance, and in the words of Davies, the stoutest assertor
of a pure Anglo-Saxon or Norman descent is convicted by the language of his
daily life, of belonging to a race that partakes largely of Celtic blood. If he calls
for his coat (W. cota, Germ. rock), or tells of the basket of fish he has caught (W.
basged, Germ. korb), or the cart he employs on his land (W. cart, from càr, a
dray, or sledge, Germ. wagen), or of the pranks of his youth, or the prancing of
his horse (W. prank, a trick, prancio, to frolic), or declares that he was happy
when a gownsman at Oxford (W. hap, fortune, chance, Germ. glück, W. gwn), or
that his servant is pert (W. pert, spruce, dapper, insolent); or if, descending to the
language of the vulgar, he affirms that such assertions are balderdash, and the
claim a sham (W. baldorddus, idle prating; siom, shom, a deceit, a sham), he is
unconsciously maintaining the truth he would deny. Like the M. Jourdain of
Molière, who had been talking prose all his life without knowing it, he has been
speaking very good Celtic without any suspicion of the fact.[63]
It is noteworthy that in his determination to ignore the Celtic influence, Prof.
Skeat concedes only one among the above-mentioned words to the British—
(gwn). The Welsh hap “must,” he says, be borrowed from the Anglo-Saxon
gehoep, and the remainder he ascribes to Middle English or to an “origin
unknown”.
Tyndall has observed that imagination, bounded and conditioned by co-operant
reason, is the mightiest instrument of the physical discoverer. It is to imagination
that words born in the fantastic and romantic childhood of the world were due,
and it is only by a certain measure of imagination that philology can hope to
unravel them. The extent to which mythology has impressed place-names may be
estimated from the fact that to King Arthur alone at least 600 localities owe their
titles. That Arthur himself has not been transmogrified into a Saxon settler[64] is
due no doubt to the still existing “Bed,” “Seat,” “Stables,” etc., with which
popular imagination connected the mystic king.
“Geographical names,” says Rice Holmes, “testify to the cult of various gods,”
and he adds: “it is probable that every British town had its eponymous hero. The
deities, however, from whom towns derived their names, were doubtless often
worshipped near the site long before the first foundations were laid: the goddess

Bibracte was originally the spirit of a spring reverenced by the peasants of the
mountain upon which the famous Aeduan town was built”.[65]
I shall not lead the reader into the intricacies of British mythology deeper than is
requisite for an understanding of the words and place-names under consideration,
nor shall I enlarge more than is necessary upon the mystic elements in that vast
and little known mythology.
It has been said that the mediæval story-teller is not unlike a peasant building his
hut on the site of Ephesus or Halicarnassus with the stones of an older and more
majestical architecture. That Celtic mythology exhibits all the indications of a
vast ruin is the opinion not only of Matthew Arnold, but of every competent
student of the subject, and it is a matter of discredit that educated Englishmen
know so little about it.
Among the phenomena of Celtic mythology are numerous identities with tales
related by Homer. Sir Walter Scott, alluding to one of these many instances,
expresses his astonishment at a fact which, as he says, seems to argue some
connection or communication between these remote highlands of Scotland, and
the readers of Homer of former days which one cannot account for.[66] His
explanation that “After all, perhaps, some Churchman, more learned than his
brethren, may have transferred the legend from Sicily to Duncrune, from the
shores of the Mediterranean to those of Loch Lomond,” is not in accord with any
of the probabilities, and it is more likely that both Greek and Highlander drew
independently from some common source. The astonishing antiquity of these
tales may be glimpsed by the fact that the Homeric poems themselves speak of a
store of older legends from an even more brilliant past.
Somebody once defined symbolism as “silent myth”. To what extent it elucidates
primeval custom has yet to be seen, but there is unquestionably an intimate
connection between symbolism and burial customs. Among some prehistoric
graves disclosed at Dunstable was one containing the relics of a woman and of a
child. The authorities suggest that the latter may have been buried alive with its
mother, which is a proposition that one cannot absolutely deny. But there is just
as great a possibility that neither the mother nor the child came to so sinister and
miserable an end. Apart from the pathetic attitude of the two bodies, the skulls
are as moral and intellectual as any modern ones, and in face of the simple facts
it would be quite justifiable to assume that the mother and the child were not
buried alive, nor committed suicide, but died in the odour of sanctity and were
reverently interred. The objects surrounding the remains are fossil echinoderms,
which are even now known popularly among the unlettered as fairy loaves, and
as there is still a current legend that whoso keeps at home a specimen of the fairy

loaf will never lack bread,[67] one is fairly entitled to assume that these “fairy
loaves” were placed in the grave in question as symbols of the spiritual food
upon which our animistic-minded ancestors supposed the dead would feed. It is
well known that material food was frequently deposited in tombs for a similar
purpose, but in the case of this Dunstable grave there must have been a spiritual
or symbolic idea behind the offering, for not even the most hopeless savage could
have imagined that the soul or fairy body would have relished fossils—still less
so if the material bodies had been buried alive.

Fig. 7.—From Man the Primeval Savage (Smith,
G. Worthington).
I venture to put forward the suggestion that primeval stone-worship, tree-
worship, and the veneration paid to innumerable birds and beasts was
largely based upon symbolism. In symbolism alone can one find any rational
explanation for the intricacies of those ancient mysteries the debris of which
has come down to us degraded into between symbolism and burial customs.
Among some prehistoric graves disclosed at Dunstable was one containing
the relics of a woman and of a child. The authorities superstitious “custom”
and it is probable that in symbolism may also be found the origin of
totemism.

Is symbol the husk, the dry bone,
Of the dead soul of ages agone?
Finger-post of a pilgrimage way
Untrodden for many a day?
A derelict shrine in the fane
Of an ancient faith, long since profane?
A gew-gaw, once amulet?
A forgotten creed’s alphabet?
Or is it....[68]
Whatever symbolism may or may not be it has certainly not that close and
exclusive connection with phallicism which some writers have been pleased
to assign it. On the contrary, it more often flushes from unlikely quarters
totally unexpected coveys of blue birds. Symbolism was undeniably a
primitive mode of thinging thought or expressing abstract ideas by things.
As Massey says of mythology: “There is nothing insane, nothing irrational
in it, ... the insanity lies in mistaking it for human history or Divine
Revelation. Mythology is the depository of man’s most ancient science, and
what concerns us chiefly is this—when truly interpreted once more it is
destined to be the death of those false theologies to which it has unwittingly
given birth.”[69] That the ancients were adepts at constructing cunningly-
devised fables is unquestionable: to account for the identities of these pagan
fables with certain teachings of the New Testament it was the opinion of one
of the Early Fathers—Tertullian, I believe—that “God was rehearsing
Christianity”.
In the opinion of those best able to judge, Druidism originated in neolithic
times. Just as the Druid sacrificed white bulls before he ascended the sacred
oak, so did the Latin priest in the grove, which was the holy place of Jupiter.
“But,” says Rice Holmes, “while every ancient people had its priests, the
Druids alone were a veritable clergy”.[70] The clergy of to-day would find it
profitable to study the symbolism which flourished so luxuriously among
their predecessors, but, unfortunately, with the exception of a few time-
honoured symbols such as the Dove, the Anchor, and the Lamb, symbolism
in the ecclesiastical and philosophic world is now quite dead. It still,
however, lingers to a limited extent in Art, and it will always be the many-
coloured radiancy which colours Poetry. The ancient and the at-one-time
generally accepted idea that mythology veiled Theology, has now been

discarded owing to the disconcerting discovery that myths were seemingly
not taught to the common people by the learned, but on the contrary spread
upwards from the vulgar to the learned. This latter process has usually been
the doom of Religion, and it is quite unthinkable that fairy-tales could
survive its blighting effect. As a random instance of the modern attitude
towards Imagination, one may cite the Rev. Prof. Skeat, who, commenting
upon the Music of the Spheres, gravely informs the world that: “Modern
astronomy has exploded the singular notion of revolving hollow concentric
spheres”. “These spheres,” he adds, “have disappeared and their music with
them except in poetry.”[71]
Whether or not our predecessors really heard the choiring of the young-eyed
cherubim, or whether the music was merely in their souls is a point
immaterial to the present inquiry, which simply concerns itself with the
physical remains of that poetic once-upon-a-time temperament which at
some period or other was prevalent,[72] and has left its world-wide imprints
on river names, such as the Irish “Morning Star”.[73] One would have
supposed it quite superfluous at this time of day to have to claim
imagination for the anonymous ancients who mapped the whole expanse of
heaven into constellations, and wove fairy-tales around the Pleiades and
every other group of stars, and it is simply astonishing to find a Doctor of
Divinity writing to-day in kultured complacency: “It is to the imagination of
us moderns alone that the grandeur of the universe appeals,[74] and it was
relatively late in the history of religion—so far as can be reconstructed from
the scanty data in our possession that the higher nature cults were
developed.”[75]
Is it wonderful that again and again the romantic soul of the Celtic peasantry
has risen against the grey dogmas of official Theology, and has expressed
itself in terms such as those taken down from the mouth of a Gaelic old
woman in 1877: “We would dance there till we were seven times tired. The
people of those times were full of music and dancing stories, and traditions.
The clerics have extinguished these. May ill befall them! And what have the
clerics put in their place? Beliefs about creeds and disputations about
denominations and churches! May lateness be their lot! It is they who have
put the cross round the heads and the entanglements round the feet of the
people. The people of the Gaeldom of to-day are anear perishing for lack of
the famous feats of their fathers. The black clerics have suppressed every

noble custom among the people of the Gaeldom—precious customs that will
never return, no, never again return.”[76]
There are features about the wisdom of the ancients which the theologian
neither understands nor tries to understand,[77] and it is like a breath of fresh
air to find the Bishop of Oxford maintaining, “We have got to get rid of
everything that makes the sound of religion irrational, and which associates
it with bygone habits of thought in regard to science and history”. Sir Gilbert
Murray has recently expressed the opinion that “it is the scholar’s special
duty to trim the written signs in our old poetry now enshrined back into
living thought and feeling”; but at present far from forwarding this
desideratum scholarship not only discountenances imagination, but even
eliminates from consideration any spiritual idea of God. To quote from a
modern authority: “Track any God right home and you will find him lurking
in a ritual sheath from which he slowly emerges, first as a dæmon or spirit of
the year, then as a full-blown divinity.... The May King, the leader of the
choral dance, gave birth not only to the first actor of the drama, but also, as
we have just seen, to the God, be he Dionysus or be he Apollo.”[78]
The theory here assumed grossly defies the elementary laws of logic, for
every act of ritual must essentially have been preceded by a thought: Act is
the outcome and offspring of Thought: Idea was never the idiot-child of Act.
The assumption that the first idea of God evolved from the personation of
the Sun God in a mystery play or harvest dance is not really or
fundamentally a mental tracking of that God right home, but rather an inane
confession that the idea of God cannot be traced further backward than the
ritual of ancient festivals.
Speaking of that extremely remote epoch when the twilight and mists of
morning shed dim-looming shapes and flickering half lights about the path
of our scarcely awakened race, The Athenæum a year or two ago remarked:
“No wonder that to such purblind eyes men appear as trees, and trees as men
—Balder the Beautiful as the mystic oak, and the oak as Balder”. This
passage forms part of a congratulation that the work of Sir James Frazer is
now complete, and that The Golden Bough “has at length carried us forward
into broad daylight”.
I have studied the works of Sir James Frazer in the hope of finding therein
some insight as to the origin and why of custom, but I have failed to

perceive the broad daylight of The Athenæum’s satisfaction.
One might lay down The Golden Bough without a suspicion that our
purblind ancestors ever had a poetic thought or a high and beautiful ideal,
and it is probable that scholarship will eventually arraign Sir James Frazer
for this suggestio falsi. In the meanwhile it should hardly be necessary to
enter a caveat against the popular idea that we are now “in broad daylight”.
The value of The Golden Bough lies largely in the evidence therein adduced
of what may be termed universal ritual. But all ritual must have originated
from ideas, and these original ideas do not seem to have entered the horizon
of Sir James Frazer’s speculations. What reason does he suppose lurked
necessarily behind, say, the sacred fire being kindled from three nests in
three trees, or by nine men from nine different kinds of wood? And why do
the unpleasant Ainos scrupulously kill their sacred bear by nine men
pressing its head against a pole?
It is now the vogue to resolve every ancient ceremony into a magic charm
for producing fire, or food, or rain, or what not, and there is very little doubt
that magic, or sacred ceremonies, verily sank, in many instances, to this
melancholy level. But, knowing what history has to tell us of priestcraft, and
judging the past from the present, is it not highly likely that the primitive
divine who found his tithes and emoluments diminishing from a laxity of
faith would spur the public conscience by the threat that unless sacred
ceremonies were faithfully and punctually performed the corn would not
flourish and the rain would either overflow or would not fall?[79]
It is now the mode to trace all ceremonial to self-interest, principally to the
self-interest of fear or food. But on this arbitrary, stale, and ancient theory[80]
how is it possible to account for the almost universal reverence for stone or
rock? Rocks yield neither food, nor firing, nor clothing, nor do they ever
inflict injuries: why, then, should the artless savage trouble to gratify or
conciliate such innocuous and unprofitable objects? The same question may
be raised in other directions, notably that of the oak tree. Here the accepted
supposition is that the oak was revered because it was struck more
frequently by lightning than any other tree, but if this untoward occurrence
really proves the oak tree was the favourite of the Fire God surely it was an
instance of affection very brilliantly dissembled.

Sir James Frazer has used his Golden Bough as he found it employed by
Virgil—as a talisman which led to the gloomy and depressing underworld.
In Celtic myth the Silver Bough played a less sinister part, and figures as a
fairy talisman to music and delight.
Whether the appeal of Sir Gilbert Murray meets with any sympathy and
response, and whether the written signs in our old poetry will ever be
enshrined back into living thought and feeling remains to be seen. I think
they will, and that the better sense of English intellectualism will sooner or
later recoil from the present mud-and-dust theories of protoplasm for, as has
been well said, “Materialism considered as a system of philosophy never
attempts to explain the Why? of things”. Certainly protoplasm has
unravelled nothing, nor possibly can. One of our standard archæologists
lamented a few decades ago: “As the Germans have decreed this it is in vain
to dispute it, and not worth while to attempt it”. But the German, an
indefatigable plodder, is but a second-rate thinker, and the time must
inevitably come when English scholars will deem it well worth while to
unhitch their waggons from Germania. With characteristic assurance the
Teutonic litterati are still prattling of The Fatherland as a “centre” of
civilisation, and are pluming themselves upon the “spiritual values” given to
mankind by Germany. Some of us are not conscious of these “spiritual
values,” but that German scholarship has poison-gassed vast tracts of
modern thought is evident enough. The theories of Mannhardt, elaborated by
Sir James Frazer and transmuted by him into the pellucid English of The
Golden Bough, have admittedly blighted the fair humanities of old religion
into a dull catalogue of common things,[81] and no one more eloquently
deplores the situation than Sir James Frazer himself. As he says: “It is
indeed a melancholy and in some respects thankless task to strike at the
foundations of beliefs in which as in a strong tower the hopes and
aspirations of humanity through long ages have sought refuge from the
storm and stress of life. Yet sooner or later it is inevitable that the battery of
the Comparative Method should breach these venerable walls mantled over
with ivy and mosses, and wild flowers of a thousand tender and sacred
associations.”
When the Comparative Method is applied in a wider and more catholic spirit
than hitherto it will then—but not till then—be seen whether the fair

humanities are exploded superstitions or are sufficiently alive to blossom in
the dust.
It is quite proper to designate The Golden Bough a puppet-play of corn-
gods,[82] for the author himself, referring to Balder the Beautiful, writes:
“He, too, for all the quaint garb he wears, and the gravity with which he
stalks across the stage, is merely a puppet, and it is time to unmask him
before laying him up in the box”.
But to me the divinities of antiquity are not mere dolls to be patted
superciliously on the head and then remitted to the dustbin. Our own ideals
of to-day are but the idols or dolls of to-morrow, and even a golliwog if it
has comforted a child is entitled to sympathetic treatment. To the
understanding of symbolism sympathy is a useful key.
The words doll, idol, ideal, and idyll, which are all one and the same, are
probably due to the island of Idea which was one of the ancient names of
Crete. Not only was Crete known as Idæa, but it was also entitled Doliche,
which may be spelled to-day Idyllic. Crete, the Idyllic island, the island of
Ideas, was also known as Aeria, and I think it probably was the centre
whence was spun the gossamer of aerial and ethereal tales, which have made
the Isles of Greece a land of immortal romance. We shall also see as we
proceed that the mystic philosophy known to history as the Gnosis[83] was in
all probability the philosophy taught in prehistoric times at Gnossus, the far-
famed capital of Crete. From Gnossus, whence the Greeks drew all their
laws and science, came probably the Greek word gnosis, meaning
knowledge. But the mystic Gnosis connoted more than is covered by the
word knowledge: it claimed to be the wisdom of the ancients, and to disclose
the ideal value lying behind the letter of all mysteries, myths, and religious
ordinances.
I am convinced that the Christian Gnostics, with whom the Tertullian type
were in constant conflict, really did know much that they claimed, and that
had they not been trampled out of the light of day Europe would never have
sunk into the melancholy, well-designated Dark Ages. Gnostic emblems
have been found abundantly in Ireland: the Pythagorean or Gnostic symbol
known as the pentagon or Solomon’s seal occurs on British coins,[84] and the
Bardic literature of Wales is deeply steeped with a Gnostic mysticism for
which historians find it difficult to account. The facts which I shall adduce

in the following pages are sufficiently curious to permit the hope that they
may lead a few of us to become less self-complacent, and in the words of the
author of Ancient Britain relative to aboriginal Britons, “to think more of
those primitive ancestors. In some things we have sunk below their
level.”[85]

FOOTNOTES:
[39] Words and Places.
[40] Schliemann, Mykenæ.
[41] Cf. Johnson, W., Byways in British Archæology.
[42] The Cromlechs of Anglesey and Carnarvonshire.
[43] Ancient Britain, p. 70.
[44] Windle, Sir B. C. A., Life in Early Britain, p. 135.
[45] Johnston, Rev. James B., The Place-names of England and Wales, 1915, p.
321. The Horse-lie-down theory is enunciated by Sir Walter Besant.
[46] Preface to The Place-names of Oxfordshire.
[47] 1915.
[48] Cf. Bonwick, J., Irish Druids, p. 278.
[49] Virchow, intro. to Schliemann, Ilios XII.
[50] Cf. Brittany, p. 28.
[51] Clodd, Ed., The Story of Primitive Man, 9, 18.
[52] Sweet, H., The History of Language, p. vi.
[53] The Principles of Comparative Philology.
[54] Even after Troy had been discovered by Schliemann, Max Müller
maintained his belief that the Siege of Troy was a Sun and Dawn myth.
[55]
Alphana vient d’equus, sans doute,
Mais il faut avouer aussi
Qu’en venant de là jusqu’ici
Il a bien changé sur la route.
[56] Westropp, T. J., Proc. R. Irish Acad., xxxiv., C., 8, p. 159.
[57] Dallas, H. A.
[58] Norwood, J. W.
[59] Such obvious concoctions of the study as exsufflicate, deracinate,
incarnadine, etc., never strike root or survive.
[60] Petrie, W. M. F., The Formation of the Alphabet, p. 3.

[61] A Book of the Beginnings, 1, p. 136.
[62] Lectures on the English Language, 1862, p. 16.
[63] Quoted from ibid., p. 30.
[64] The Edin of the prehistoric British Dun edin, now Edinburgh, has been
calmly misappropriated to a supposed Edwin.
[65] Ancient Britain, pp. 273, 283.
[66] Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft.
[67] Johnson, W., Byways in British Archæology, p. 304.
[68] Cloudesley Brereton, in The Quest.
[69] Luniolatry, p. 2.
[70] Ancient Britain, p. 298.
[71] This dictum would have cheered the heart of Tertullian, who maintained that
God could never forgive an actor because Christ said: No man by taking thought
can add one cubit to his stature; a statement which the actor impiously falsified
by wearing high heeled boots. Commenting upon The Lost Language of
Symbolism, The Expository Times very courteously observed: “To the reader of
the Bible its worth is more than to all others, for the Bible is full of symbols and
we have lost their language. We are very prosaic. The writers of the Old
Testament and of the New were very imaginative. Between us there is a gulf
fixed of which we are aware only in unquiet moments.”
[72] “There must have been a time when a simple instinct for poetry was
possessed by all nations as it still is by uncivilised races and children. Among
European nations this instinct appears to be dead for ever. We can name neither a
mountain nor a flower.”—Prof. Weekley, Romance of Words. “Who did first
name the flowers? Who first gave them, not their Latin titles, but the old,
familiar, fanciful, poetic, rustic ones, that run so curiously alike in all the vulgar
tongues? Who first called the lilies of the valley the Madonna’s tears? the wild
blue hyacinth, St. Dorothy’s flower? the starry passiflora, the Passion of Christ;
who named them all first, in the old days that are forgotten? All the poets that
ever the world has known might have been summoned together for the baptism
of the flowers, and have failed to name them half so well as popular tradition has
done long ago in the dim lost ages, with names that still make all the world
akin.”—Anon.
[73] “This pretty name (which Fitzgerald, History of Limerick, vol. i., p. 320,
calls the River Dawn) arose from a change of Samhair or Samer to Caimher, ‘the
daybreak,’ or ‘Morning Star’”.—Westropp, T. J., Proc. of Royal Irish Acad.,
xxxiii., C. 2, p. 13.
[74] The peculiar temperament of “us moderns alone” is, I am afraid, more
acutely diagnosed by Prof. Weekley, in Surnames, where he observes: “The
‘practical man,’ when his attention is accidentally directed to the starry sky,
appraises that terrific spectacle with a non-committal grunt: but he would receive
with a positive snort any suggestion that the history of European civilisation is
contained in the names of his friends and acquaintances. Still, even the practical
man, if he were miraculously gifted with the power of interpreting surnames,

could hardly negotiate the length of Oxford Street on a motor-bus without
occasionally marvelling and frequently chuckling.”
[75] Coneybeare, Dr. F. C., The Historical Christ, p. 19. [Italics mine.] The views
of Dr. Coneybeare may be connoted with those of his fellow-cleric, the Rev. H.
C. Christmas: “The astrotheology into which Egyptian fables are ultimately
resolved having taken animals as symbols, soon elevated those symbols in the
minds of the people at large into real divinities. The signs of the zodiac were
worshipped, and the constellations not in that important circle did not go without
adoration. Various stars became noted as rising or setting at particular seasons,
and serving as marks of time; while the physical circumstances of the animal
creation gave an easy means of naming the stars and constellations, and thus
connected natural history with the symbolical theology of the times.... In their
[the Egyptians’] view the earth was but a mirror of the heavens, and celestial
intelligences were represented by beasts, birds, fishes, gems, and even by rocks,
metals, and plants. The harmony of the spheres was answered by the music of the
temples, and the world beheld nothing that was not a type of something
divine.”—Universal Mythology, 1838, p. 19.
[76] Quoted from Wentz, W. D. Y., The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries.
[77] “The current ignorance of those pre-Christian evidences that have been
preserved by the petrifying past must be wellnigh invincible when a man like
Prof. Jowett could say, as if with the voice of superstition in its dotage: ‘To us the
preaching of the Gospel is a New Beginning, from which we date all things;
beyond which we neither desire, nor are able, to inquire.’”—Massey, G., The
Logic of the Lord, 1897.
[78] Harrison, Miss Jane, Ancient Art and Ritual, pp. 192-3.
[79] A bogey of the present Bishop of London is not “no crops” but “no foreign
monarchs”. The Daily Chronicle of 13th May, 1914, reports his Lordship as
saying: “If the British Empire was not to be disgraced by the heart of London
becoming pagan, his fund must be kept going.” [Italics mine.] “Once religion
went, everything else went; it would be good-bye to the visits of foreign
monarchs to London, because Londoners would have disgraced the Empire and
themselves before the whole world.”
[80] The “celebrated but infamous” Petronius, surnamed Arbiter, philosophised
in the first century to the following up-to-date effect:—

Fear made the first divinities on earth
The sweeping flames of heaven; the ruined tower,
Scathed by its stroke. The softly setting sun,
The slow declining of the silver moon,
And its recovered beauty. Hence the signs
Known through the world, and the swift changing year,
Circling divided in its varied months.
Hence rose the error. Empty folly bade
The wearied husbandman to Ceres bring
The first fair honours of his harvest fields
To gird the brow of Bacchus with the palm,
And taught how Pales, ’mid the shepherd bands,
Stood and rejoiced, how Neptune in the flood
Plunged deep, and ruled the ever-roaring tide;
How Vallas reigned o’er earth’s stupendous caves
Mightily. He who vowed and he who reaped
With eager contest, made their gods themselves.
[81]
The intelligible forms of ancient poets
The fair humanities of old religion
The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty
That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain
Or forest or slow stream, or pebbly spring
Our chasms and watery depths; all these have vanished
They live no longer in the faith of reason.
—Coleridge.
[82] There is, of course, no novelty in these ideas, which are merely a
recrudescence and restatement of the notions to which Plutarch thus alludes:—
“We shall also get our hands on the dull crowd, who take pleasure in associating
the ideas about these gods either with changes of the atmosphere according to the
seasons, or with the generation of corn and sowings and ploughings, and in
saying that Osiris is buried when the sown corn is hidden by the earth, and comes
to life and shows himself again when it begins to sprout.... They should take very
good heed, and be apprehensive lest unwittingly they write off the sacred
mysteries and dissolve them into winds and streams and sowings and ploughings
and passions of earth and changes of seasons.”
[83] “The Gnostic movement began long before the Christian era (what its
original historical impulse was we do not know), and only one aspect of it, and
that from a strictly limited point of view, has been treated by ecclesiastical
historians.”—Lamplugh, Rev. F., The Gnosis of the Light, 1918, p. 10.
[84] Holmes, Rice, Ancient Britain, p. 295.
[85] Ibid., p. 373.

CHAPTER III
A TALE OF TROY
Upon the Syrian sea the people live,
Who style themselves Phœnicians,
These were the first great founders of the world—
Founders of cities and of mighty states—
Who showed a path through seas before unknown.
In the first ages, when the sons of men
Knew not which way to turn them, they assigned
To each his first department; they bestowed
Of land a portion and of sea a lot,
And sent each wandering tribe far off to share
A different soil and climate. Hence arose
The great diversity, so plainly seen,
’Mid nations widely severed.
—Dyonysius of Susiana, A.D. 300.

It is a modern axiom that the ancient belief expressed in the above extract
has no foundation in fact, and that the Phœnicians, however far-spread may
have been their commercial enterprise, never extended their voyages beyond
the Pillars of Hercules. It is conceded that it would be easy to demonstrate in
Britain the elaborate machinery of sun-worship, if only it could be shown
that there were at any time intimate and direct relations between Britain and
Phœnicia. 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 Phœnicians, and where do they come in? It
is a cruel thing to say to a generation which can ill afford to part with any
fragment of its diminished archæological patrimony; but it must be said
without reserve or qualification: the Phœnicians do not come in at all.”[86]
But before bidding a final and irrevocable adieu to Tyre and Tarshish, one is
entitled to inquire whence and how Phœnician or Hebrew words and place-
names reached this country, particularly on the western coasts. The cold-

shouldering of Oriental words has not extinguished their existence, and
although these changelings may no longer find an honoured home in our
Dictionaries, the terms themselves have survived the ignominy of their
expulsion and are as virile to-day as hitherto.
The English language, based upon an older stratum of speech and
perpetually assimilating new shades of sense, has descended in direct
ancestry from the Welsh or Kymbric, and Kymbric, still spoken to-day, has
come down to us in verbal continuity from immemorial ages prior to the
Roman invasion. It was at one time supposed that of the Celtic sister-
tongues the Irish or Gaelic was the more ancient, but according to the latest
opinion, “In the vocabularies of the two languages where strict phonetic
tests of origin can be applied it is found that the borrowing is mainly on the
side of the Irish”.[87] The identities between Welsh and Hebrew are so close
and pressing that from time to time claims have been put forward that the
old Welsh actually was Hebrew. “It would be difficult,” said Margoliouth,
“to adduce a single article or form of construction in the Hebrew Grammar,
but the same is to be found in Welsh, and there are many whole sentences in
both languages exactly the same in the very words”.[88] Entire sentences of
archaic Hebraisms are similarly to be found in the now obsolete Cornish
language, and there are “several thousand words of Hebrew origin” in the
Erse or Gaelic. According to Vallencey, “the language of the early
inhabitants of Ireland was a compound of Hebrew and Phœnician,”[89] and
this statement would appear to be substantiated by the curious fact that in
1827 the Bible Societies presented Hebrew Bibles to the native Irish in
preference to those printed in English, as it was found that the Irish peasants
understood Hebrew more readily than English.[90]
Is it conceivable that these identities of tongue are due to chance, or that the
terms in point permeated imperceptibly overland to the farthest outposts of
the Hebrides?
It is a traditional belief that the district now known as Cornwall had at some
period commercial relations with an overseas people, referred to
indifferently as “Jews,” “Saracens,” or “Finicians”. That certain of the
western tin mines were farmed by Jews within the historic period is a fact
attested by Charters granted by English kings, notably by King John; yet
there is a tradition among Cornish tinners that the “Saracens,” a term still
broadly applied to any foreigner, were not allowed to advance farther than

the coast lest they should discover the districts whence the tin was brought.
The entire absence of any finds of Phœnician coins is an inference that this
tradition is well founded, for it is hardly credible that had the “Finicians”
penetrated far inland or settled to any extent in the country, some of their
familiar coins would not have come to light.
The casual or even systematic visits of mere merchants will not account for
integral deep-seated identities. The Greeks had a powerful settlement at
Marseilles centuries before Cæsar’s time, yet the vicinity of these Greek
traders, although it may have exercised some social influences upon arts and
habits, did not effect any permanent impression on the language, religion, or
character of the Gaulish nation.
One is thus impelled to the conclusion that the resemblances between British
and Phœnician 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 Phœnicians, though so great and enterprising a people, have left no
literature; and it is thus impossible to compare their legends and traditions
with our own. With Crete the same difficulty exists, as at present her script
is indecipherable, and no one knows positively the name of a single deity of
her Pantheon.
There is no historic record of any intercourse between the British and the
Greeks, but both Irish and British traditions specify the Ægean as the district
whence their first settlers arrived. Tyndal, the earliest translator of the Greek
Testament into English, asserts that “The Greek agreeth more with the
English than the Latin, and the properties of the Hebrew tongue agreeth a
thousand times more with the English than with the Latin”. Happily Greece
possesses a literature, and one may thus compare the legends of Greece with
those of our own country.
An Hellenic author of the first century is thus rendered by Sir John Rhys:[91]
“Demetrius further said that of the islands round Britain many lie scattered
about uninhabited, of which some are named after deities and heroes. He
told us also that being sent by the Emperor with the object of reconnoitring
and inspecting, he went to the island which lay nearest to those uninhabited,
and found it occupied by few inhabitants who were, however, sacrosanct and
inviolable in the eyes of the Britons.... There is there, they said, an island in

which Cronus is imprisoned with Briareus, keeping guard over him as he
sleeps, for as they put it—sleep is the bond forged for Cronus. They add that
around him are many deities, his henchmen and attendants.”[92]
It is remarkable that Greek mythology was thus familiar to the supposedly
blue-painted savages of Britain. Nor is the instance solitary, for at Bradford
a Septennial festival used to be held in honour of Jason and the Golden
Fleece,[93] and at Achill in Ireland there is a custom which seemingly
connects Achill and Achilles. Pausanias tells the tale of young Achilles
attired in female garb and living among maidens, and to this day the
peasantry of Achill Island on the north-west coast of Ireland dresses its boys
as girls for the supposed purpose of deceiving a boy-seeking devil.[94] Are
these and other coincidences which will be adduced due to chance, to
independent working of the primitive mind, or to intercourse with a
maritime people who were not restricted by the Pillars of Hercules?
The exit of the Phœnicians has created a dilemma which impels Mr. Donald
A. Mackenzie to inquire: “By whom were Egyptian beads carried to Britain
between 1500 B.C. and 1400 B.C.? Certainly not the Phœnicians. The sea-
traders of the Mediterranean were at the time the Cretans. Whether or not
their merchants visited England we have no means of knowing.”[95] There
are, however, sure and certain sources of information if one looks into the
indelible evidence of fairy-tales, monuments, language, traditions, and
place-names.
Ammianus Marcellinus records that it was a traditional belief among the
Gauls that “a few Trojans fleeing from the Greeks and dispersed occupied
these places then uninhabited”.[96] The similar tradition pervading early
British literature we shall consider in due course and detail. This legend runs
broadly that Bru or Brutus, after sailing for thirty days and thirty nights,
landed at Totnes, whence after slaying the giant Gogmagog and his
followers he marched to Troynovant or New Troy now named London.
It was generally believed that this supposed fiction was a fabrication by
Geoffrey of Monmouth, but it was subsequently discovered in the historical
poems of Tyssilia, a Welsh Bard. According to a poem attributed to Taliesin,
the semi-mythical “Chief of the Bards of the West,” whose reputation Sir J.
Morris Jones has recently so brilliantly resuscitated,[97] “A numerous race,
fierce, they are said to have been, were thy original colonists Britain first of

Isles. Natives of a country in Asia, and the city of Gafiz. Said to have been a
skilful people, but the district is unknown which was mother to these
children, warlike adventurers on the sea. Clad in their long dress who could
equal them? Their skill is celebrated, they were the dread of Europe.”
According to the Welsh Triads the first-comer to these islands was not Bru,
but a mysterious and mighty Hu: “The first of the three chieftains who
established the colony was Hu the Mighty, who came with the original
settlers. They came over the hazy sea from the summer country, which is
called Deffrobani; that is where Constantinople now stands.”[98]
Although, as will subsequently be seen, Hu and Bru were seemingly one and
the same, it is not to be supposed that Britain can have been populated from
one solitary shipload of adventurers; argosy after argosy must have reached
these shores. The name Albion suggests Albania, and in due course I shall
connect not only Giant Alban, but also the Lady Albion and the fairy Prince
Albion with Albania, Albany, and “Saint” Alban.
The Albanian Greek is still characterised by hardihood, activity, bodily
strength, and simplicity of living; and there is unquestionably some
connection between the highlanders of Albania and the highlanders of
Albany who, up to a few hundred years ago, used to rush into battle with the
war-cry of “Albani! Albani!” By the present-day Turk the Albanians are
termed Arnaouts.[99] Whether this name has any connection with argonauts
is immaterial, as the historic existence of argonauts and argosies is a matter
of fact, not fancy. A typical example of the primitive argosies is recorded in
the British Chronicles where the arrival of Hengist and Horsa is described.
Layamon’s Brut attributes to Hengist the following statement:—
“Our race is of a fertile stock, more quick and abounding than any other you
may know, or whereof you have heard speak. Our folk are marvellously
fruitful, and the tale of the children is beyond measure. Women and men are
more in number than the sand, for the greater sorrow of those amongst us
who are here. When our people are so many that the land may not sustain
nor suffice them, then the princes who rule the realm assemble before them
all the young men of the age of fifteen and upwards, for such is our use and
custom. From out of these they choose the most valiant and the most strong,
and, casting lots, send them forth from the country, so that they may travel
into divers lands, seeking fiefs and houses of their own. Go out they must,

since the earth cannot contain them; for the children come more thickly than
the beasts which pasture in the fields. Because of the lot that fell upon us we
have bidden farewell to our homes, and putting our trust in Mercury, the god
has led us to your realm.”
In all probability this is a typical and true picture of the perennial argosies
which periodically and persistently fared forth from Northern Europe and
the Mediterranean into the Unknown.
The Saxons came here peaceably; they were amicably received, and it would
be quite wrong to imagine the early immigrations as invasions involving any
abrupt breach in place-names, customs, and traditions. Of the Greeks, Prof.
Bury says: “They did not sweep down in a great invading host, but crept in,
tribe by tribe, seeking not political conquest but new lands and homesteads”.
At the time of Cæsar the tribe occupying the neighbourhood of modern
London were known as the Trinovantes,[100] and as these people can hardly
be supposed to have adopted their title for the purpose of flattering a poetic
fiction in far Wales, the name Trinovant lends some support to the Bardic
tradition that London was once termed Troy Novant or New Troy. Argonauts
of a later day christened their new-found land New York, and this
unchangingly characteristic tendency of the emigrant no doubt accounts for
the perplexing existence of several cities each named “Troy”. That many
shiploads of young argonauts from one or another Troy reached the coasts of
Cornwall is implied by the fact that in Cornwall tre’s were seemingly so
numerous that tre became the generic term for home or homestead. It is
proverbial that by tre, pol, and pen, one may know the Cornish men.

Fig. 8.—Welsh Shepherd’s “Troy
Town.”

From Prehistoric London (Gordon,
E. O.).

Fig. 9.—Cretan maze-coins and British
mazes at Winchester, Alkborough, and
Saffron Walden.
From Prehistoric London (Gordon, E. O.).
[To face p. 87
Borlase, in his glossary of Cornish words, gives both tre and dre as meaning
dwelling; the Welsh for Troy is Droia, the Greek was Troie, and this
invariable interchange of t and d is again apparent in derry, the Irish
equivalent for the Cornish tre. The standard definition of true is firm or
certain; whence it may appear that the primeval “Troys” were, so to speak,
the permanent addresses of the wandering families and tribes. These Troys
or trues were maybe caves—whence trou, the French for hole or cave;
maybe the foot of a big tree, preferably the sacred oak-tree, which was alike
sacred in Albion and Albania. Tree is the same word as true, and dru, the
Sanscrit for tree, is the same word as dero or derry, the Irish for oak tree, as

in Londonderry, Kildare, etc. The Druids have been generally supposed to
have derived their title of Druid from the drus or oak tree under which they
worshipped, but it is far more probable that the tree was named after the
Druids, and that druid (the accusative and dative of drui, a magician or
sorcerer), is radically the Persian duru, meaning a good holy man, the
Arabic deri, meaning a wise man.[101]
But apart from the generic term tre or dre there are numerous “Troy Towns”
and “Draytons” in Britain. Part of Rochester is called Troy Town, which
may be equated with the Duro- of Durobrevis the ancient name of
Rochester. There is a river Dray in Thanet and the ancient name for
Canterbury was Durovern. Seemingly all over Britain the term Troy Town
was applied to the turf-cut mazes of the downs and village greens, and the
hopscotch of the London urchin is said to be the Troy game of the Welsh
child.
In London, tempus Edward II., a military ride and tournament used to be
performed by the young men of the royal household on every Sunday during
Lent.[102] This also so-called Troy game had obviously some relation to the
ancient Trojan custom thus described by Virgil:—

In equal bands the triple troops divide,
Then turn, and rallying, with spears bent low,
Charge at the call. Now back again they ride,
Wheel round, and weave new courses to and fro,
In armed similitude of martial show,
Circling and intercircling. Now in flight
They bare their backs, now turning, foe to foe,
Level their lances to the charge, now plight
The truce, and side by side in friendly league unite.

E’en as in Crete the Labyrinth of old
Between blind walls its secret hid from view,
With wildering ways and many a winding fold,
Wherein the wanderer, if the tale be true,
Roamed unreturning, cheated of the clue;
Such tangles weave the Teucrians, as they feign
Fighting, or flying, and the game renew;
So dolphins, sporting on the watery plane,
Cleave the Carpathian waves and distant Libya’s main.

These feats Ascanius to his people showed,
When girdling Alba Longa; there with joy
The ancient Latins in the pastime rode,
Wherein the princely Dardan, as a boy,
Was wont his Trojan comrades to employ.
To Alban children from their sires it came,
And mighty Rome took up the “game of Troy,”
And called the players “Trojans,” and the name
Lives on, as sons renew the hereditary game.[103]

In Welsh tru means a twisting or turning, and this root is at the base of
tourney and tournament. One might account for the courtly jousts of the
English Court by the erudition and enterprise of scholars and courtiers, but
when we find turf Troy Towns being dug by the illiterate Welsh shepherd
and a Troy game being played by the uneducated peasant, the question
naturally arises, “What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?” In the Scilly

Islands there is a Troy Town picked out in stones which the natives
scrupulously restore and maintain: in the words of Miss Courtney, “All
intricate places in Cornwall are so denominated, and I have even heard
nurses say to children, when they were surrounded by a litter of toys, that
they looked as if they were in Troy Town”.[104]
In the Æneid Virgil observes that “Tyrians and Trojans shall I treat as one”.
Apart from Tyrians and Trojans the term Tyrrheni or Tyrseni was applied to
the Etrurians—a people the mystery of whose origin is one of the unsolved
riddles of archæology. It was Etruria that produced not only Dante, but also
a galaxy of great men such as no other part of Europe has presented. In
Etruria woman was honoured as nowhere else in Europe except, perhaps, in
Crete and among the Kelts; and in Etruria—as in Crete—religion was veiled
under an “impenetrable cloud of mysticism and symbolism”.
It is supposed that Etruria derived much from the prehistoric Greeks who
dwelt in Albania and worshipped Father Zeus in the sacred derrys or oak-
groves of Dodona. The Etrurians and Greeks were unquestionably of close
kindred, and it would seem from their town of Albano and their river
Albanus that the Etrurians similarly venerated St. Alban or Prince Albion.
The capital of Etruria was Tarchon, so named after the Etruscan Zeus, there
known as Tarchon. In the Introduction to The Cities and Cemeteries of
Etruria, Dennis points out that for ages the Etruscans were lords of the sea,
rivalling the Phœnicians in enterprise; founding colonies in the islands of the
Tyrrhene Sea “even on the coast of Spain where Tarragona (in whose name
we recognise that of Tarchon) appears to have been one of their settlements
—a tradition confirmed by its ancient fortifications. Nay, the Etruscans
would fain have colonised the far ‘islands of the blest’ in the Atlantic Ocean,
probably Madeira or one of the Canaries, had not the Carthaginians opposed
them.”
The title Madeira, which is radically deira, might imply an origin from
either Tyre or Troy, and if place-names have any significance it seems
probable the Etrurians reached even our remote Albion. One may recognise
Targon as at Tarragona in Pentargon, the sonorous, resounding title of a
mighty pen or headland near Tintagel, and it is not unlikely Tarchon or
Tarquin survives in giant Tarquin who is popularly associated with
Cumberland and the North of England. In Arthurian legend it is seemingly
this same Tarquin that figures as Sir Tarquin, a false knight who was the

enemy of the Round Table and a sworn foe to Lancelot: “They hurtled
together like two wild bulls, rashing and lashing with their shields and
swords, that sometimes they fell both over their noses. Thus they fought still
two hours and more and never would have rest.”[105]
It will become increasingly evident as we proceed that tur or true served
frequently as an adjective, meaning firm, constant, durable, and eternal, and
that it is thus used in the name Tarchon, 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 King Arthur, which, before being known as
Tintagel, was named Dunechein or the dun of chein. At Durovern (now
Canterbury) is a large tumulus known as the Dane John, and on the heights
behind St. Just in Cornwall is Chun Castle.[106] This is a noble specimen of
Cyclopean architecture, and appears to be parallel in style of building with
the Cyclopean architecture of Etruria. Similarly, in the Dune Chein
neighbourhood may be seen Cyclopean and “herring-bone” walls, which
seemingly do not differ from those of Crete and Etruria.
At Winchelsea in Sussex are the foundations and the doorway of an ancient
building known as “Trojans or Jews’ Hall,” but of the history of these ruins
nothing whatever is known. There is, however, little if any doubt that Trojan
or Tarchon was an alternative title of the Etrurian Jonn, Jupiter, or Jou, and
that to the Cretan Jou the Greeks added their piter or father, making thereby
Jupiter or Father Jou. Jou was the title of a kingly dynasty in Crete, but the
custom of royal dynasties taking their title from the All Father likened to the
Sun is so constant as almost to constitute a rule.
The word Jew, when pronounced yew, will be considered subsequently; it
may here be pointed out that Jay, Gee, and Joy are common surnames,
query, once tribal names in Britain. Near Penzance is Marazion or Market
Jew, and it may be suggested that the traditional Cornish “Jews” were pre-
Phœnician followers of the Cretan Jou. With Market-Jew one may connote
Margate, which, as will be shown later, was probably in its origin—like

Marazion or Mara San—a port of mer, or mère, the generic terms for sea
and mother. It is a well-recognised fact that Brittany, Cornwall, and Wales
spoke more or less the same tongue, and according to Cæsar in his time
there was little or no difference between the languages of Gaul and Britain.
As will also be seen later it is probable that the words mer and mère, and the
names Maria and Marie, are radically rhi, the Celtic for lady or princess;
that Rhea, the Mother-Goddess of Crete, is simply rhia, the Gælic and the
Welsh for queen, and that Maria meant primarily Mother Queen, or Mother
Lady. The early forms of Marazion figure as Marhasyon, Marhasion, etc.
Among the Basques of Spain jaun meant lord or master; in British chun or
cun meant mighty chief,[107] whence it is probable that the name Tarchon
meant Eternal Chief or Eternal Lord, and this anonymity would accord with
the custom which most anciently prevailed at Dodona. “In early times,” says
Herodotus, “the Pelasgi, as I know by information which I got at Dodona,
offered sacrifices of all kinds and prayed to the gods, but had no distinct
names and appellations for them, since they had never heard of any. They
called them gods (theoi) because they had disposed and arranged all things
in such a beautiful order.”[108]
The eternal Chon or Jonn of Etruria may be recognised Latinised in Janus,
the most ancient deity of Rome or Janicula, and we may perhaps find him
not only in John of Cornwall but among the innumerable Jones of Wales.
The Ionians or Greeks of Ionia worshipped Ione, the Holy Dove, whence
they are said to have derived their title. In Greek, ione, in Hebrew, juneh,
means a dove, and the Scotch island of Iona is indelibly permeated with
stories and traditions of St. Columba or Columbkille, the Little Dove of the
Church. The dove was the immemorial symbol of Rhea, and it is highly
probable that it was originally connected with the place-name Reculver, of
which the root is unknown, but “has been influenced by Old English culfre,
culver, a culver dove or wood pigeon”.[109] In Cornwall there is a St.
Columb Major and St. Columb Minor, where the dedication is to a virgin of
this name, and on the coast of Thanet the shoal now called Columbine,
considered in conjunction with the neighbouring place-names Roas Bank
and Rayham, may be assumed to be connected with Rhea’s sacred
Columbine or Little Dove. A neighbouring spit is marked Cheney Spit, and
close at hand are Cheyney Rocks. There is thus some probability that Great
Cheyne Court, Little Cheyne Court, Old Cheyne Court, New Cheyne Court,

and the Kentish surname Joynson have all relation to the mysterious ruin
“Trojans or Jews Hall”.

Fig. 11.—From The Cities
Fig. 10.—From Nineveh (Layard). and Cemeteries of Etruria
(Dennis, G.).

Fig. 11 shows the Goddess of Etruria holding her symbolic columba, in Fig.
10, the same emblem worshipped in Assyria is being carried with pomp and
circumstance, and Fig. 12 shows the columba, turtle, or tortora, being
similarly honoured in Western Europe.
“Throughout the Ægean,” says Prof. Burrows, “we see traces of the Minoan
Empire, in one of the most permanent of all traditions the survival of a
place-name; the word Minoa, wherever it occurs, must mark a fortress or
trading station of the Great King as surely as the Alexandrias, or Antiochs,
or Cæsareas of later days.”[110]

Fig. 12.—From The Everyday Book (Hone, W.).
If a modern place-name be valid evidence in the Mediterranean, the place-
name Minnis Bay between Margate and Reculver has presumably a similar
weight, particularly as a few miles further round the coast is a so-called
Minnis Rock. Here is an ancient hermitage consisting of a three-mouthed
cave measuring precisely 9 feet deep. King Minos of Crete held his kingship
on a tenure of nine years, and the number nine is peculiarly identified with
the idea of Troy, true, or permanent. In Hebrew, truth and nine are
represented by one and the same term, because nine is so extraordinarily
true or constant to itself, that 9 × 9 = 81 = 9, 9 × 2 = 18 = 9, and so from
nine times one to nine times nine.
In Crete there were no temples, but worship was conducted around small
caves situated in the side of hills. This is precisely the position of Minnis
Rock which is situated in a valley running up from Hastings to St. Helens.
“It is,” says the local guide-book, “one of the few rock cells in the country,
and though almost choked with earth and rubbish is still worth inspection.
The three square-headed openings were the entrances to the separate

chambers of the cave, which went back 9 feet into the rock. It is surmised
that the Hermitage was used as a chapel or oratory, dedicated probably to St.
Mary, or some other saint beloved of those who go down to the sea in ships.
Many such chapels existed in olden times within sight and sound of the
waves, and passing vessels lowered their topsails to them in reverence.
Torquay, Broadstairs, Dover, Reculver, Whitby, and other places in England
had similar oratories.”[111]
The Etruscans or Tyrrhenians believed in a Hierarchy of Nine Great Gods.
Minos of Crete was not merely one of a line of mighty sea-kings, but Greek
mythology asserts that Minos was the son of Zeus, i.e., Jonn or Tarchon. In a
subsequent chapter we shall consider him at length, but meanwhile it may be
noted that it is not unlikely that the whole of Eastern Kent was known as
Minster, Minosterre, or Minos Terra. There are several Minsters in Sheppey,
and another Minster together with a Mansion near Margate. The generic
terms minster and monastery may be assigned to the ministers of Minos
originally congregating in cells or trous or in groves under and around the
oaks or other similarly sacred trees.
Troy, or as Homer terms it, “sacred Troy,” was pre-eminently a city of
towers, tourelles, turrets, or tors, and in the West of England tor, as in
Torquay, Torbay, etc., is ubiquitous. Tory Island, off the coast of Ireland, is
said to have derived its title from the numerous torrs upon it. The same word
is prevalent throughout Britain, but there are no torrs at Sindry Island in
Essex nor at 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”.[112] Tarshish is usually considered to have been the
western coast of the Mediterranean afterwards called Gaul, in later times
Spain and France, and undoubtedly the men of Tarshish, Tyre, Troy, or
Etruria, toured, trekked, travelled, tramped, traded, and trafficked far and
wide. Etrurian vases have been disinterred in Tartary and also, it is said,
from tumuli in Norway, yet as Mrs. Hamilton Gray observes: “We believe
that they were never made in those countries, and that the Tartars and
Norwegians never worshipped, and possibly never even knew the names of
the gods and heroes thereon represented”.[113] These vases more often than

not depicted incidents of Trojan legend, and of that famous Troy whose
exploits in the words of Virgil “fired the world”.
The Tyrians conceived their chief god Hercules or Harokel as a bagman or
merchant, and in Phœnician the word harokel meant merchant. Our own
term merchant[114] is etymologically akin to Mercury, the god of merchants,
and as mere among other meanings meant pure or true, it is not unlikely that
merchant was once the intellectual equivalent to Tarchon or True John. In
the West of England the adjective “jonnock” still means true,
straightforward, generous, unselfish, and companionable.[115] The adjective
chein still used by Jews means very much the same as jonnock, with,
however, the additional sense of the French chic. Jack is the diminutive
endearing form of John, and the Etruscan Joun is said to have been the
Hebrew Jack or Iou.[116] Joun or his consort Jana was in all probability the
divinity of the Etruscan river Chiana, and Giant or Giantess Albion the
divinity of the neighbouring river Albinia.
Close to Market Jew or Marazion is a village called Chyandour, where is a
well named Gulfwell, meaning, we are told, the “Hebrew brook”. It is still a
matter of dispute whether the Jews shipped their tin from Market Jew or
overland from Thanet (? Margate[117]). From the word tariff, a Spanish and
Arabian term connected with Tarifa, the southernmost town in Spain, it
would seem that the dour and daring traders who carried on their traffic with
Market Jew and Margate toured with a tarifa or price-list. Doubtless the
tariff charges were commensurate with the risks involved, for only too
frequently, as is stated in the Psalms, “the ships of Tarshish were broken
with an east wind”. To try a boat means to-day to bring her head to the gale,
and in Somersetshire small ships are still entitled trows, a word evidently
akin to trough.
The Etruscans or Tyrrhenians represented Hercules
the Great Merchant in a kilt, and this seemingly was
a tartan or French tiretaine. Speaking of certain
figures unearthed at Tarchon, Dennis remarks: “The
drapery of the couches is particularly worthy of
notice, being marked with stripes of different
colours crossing each other as in the Highland plaid;
and those who are learned in tartanology might

Fig. 13 possibly pronounce which of the Macs has the
strongest claim to an Etruscan origin”.[118]
Fig. 13 reproduced from Mrs. Murray Aynsley’s Symbolism of the East and
West, is taken from a fragment of pottery found in what is believed to be a
pre-Etruscan cemetery at Bologna in Italy. It might be a portrait of Hendry
or Sander bonneted in his glengarry, armed with a target, and trekking off
with two terriers. Terre, or terra firma, the earth, is the same as true,
meaning firm or constant. According to Skeat the present form of the verb
tarry is due to tarien, terien, “to irritate, provoke, worry, vex; hence to
hinder, delay”. Having “tarried” an order there was, it may be, still further
“tarrying” on presentation of the tariff, and it may be assumed that the
author of The Odyssey had been personally “tarried” for he refers feelingly
to—
A shrewd Phœnician, 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 Phœnicia, where his house
And his possessions lay; there I abode
A year complete his inmate; but (the days
And months accomplish’d of the rolling year
And the new seasons ent’ring on their course)
To Lybia then, on board his bark, by wiles
He won me with him, partner of the freight
Profess’d, but destin’d secretly to sale,
That he might profit largely by my price.
Not unsuspicious, yet constrain’d to go,
With this man I embark’d.
The hero of The Odyssey was, self-confessedly, no tyro, but was himself “in
artifice well framed and in imposture various”. Admittedly he “utter’d
prompt not truth, but figments to truth opposite, for guile in him stood never
at a pause”.[119] Obviously he was a sailor to the bone, and when he says, “I
boast me sprung from ancestry renowned in spacious Crete,” with the
additional statement that at one time he was an Admiral of Crete, it is
possible we are in face of a fragment of genuine autobiography.

Doubtless, as our traditions state, the first adventurers on the sea who
reached these shores were oft-times terrors and “the dread of Europe”. To
the Tyrrhenes may probably be assigned the generic term tyrranos which,
however, meant primarily not a tyrant as now understood, but an autocrat or
lord. “Clad in their long dress who could equal them?” wondered a British
Bard, and it may be that the long robes figured herewith are the very moulds
of form which created such a powerful impression among our predecessors.
The word attire points to the possibility that at one time Tyre set the fashions
for the latest tire, and like modern Paris fired the contemporary world of
dress. In connection with the word dress, which is radically dre, it is
noticeable that the Britons were conspicuously dressy men; indeed, Sir John
Rhys, discussing the term Briton, Breton, or Brython, seriously maintains
that “the only Celtic words which can be of the same origin are the Welsh
vocables brethyn, ‘cloth and its congeners,’ in which case the Britons may
have styled themselves ‘cloth-clad,’ in contradistinction to the skin-wearing
neolithic nation that preceded them”.
We know from Homer that the Trojans had a pretty
taste in tweeds, and that their waistcoats in
particular were subjects of favourable remark:—
They 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.
FIGURES ON ANCIENT Time does not alter the radical characteristics of any
BRONZES FOUND IN THE race, and the outstanding qualities of the Britons—
TYROL. the traditional “remnant of Droia,” are still very
Fig. 14.—From The much to-day what they were in the time of Diodorus
Cities and Cemeteries the Sicilian. “They are,” said he, “of much sincerity
of Etruria (Dennis, and integrity far from the craft and knavery of men
G.). among us.”[120] So great was the Trojan reputation
for law and order that the Greeks who owed their
code of laws to Crete paid Minos the supreme compliment of making him
the Lord Chief Justice of the World of Shades. It will probably prove that the
droits, laws, rights, or dues of “Dieu et mon Droit” are traceable to those of
Troy, as also perhaps the Triads or triple axioms of the Drui or Druids. To
put a man on trial was originally perhaps to try or test him at the sacred tree:

the triadic form of ancient maxims had doubtless some relation to the
Persian Trinity of Good Thought, Good Deed, Good Word, and these three
virtues were symbolised by the trefoil or shamrock. The Hebrew for law is
tora or thorah, the Hill of Tara in Ireland (middle-Irish, Temair), is
popularly associated with the trefoil symbol of the Trinity (Welsh, Drindod);
that three, trois, or drei was associated by the game of Troy is obvious from
Virgil’s reference to the “triple groups dividing,” and that the trefoil was
venerated in Crete would appear from Mr. Mackenzie’s statement: “Of
special interest, too, is a clover-leaf ornament—an anticipation of the Irish
devotion to the shamrock”.[121]
The primitive trysts were probably at the old Trysting Trees; trust means
reliability and credit and truce means peace. Among rude nations the men
who carried with them Peace, Law, and Order must naturally have been
deemed supermen or gods, hence perhaps why in Scandinavia Tyr meant
god. Our Thursday is from Thor—a divinity who was sometimes assigned
three eyes—and our Tuesday from Tyr, who was supposed to be the
Scandinavian Joupiter. The plural form of Tyr meant “glorious ones,” and
according to The Edda, not only were the Danes and Scandinavians
wanderers from Troy or Tyrkland, but Asgard itself—the Scandinavian
Paradise—preserved the old usages and customs brought from Troy.[122]
Homer by sidelights indicates that the Trojans were nice in their domestic
arrangements, took fastidious care of their attire, and were confirmed lovers
of fresh air. Thus Telemachus—
Open’d his broad chamber-valves, and sat
On his couch-side: then putting off his vest
Of softest texture, placed it in the hands
Of the attendant dame discrete, who first
Folding it with exactest care, beside
His bed suspended it, and, going forth,
Drew by its silver ring the portal close,
And fasten’d it with bolt and brace secure.
There lay Telemachus, on finest wool
Reposed, contemplating all night his course
Prescribed by Pallas to the Pylian shore.[123]

The word “Trojan” was used in Shakespeare’s time to mean a boon
companion, a jonnock tyro, or a plucky fellow, and it is worthy of note that
the trusty lads of Homer’s time passed, as does the Briton of to-day, their
liquor scrupulously from left to right:—
So spake Jove’s daughter; they obedient heard.
The heralds, then, pour’d water on their hands,
And the attendant youths, filling the cups,
Served them from left to right.[124]
One of the most remarkable marvels of Cretan archæology is the up-to-date
drainage system, and that the Tyrrhenians were equally particular is recorded
apparently for all time by the Titanic evidence of the still-standing Cloaca
Maxima or great main drain of Rome.
The word Troy carries inevitable memories of Helen whose beauty was such
utter perfection that “the Helen of one’s Troy” has become a phrase. The
name Helen is philologically allied to Helios the Sun, and is generally
interpreted to mean torch, shiner, or giver of light. The Greeks called
themselves Hellenes, after Hellen their eponymous divine leader. Oriental
nations termed the Hellenes, Iones, and there is little doubt that Helen and
Ione were originally synonymous. In Etruria was the city of Hellana, and we
shall meet St. Helen in Great Britain, from Helenium, the old name for
Land’s End, to Great St. Helen’s and Little St. Helen’s in London. St. Helen,
the lone daughter of Old King Cole, the merry old soul, figures in Wales and
Cumberland as Elen the Leader of Hosts, whose memory is preserved not
only in Elaine the Lily Maid, but also in connection with ancient roadways
such as Elen’s Road, and Elen’s Causeway. These, suggests Squire, “seem to
show that the paths on which armies marched were ascribed or dedicated to
her”.[125] Helen’s name was seemingly bestowed not only on our rivers, such
as the Elen, Alone, or Alne and Allan Water, but it likewise seems to have
become the generic term lan meaning holy enclosure, entering into
innumerable place-names—London[126] among others—which will be
discussed in course. The character in which Helen was esteemed may be
judged from the Welsh adjective alain, which means “exceeding fair, lovely,
bright”. Not only in Wales but also in Ireland Allen seems to have been
synonymous with beauty, whence the authorities translate the place-name
Derryallen to mean oakwood beautiful. In Arthurian romance Elaine or Elen
figures as the sister of Sir Tirre,[127] as the builder of the highest fortress in

Arvon, and as sitting lone or alone in a sea-girt castle on a throne of ruddy
gold. It is said that so transcendent was her beauty that it would be no more
easy to look into her face than to gaze at the sun when his rays were most
irresistible. It would thus seem that Howel, said to be Elen’s brother, may be
equated with hoel, the Celtic for Sun, and that Elen herself, like Diana, was
the glorious twin-sister of Helios or Apollo.
The principal relics of St. Helena are possessed by the city of Treves, and at
Therapne in Greece there was a special sanctuary of Helena the divinely fair
daughter of Zeus and a swan. “Troy weight,” so called, originated, it is
supposed, from the droits or standards of a famous fair held at Troyes in
France.
From time immemorial Crete seems to have been associated with the
symbol of the cross. This pre-Christian Cross of Crete was the equi-limbed
Cross of St. John (Irish Shane) which form is also the Red Cross of St.
George. In earlier times this cross was termed the Jack—a familiar form of
“the John”—and it was also entitled “the Christopher”. In India the cave
temple of Madura, where Kristna[128]-worship is predominant, is cruciform,
and the svastika or solar cross, a variant of John’s Cross, is in one of its
Indian forms known as the Jaina cross and the talisman of the Jaina kings.
“It must never be forgotten,” said a prince of the Anglican Church preaching
recently at St. Paul’s, “that the cross was primarily an instrument of torture.”
Among a certain school, who in Apostolic phrase deem themselves of all
men most miserable, this conception is firmly fixed and seemingly it ever
has been. It was Calvinistic doctrine that all pain and suffering came from
the All Father, and that all pleasure and joy originated from the Evil One.
Thus to Christianity the Latin Cross has been the symbol of misery and the
concrete conception of Christian Ideal is the agonised Face of the Old
Masters. This dismal verity was exemplified afresh by the melancholy poster
which was recently scattered broadcast over England by the National
Mission engineered by the Bishop of London. Even the Mexican cross,
consisting of four hearts vis a vis (Fig. D)—a form which occurs sometimes
in Europe—has been daubed with imaginary gore, and with reference to this
inoffensive emblem the author of The Cross: Heathen and Christian
complacently writes: “The lady to whom I have just alluded considers (and I
think with great propriety) that the circle of crosses formed by groups of

four hearts represents hearts sacrificed to the gods; the dot on each
signifying blood”.[2]

Fig. 15.—From The Cross: Heathen and Christian
(Brock, M.).
But we shall meet with these same dots on prehistoric British cross-coins as
also on the “spindle whorls” of the most ancient Troy, and it will be seen
that, apart from the word svastika which intrinsically means it is well, the
svastika or pre-Christian cross was an emblem not of Melancholia but Joy.

The English word joy and the French word jeu have, I think, been derived
from Jou, just as jovial is traceable from Jove, and 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. Cres, the son of Jou, after whom the Cretans were termed Eteocretes,
is an elementary form of Christopher, and the burning cross with which the
legends state Christopher was tortured by being branded on the brow was
more probably the Christofer or Jack—the Fiery Cross, with which
irresistible talisman the clansmen of Albany were summoned together.
Similarly the solar wheel of Katherine or The Pure One was supposed by the
mediæval monks—whose minds were permanently bent on melancholia and
torture—to have been some frightful implement of knives and spikes by
which Kate or Kitt, the Pure Maiden, was torn into pieces. It will be seen in
due course that almost every single “torture” sign of the supposed martyrs
was in reality the pre-Christian emblem of some pagan divinity whence the
saintly legends were ignorantly and mistakenly evolved.
When the Saxon monks came into power, in the manner characteristic of
their race, they “tarried” the old British monasteries and sacred mounds,
bringing to light many curious and extraordinary things. At St. Albans they
overthrew and filled up all the subterranean crypts of the ancient city as well
as certain labyrinthine passages which extended even under the bed of the
river. The most world-famous labyrinth was that at Gnossus which has not
yet been uncovered, but every Etrurian place of any import had its
accompanying catacombs, and in the chapter on “Dene holes” we shall
direct attention to corresponding labyrinths which remain intact in England
even to-day.
When pillaging at St. Albans the Saxons found not only anchors, oars, and
parts of ships, imputing that St. Albans was once a port, but they also
uncovered the foundations of “a vast palace”. “Here,” says Wright,[129]
“they found a hollow in the wall like a cupboard in which were a number of
books and rolls, which were written in ancient characters and language that
could only be read by one learned monk named Unwona. He declared that
they were written in the ancient British language, that they contained ‘the
invocations and rites of the idolatrous citizens of Waertamceaster,’ with the
exception of one which contained the authentic life of St. Albans.” And as

the Abbot before mentioned “diligently turned up the earth” where the ruins
of Verulamium appeared, he found many other interesting things—pots and
amphoras elegantly formed of pottery turned on the lathe, glass vessels,
ruins of temples, altars overturned, idols, and various kinds of coins.
Many of the jewels and idols then uncovered remained long in the
possession of the Abbey, and are scheduled in the Ecclesiastical inventories
together with a memorandum of the human weaknesses against which each
object was supposed to possess a talismanic value. Thus Pegasus or
Bellerophon is noted as food for warriors, giving them boldness and
swiftness in flight; Andromeda as affording power of conciliating love
between man and woman; Hercules slaying a lion, as a singular defence to
combatants. The figure of Mercury on a gem rendered the possessor wise
and persuasive; a dog and a lion on the same stone was a sovereign remedy
against dropsy and the pestilence; and so on and so forth.
“I am convinced,” says Wright, “that a large portion of the reliques of saints
shown in the Middle Ages, were taken from the barrows or graves of the
early population of the countries in which they were shown. It was well
understood that those mounds were of a sepulchral character, and there were
probably few of them which had not a legend attached. When the earlier
Christian missionaries and the later monks of Western Europe wished to
consecrate a site their imagination easily converted the tenant of the lonely
mound into a primitive saint—the tumulus was ransacked and the bones
were found—and the monastery or even a cathedral was erected over the site
which had been consecrated by the mystics rites of an earlier age.”[130] After
purification by a special form of exorcism the pagan pictures were accepted
into Christian service, the designs being construed into Christian doctrines
far from the purpose of the things themselves.
Among the monkish loot at St. Albans was an ancient cameo herewith
reproduced. This particular jewel was supposed to be of great efficacy and
was entitled Kaadman; “perhaps,” suggests Wright, “another mode of
spelling cadmeus or cameus”. But in view of the fact that Alban means all
good, it was more probably the picture of a sacred figure which the natives
recognised as the original Kaadman, i.e., Guidman or the Good Man.[131]
The jewels found at St. Albans being unquestionably Gnostic it is quite
within the bounds of probability that the Kaadman seal was an “idol” of
what the Gnostics entitled Adam Caedmon or Adam Kadman. According to

C. W. King the Adam Kadman or Primitive Man of
Gnosticism, was the generative and conceptive
principle of life and heat, Who manifested Himself
in ten emanations or types of all creation.[132] In
Irish cad means holy; good and cad are the same
word, whence Kaadman and the surnames Cadman
and Goodman were probably once one. The word
Albon or Albion means as it stands all good, or all
well, and the river Beane, like the river Boyne—
over whom presided the beneficent goddess Boanna
—means bien, good, or bene well. The
Herefordshire Beane was alternatively known as the
river Beneficia, a name which to the modern
etymologer working on standard lines confessedly
Fig. 16. “yields a curious conundrum”.[133]
—“Kaadman.” From
Essays on The Anglo-Saxon Abbot of St. Albans after having
Archæological assured himself that the idolatrous books before-
Subjects (Wright, T.). mentioned proved that the pagan British worshipped
Phœbus, 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.
Phœbus was the British Heol, Howel, or the Sun, and Mercury, was, as
Cæsar said, the Hercules of Britain. The snake-encircled club of Kaadman is
the equivalent to the caduceus or snake-twined rod of Mercury; the human
image in the hand of Kaadman implies with some probability that
“Kaadman” was the All Father or the Maker of Mankind. We shall see
subsequently that the Maker of All was personified as Michael or Mickle,
and that St. Mickle and All Angels or All Saints stood for the Great Muckle
leading the Mickle—“many a mickel makes a muckle”. St. Michael is the
patron saint of Gorhambury, a suburb of St. Albans, and in Christian Art St.
Michæl is almost invariably represented with the scales and other attributes
of Anubis, the Mercury of Egypt. Both Anubis of Egypt and Mercury of
Rome were connected with the dog, and Anubis was generally represented
with the head of a dog or jackal. In The Gnostics and their Remains, King

illustrates on plate F a dog or jackal-headed man which is subscribed with
the name MICHAH, and it is probable the word make is closely associated
with Micah or Mike.
Eastern tradition states that St. Christopher, or St. Kit, was a
Canaanitish giant, 12 feet in stature, having the head of a
dog. The kilted figure represented in the Gnostic cameo
here illustrated, is seemingly that same Kitman, or
Kaadman, Bandog, or Good Dog, and chien, the French for
dog, Irish chuyn, may be equated with geon, geant, or giant.
The worship of the chien was carried in the Near East to
such a pitch that a great city named Cynopolis or Dog-
Town existed in its honour. The priests of Cynopolis, who
maintained a golden image of their divine kuon or chien,
ANUBIS. termed themselves Kuons, and these kuons or dog-ministers
Fig. 17. were, according to some authorities, the original Cohen
family. A beautiful relievo of Adonis and his dog has been
unearthed at Albano in Etruria; Fig. 13 is accompanied by
bandogs(?); Albania in Asia Minor is mentioned by Maundeville as
abounding in fierce dogs, and in Albion, where we still retain memories of
the Dog Days, it will be shown to be probable that sacred dogs were
maintained near London at the mysteriously named Isle of Dogs. Until the
past fifty years the traditions of this island at Barking were so uncanny that
the site remained inviolate and unbuilt over. Whence, I think, it may
originally have been a kennel or Cynopolis, where the kuons of the Cantians
or Candians were religiously maintained.[134]

Fig. 18.—From An Essay on Ancient Coins,
Medals, and Gems (Walsh, R.).
We shall deal more fully with the cult and symbolism of the dog in a future
chapter entitled “The Hound of Heaven”. Not only in England, but also in
Ireland, place-names having reference to the dog are so persistent that Sir J.
Rhys surmised the dog was originally a totem in that country.
In connection with chuyn, the Irish for dog, it may be noted that one of the
titles of St. Patrick—whence all Irishmen are known as Paddies—was
Taljean or Talchon, and moreover that Crete was alternatively known to the
ancients as Telchinea. In Cornish and in Welsh tal meant high; in old
English it meant valiant, whence Shakespeare says, “Thou’rt a tall fellow”;
in the Mediterranean the Maltese twil; Arabic twil meant tall and hence we
may conclude that the present predominant meaning of our tall was once far
spread, Talchon meaning either tall geon or tall chein, i.e., dog-headed giant
Christopher.
The outer inscription around Fig. 18 is described as “altogether barbarous
and obscure,” but as far as can be deciphered the remaining words—“a
corruption of Hebrew and Greek—signify ‘the sun or star has shone’”.[135] I
have already suggested a connection between John, geon, chien, shine,
shone, sheen, and sun.

It is probable that not only the literature of the saints but also many of the
national traditions of our own and other lands arose from the
misinterpretation of the symbolic signs and figures which preceded writing.
The “diabolical idols” of Britain, as Gildas admitted, far exceeded those in
Egypt; similarly in Crete, the fantastic hieroglyphics not yet read or
understood far out-Egypted Egypt. The Christian Fathers fell foul with
Gnostic philosophers for the supposed insult of representing Christ on the
Cross with the head of an ass; but it is quite likely that the Gnostic intention
—the ass being the symbol of meekness—was to portray Christ’s meekness,
and that no insult was intended. A notable instance of the way in which
ignorant and facetious aliens misconstrued the meaning of national or tribal
emblems has been preserved in the dialogue of a globe-trotting Greek who
lived in the second century of the present era. The incident, as self-recorded
by the chatty but unintelligent Greek, is Englished by Sir John Rhys as
follows: “The Celts call Heracles in the language of their country Ogmios,
and they make very strange representations of the god. With them he is an
extremely old man, with a bald forehead and his few remaining hairs quite
grey; his skin is wrinkled and embrowned by the sun to that degree of
swarthiness which is characteristic of men who have grown old in a
seafaring life: in fact, you would fancy him rather to be a Charon or Japetus,
one of the dwellers in Tartarus, or anybody rather than Heracles. But
although he is of this description he is, nevertheless, attired like Heracles,
for he has on him the lion’s skin, and he has a club in his right hand; he is
duly equipped with a quiver, and his left hand displays a bow stretched out:
in these respects he is quite Heracles. It struck me, then, that the Celts took
such liberties with the appearance of Heracles in order to insult the gods of
the Greeks and avenge themselves on him in their painting, because he once
made a raid on their territory, when in search of the herds of Geryon he
harrassed most of the western peoples. I have not, however, mentioned the
most whimsical part of the picture, for this old man Heracles draws after
him a great number of men bound by their ears, and the bonds are slender
cords wrought of gold and amber, like necklaces of the most beautiful make;
and although they are dragged on by such weak ties, they never try to run
away, though they could easily do it: nor do they at all resist or struggle
against them, planting their feet in the ground and throwing their weight
back in the direction contrary to that in which they are being led. Quite the
reverse: they follow with joyful countenance in a merry mood, and praising

him who leads them pressing on one and all, and slackening their chains in
their eagerness to proceed: in fact, they look like men who would be grieved
should they be set free. But that which seemed to me the most absurd thing
of all I will not hesitate also to tell you: the painter, you see, had nowhere to
fix the ends of the cords, since the right hand of the god held the club and
his left the bow; so he pierced the tip of his tongue, and represented the
people as drawn on from it, and the god turns a smiling countenance towards
those whom he is leading. Now I stood a long time looking at these things,
and wondered, perplexed and indignant. But a certain Celt standing by, who
knew something about our ways, as he showed by speaking good Greek—a
man who was quite a philosopher, I take it, in local matters—said to me,
‘Stranger, I will tell you the secret of the painting, for you seem very much
troubled about it. We Celts do not consider the power of speech to be
Hermes, as you Greeks do, but we represent it by means of Heracles,
because he is much stronger than Hermes. Nor should you wonder at his
being represented as an old man, for the power of words is wont to show its
perfection in the aged; for your poets are no doubt right when they say that
the thoughts of young men turn with every wind, and that age has something
wiser to tell us than youth. And so it is that honey pours from the tongue of
that Nestor of yours, and the Trojan orators speak with one voice of the
delicacy of the lily, a voice well covered, so to say, with bloom; for the
bloom of flowers, if my memory does not fail me, has the term lilies applied
to it. So if this old man Heracles, by the power of speech, draws men after
him, tied to his tongue by their ears, you have no reason to wonder, as you
must be aware of the close connection between the ears and the tongue. Nor
is there any injury done him by this latter being pierced; for I remember,
said he, learning while among you some comic iambics, to the effect that all
chattering fellows have the tongue bored at the tip. In a word, we Celts are
of opinion that Heracles himself performed everything by the power of
words, as he was a wise fellow, and that most of his compulsion was
effected by persuasion. His weapons, I take it, are his utterances, which are
sharp and well-aimed, swift to pierce the mind; and you too say that words
have wings.’ Thus far the Celt.”[136]
The moral of this incident may be applied to the svastika cross, an
ubiquitous symbol or trade-mark which Andrew Lang surmised might after
all have merely been “a bit of natural ornament”. The sign of the cross will
be more fully considered subsequently, but meanwhile one may regard the

svastika as the trade-mark of Troy. The Cornish for cross was treus, and
among the ancients the cross was the symbol of truce.[137] The Sanscrit
name svastika is composed of su, meaning soft, gentle, pleasing, or
propitious, and asti (Greek esto), meaning being. It was universally the
symbol of the Good Being or St. Albion, or St. All Well; it retains its
meaning in its name, and was the counterpart to the Dove which symbolisms
Innocence, Peace, Simplicity, and Goodwill. There is no doubt that the two
emblems were the insignia of the prehistoric Giants, Titans, or followers of
the Good Sun or Shine, or Sunshine, men who trekked from one or several
centres, to India, Tartary, China, and Japan. Moreover, these trekkers whom
we shall trace in America and Polynesia, were seafaring and not overland
folk, otherwise we should not find the Cyclopean buildings with their
concomitant symbols in Africa, Mexico, Peru, and the islands of the Pacific.
The svastika in its simpler form is the cross of St. Andrew, Scotch Hender or
Hendrie. In British the epithet hen meant old or ancient, so that the cross of
Hen drie is verbally the cross of old or ancient Drew, Droia, or Troy. This is
also historically true, for the svastika has been found under the ruins of the
ten or dozen Troys which occupy the immemorial site near Smyrna.
Our legends state that Bru or Brut, after tarrying awhile at Alba in Etruria,
travelled by sea into Gaul, where he founded the city of Tours. Thence after
sundry bickers with the Gauls he passed onward into Britain which acquired
its name from Brute, its first Duke or Leader. We shall connote Britannia,
whose first official portraits are here given, with the Cretan Goddess
Britomart, which meant in Greek “sweet maiden”. One of these Britannia
figures has her finger to her lips, or head, in seemingly the same attitude as
the consort of the Giant Dog, and the interpretation is probably identical
with that placed by Dr. Walsh upon that gnostic jewel. “Among the
Egyptians,” he says, “it was deemed impossible to worship the deity in a
manner worthy by words, adopting the sentiments of Plato—that it was
difficult to find the nature of the Maker and Father of the Universe, or to
convey an idea of him to the people by a verbal description—and they
imagined therefore the deity Harpocrates who presided over silence and was
always represented as inculcating it by holding his finger on his lips”. We
know from Cæsar that secrecy was a predominant feature of the Drui or
Druidic system, and for this custom the reasons are thus given in a Bardic
triad: “The Three necessary but reluctant duties of the bards of the Isle of

Britain: Secrecy, for the sake of peace and the public good; invective
lamentation demanded by justice; and the unsheathing of the sword against
the lawless and the predatory”.
Britain is in Welsh Prydain, and, according to some Welsh scholars, the root
of Prydain is discovered in the epithet pryd, which signifies precious, dear,
fair, or beautiful. This, assumed Thomas, “was at a very early date accepted
as a surname in the British royal family of the island”.[138] I think this Welsh
scholar was right and that not only Britomart the “sweet maiden,” but also
St. Bride, “the Mary of the Gael,” were the archetypes of Britannia; St.
Bride is alternatively St. Brighit, whence, in all probability, the adjective
bright. At Brightlingsea in Essex is a Sindry or Sin derry island(?); in the
West of England many villages have a so-called ‘sentry field,’ and
undoubtedly these were originally the saintuaries, centres, and sanctuaries of
the districts. To take sentry meant originally to seek refuge, and the primary
meaning of terrible was sacred. Thus we find even in mediæval times,
Westminster alluded to by monkish writers as a locus terribilis or sacred
place. The moots or courts at Brightlingsea were known as Brodhulls,
whence it would appear that the Moothill or Toothill of elsewhere was
known occasionally as a Brod or Brutus Hill.
Some of the Britannias on page 120 have the aspect of young men rather
than maidens, and there is no doubt that Brut was regarded as androginous
or indeterminately as youth or maiden. We shall trace him or her at
Broadstairs, a corruption of Bridestow, at Bradwell, at Bradport, at
Bridlington, and in very many more directions. From Pryd come probably
the words pride, prude, and proud, and in the opinion of our neighbours
these qualities are among our national defects. Claiming a proud descent we
are admittedly a dour people, and our neighbours deem us triste, yet,
nevertheless trustworthy, and inclined to truce.
On the shield of one of the first Britannias is a bull’s head, whence it may be
assumed the bull was anciently as nowadays associated with John Bull. At
British festivals our predecessors used to antic in the guise of a bull, and the
bull-headed actor was entitled “The Broad”. The bull was intimately
connected with Crete; Britomart was the Lady of All Creatures, and
seemingly the brutes in general were named either after her or Brut. The
British word for bull was tarw, the Spanish is toro; in Etruria we find the
City of Turin or Torino using as its cognisance a rampant bull; and I have

little doubt that the fabulous Minotaur was a physical brute actually
maintained in the terrible recesses of some yet-to-be-discovered labyrinth.
The subterranean mausoleums of the Sacred Bulls of Egypt are among the
greatest of the great monuments of that country; the bull-fights of Spain
were almost without doubt the direct descendants of sacred festivals,
wherein the slaying of the Mithraic Bull was dramatically presented, but in
Crete itself the bull-fights seem to have been amicable gymnastic games
wherein the most marvellous feats of agility were displayed. Illustrations of
these graceful and intrepid performances are still extant on Cretan frieze and
vase, the colours being as fresh to-day as when laid on 3000 years ago.

Fig. 19.—From An Essay on Medals
(Pinkerton, J.).
In Britain the national sport seems to have been bull-baiting, and the dogs
associated with that pastime presumably were bull-dogs. Doggedness is one
of the ingrained qualities of our race; of recent years the bull-dog has been
promoted into symbolic evidence of our tenacity and doggedness. Our

mariners are sea-dogs, and the modern bards vouch us to be in general boys
of the bull-dog breed. The mascot bull-dogs in the shops at this moment
serve the same end as the mascot emblems and mysterious hieroglyphics of
the ancients, and the Egyptian who carried a scarabæus or an Eye of Horus,
acted without doubt from the same simple, homely impulse as drives the
modern Englishman to hang up the picture of a repulsive animal subscribed,
“What we have we’ll hold”.
The prehistoric dog or jackal symbolised not tenacity or courage, but the
maker of tracks, for the well-authenticated reason that dogs were considered
the best guides to practicable courses in the wilderness. Bull-headed men
and dog-headed men are represented constantly in Cretan Art, and these in
all likelihood symbolised the primeval bull-dogs who trekked into so many
of the wild and trackless places of the world.
The Welsh have a saying, “Tra Mor, Tra Brython,” which means, “as long as
there is sea so long will there be Britons”. Centuries ago, Diodorus of Sicily
mentioned the Kelts as “having an immemorial taste for foreign expeditions
and adventurous wars, and he goes on to describe them as ‘irritable, prompt
to fight, in other respects simple and guileless,’ thus, according with Strabo,
who sums up the Celtic temperament as being simple and spontaneous,
willingly taking in hand the cause of the oppressed”.[139]
Diodorus also mentions the Kelts as clothed sometimes “in tissues of
variegated colours,” which calls to mind the tartans of the Alban McAlpines,
Ians, Jocks, Sanders, Hendries, and others of that ilk.
The dictionaries define the name Andrew as meaning a man, whence
androgynous and anthropology; in Cornish antrou meant lord or master, and
these early McAndrews were doubtless masterly, tyrannical, dour, derring-
doers, inconceivably daring in der-doing. To try means make an effort, and
we speak proverbially of “working like a Trojan”. The corollary is that tired
feeling which must have sorely tried the tyros or young recruits. After daring
and trying and tiring, these dour men eventually turned adre, which is
Cornish for homeward. Whether their hearts were turned Troy-ward in the
Ægean or to some small unsung British tre or Troynovant, who can tell? “I
am now in Jerusalem where Christ was born,” wrote a modern argonaut to
his mother, but, he added, “I wish I were in Wigan where I was born.”

FOOTNOTES:
[86] Taylor, Rev. T., The Celtic Christianity of Cornwall, p. 27.
[87] Morris-Jones, Sir J., Y. Cymmrodor, xxvii., p. 240.
[88] Margoliouth, M., The Jews in Great Britain, p. 33.
[89] As bearing upon this statement I reprint in the Appendix to the present
volume a very remarkable extract from Britain and the Gael (Wm. Beal), 1860.
[90] Wilkes, Anna, Ireland: Ur of the Chaldees, p. 6.
[91] Introduction to Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (Everyman’s Library).
[92] Plutarch, De Defectu Oraculorum, xvii.
[93] Eckenstein, L., Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes, p. 70.
[94] Clodd, E., Tom Tit Tot, p. 131.
[95] Mackenzie, D. A., Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe, p. 326.
[96] Cf. Poste, B., Britannic Researches, p. 220.
[97] Y Cymmrodor, xxviii.
[98] Triad 4.
[99] “The notion that the Albanian is a mere mixture of Greek and Turkish has
long been superseded by the conviction that though mixed it is essentially a
separate language. The doctrine also that it is of recent introduction into Europe
has been similarly abandoned. There is every reason for believing that as
Thunmann suggested, it was, at dawn of history, spoken in the countries where it
is spoken at the present moment.”—Latham, R. G., Varieties of Man, p. 552.
[100] Rhys, J., Celtic Britain.
[101] The same root may be behind deruish or dervish.
[102] Gordon, E. O., Prehistoric London, p. 127.
[103] Virgil, Æneid, 79, 80, 81.
[104] Cornish Feasts and Folklore, p. 119.
[105] Malory, viii.
[106] I question the current supposition that this is a corruption of chy an woon
or “house on the hill”.
[107] Beal, W., Britain and the Gael, p. 22.
[108] Herodotus, 11, 52.
[109] Johnston, J. B., Place-names of England and Wales, p. 413.
[110] Burrows, R. M., The Discoveries in Crete, p. 11.
[111] Hastings (Ward Lock & Co.), p. 63.
[112] xxvii. 12.

[113] Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria, p. 9.
[114] From mercari, to trade (Skeat).
[115] Jonnock is probably cognate with yankee, which was in old times used in
the New England States as an adjective meaning “excellent,” “first-class”. Thus,
a “yankee” horse would be a first-class horse, just as we talk of English beef and
other things English, meaning that they are the best. Another explanation of
yankee is that when the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth Rock, near
Massachusetts Bay, in 1620, they were met on the shore by native Indians who
called them “Yangees”—meaning “white man”—and the term was finally
completed into “Yankees”.
[116] Taylor, Rev. R., Diegesis, p. 158.
[117] The remarkable serpentine, shell-mosaiked shrine, known as Margate
Grotto, is discussed in chap. xiii.
[118] i., 367.
[119] Odyssey, Book IV.
[120] Cf. Smith, G., Religion of Ancient Britain, p. 65.
[121] Myths of Crete and Prehistoric Europe, p. 239.
[122] Rydberg, V., Teutonic Mythology, pp. 22-36.
[123] Odyssey, Book I.
[124] Ibid., Book III.
[125] The Myth of Br. Islands, p. 324.
[126] The current idea that London was Llyn din, the Lake town, has been
knocked on the head since it has been “proved that the lake which was described
so picturesquely by J. R. Green did not exist”. Cf. Rice Holmes, Ancient Britain,
p. 704.
[127] 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.
[128] This name will subsequently be traced to Cres, the son of Jupiter, to whom
the Cretans assigned their origin.
[129] Wright, T., Essays on Archæological Subjects, vol. i., p. 273.
[130] Wright, T., Essays on Archæological Subjects, vol. i., p. 283.
[131] In Albany the memory of “the gudeman” lingered until late, and according
to Scott: “In many parishes of Scotland there was suffered to exist a certain
portion of land, called the gudeman’s croft, which was never ploughed or
cultivated, but suffered to remain waste, like the Temenos of a pagan temple.
Though it was not expressly avowed, no one doubted that ‘the goodman’s croft’
was set apart for some evil being; in fact, that it was the portion of the arch-fiend
himself, whom our ancestors distinguished by a name which, while it was
generally understood, could not, it was supposed, be offensive to the stern

inhabitant of the regions of despair. This was so general a custom that the Church
published an ordinance against it as an impious and blasphemous usage.
“This singular custom sunk before the efforts of the clergy in the seventeenth
century; but there must still be many alive who, in childhood, have been taught to
look with wonder on knolls and patches of ground left uncultivated, because,
whenever a ploughshare entered the soil, the elementary spirits were supposed to
testify their displeasure by storm and thunder,”
Demonology and Witchcraft.
[132] These Sources of Life or vessels of Almighty Power were described as
Crown, Wisdom, Prudence, Magnificence, Severity, Beauty, Victory, Glory,
Foundation, Empire. Cf. King, C. W., The Gnostics and their Remains, p. 34.
[133] Johnston, Rev. J. B., Place-names of England and Wales.
[134] “The origin of the name is quite unknown to history.... Possibly because so
many dogs were drowned in the Thames here.”—Johnston, Rev. J. B., Place-
names of England, p. 321.
[135] Walsh, R., An Essay on Ancient Coins, Medals, and Gems, p. 58.
[136] Rhys, Sir J., Celtic Heathendom, pp. 14-16.
[137] British children still cross their forefingers as a sign of treus, pax, or fainits.
[138] Britannia Antiquissima, p. 4.
[139] Cf. Thomas, J. J., Britannia Antiquissima, pp. 84, 85.

CHAPTER IV
ALBION

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

Our Chronicles state that when Brute and his companions reached these
shores, “at that time the name of the island was Albion”. According to
tradition Alba, Albion, or Alban, whence the place-name Albion, was a fairy
giant, but this, in the eyes of current scholarship, is a fallacy, and alba is
merely an adjective meaning white, whence wherever met with it is so
translated. But because there happens to be a relatively small tract of white
cliffs in the neighbourhood of Dover, it is a barren stretch of imagination to
suppose that all Britain thence derived its prehistoric title, and in any case
the question—why did alba mean white?—would remain unanswered. The
Highlanders of Scotland still speak of their country as Albany or Alban; the
national cry of Scotland was evidently at one time “Albani,” and even as
late as 1138, “the army of the Scots with one voice vociferated their native
distinction, and the shout of Albani! Albani! ascended even to the heavens”.
[140]

Not only by the Romans but likewise by the Greeks, Britain was known as
Albion, and one may therefore conjecture that the white-cliff theory is an

unsound fancy.
Strabo alludes to a certain district generally supposed to be Land’s End,
under the name “Kalbion,”[141] a word manifestly having some radical
relation to “Albion”. By an application of the comparative method to place-
names and proper-names, I arrived several years ago at the seemingly only
logical conclusion that in many directions ak and its variants meant great or
mighty. On every hand there is presumptive evidence of this fact, and I have
since found that Bryant and also Faber, working by wholly independent
methods, reached a very similar conclusion. My modus operandi, with
many of its results, having been already published,[142] it is unnecessary
here to restate them, and I shall confine myself to new and corroborative
evidence.
In addition to great or mighty it is clear that the radical in question meant
high. The German trisagion of hoch! hoch! hoch! is still equivalent to the
English high! high! high! the Swedish for high is hog, the Dutch is oog, and
in Welsh or British high is uch. It is presumably a trace of the gutteral ch
that remains in our modern spelling of high with a gh now mute, but the
primordial Welsh uch has also become the English ok, as in Devonshire
where Okment Hill is said to be the Anglicised form of uch mynydd, the
Welsh or British for high hill. I shall, thus, in this volume treat the syllable
’k or ’g as carrying the predominant and apparently more British meaning
of high. That the sounds ’g and ’k were invariably commutable may be
inferred from innumerable place-names such as Ogbourne St. Andrew,
alternatively printed Okebourne, and that the same mutability applies to
words in general might be instanced from any random page of Dr. Murray’s
New English Dictionary. We may thus assume that “Kalbion,” meant Great
Albion or High Albion, and it remains to analyse Alba or Albion.
B and P being interchangeable, the ba of Alba is the same word as pa,
which, according to Max Müller, meant primarily feeder; papa is in Turkish
baba, and in Mexico also ba meant the same as our infantile pa, i.e., feeder
or father. In paab, the British for pope, one p has become b the other has
remained constant.
The inevitable interchange of p and b is conspicuously evident in the place-
name—Battersea, alternatively known as Patrickseye, and on that little ea,
eye, or eyot in the Thames at one time, probably, clustered the padres or

paters who ministered to the church of St. Peter—the architypal Pater—
whose shrine is now Westminster Abbey.
It is a custom of children to express their superlatives by duplications, such
as pretty pretty, and in the childhood[143] of the world this habit was
seemingly universal. Thus pa, the Aryan root meaning primarily feeder, has
been duplicated into papa, which is the same word as pope, defined as
indicating the father of a church. In A.D. 600 the British Hierarchy protested
against the claims of the “paab” of Rome to be considered “the Father of
Fathers,”[144] and there is little doubt that Pope is literally pa-pa or Father
Father. In Stow’s time there existed in London a so-called “Papey”—“a
proper house,” wherein sometime was kept a fraternity of St. Charity and
St. John. This was, as Stow says, known as the Papey;[145] “for in some
language priests are called papes”.
In the Hebrides the place-names Papa Stour, Papa Westray, and so forth are
officially recognised as the seats of prehistoric padres, patricks, or papas.
Skeat imagines that the words pap meaning food, and pap meaning teat or
breast, are alike “of infantine origin due to the repetition of pa pa in calling
for food”. They may be so, but to understand the childhood of the world one
must stoop to infantile levels.
In Celtic alp or ailpe meant high, and also rock. Among the ancients rock
was a generally recognised symbol of the undecaying immutable High
Father, and in seemingly every tongue will be found puns such as pierre and
pere, Peter the pater, and Petra the Rock. The papacy of Peter is founded
traditionally upon St. Petra, the Rock of Ages, “Upon this Rock will I found
my Church,” and the St. Rock of this country, whose festival was celebrated
upon Rock Monday, was assumedly a survival of pagan pre-Christian
symbolism.

Fig. 20.—From Analysis of Ancient Mythology
(Bryant, J.).
In the group of coins here illustrated it will be noticed that the Mater
Deorum is conventionally throned upon a rock. “Unto Thee will I cry, O
Lord my Rock,” wrote the Psalmist, and the inhabitants of Albion probably
once harmonised in their ideas with the Kafirs of India, who still say of the
stones they worship, “This stands for God, but we know not his shape.” In
Cornwall, within living memory, the Druidic stones were believed in some
mysterious way to be sacred to existence, and the materialistic theory which
attributes all primitive worship to fear or self-interest, will find it hard to
account satisfactorily for stone worship. Cold, impassive stone, neither
feeds, nor warms, nor clothes, yet, as Toland says: “’Tis certain that all
nations meant by these stones without statues the eternal stability and power

of the Deity, and that He could not be represented by any similitude, nor
under any figure whatsoever”.

Fig. 21.—Christ and His Apostles, under the form
of Lambs or of Sheep. (Latin sculpture; first
centuries of the Church.)
From Christian Iconography (Didron).
It is asserted by one of the classical authors that stones were considered
superior in two respects, first in being not subject to death, and second in
not being harmful. That Albion was harmless and beneficent is implied by

the adjectives bien, bonny, benevolent, bounteous, and benignant. That St.
Alban was similarly conceived is implied by the statement that this Lord’s
son of the City of Verulam was “a well disposed and seemly young man,”
who “always loved to do hospitality granting meat and drink wherever
necessary”. That St. Alban was not only Alpa, the All Feeder, but that he
was also Alpe, the High One and the Rock whence gushed a “living water,”
is clear from the statement: “Then at the last they came to the hill where this
holy Alban should finish and end his life, in which place lay a great
multitude of people nigh dead for heat of the sun, and for thirst. And then
anon the wind blew afresh, cool, and also at the feet of this holy man Alban
sprang up a fair well whereof all the people marvelled to see the cold water
spring up in the hot sandy ground, and so high on the top of an hill, which
water flowed all about and in large streams running down the hill. And then
the people ran to the water and drank so that they were well refreshed, and
then by the merits of St. Alban their thirst was clean quenched. But yet for
all the great goodness that was showed they thirsted strongly for the blood
of this holy man.”[146]
From this and other miraculous incidents in the life of St. Alban it would
appear that the original compilers had in front of them some cartoons,
cameos, or symbolic pictures of “The Kaadman,” which had probably been
recovered from the ruins of the ancient city. The authenticity of St. Alban’s
“life” is further implied by the frequency with which allusions are made to
the blazing heat of the sun, a sunshine so great, so conspicuous, that it burnt
and scalded the feet of the sightseers. The Latin for yellow, which is the
colour of the golden sun, is galbinus, a word which like Kalbion resolves
into ’g albinus, the high or mighty Albanus. From galbinus the French
authorities derive their word jaune, but jaune is simply Joan, Jeanne, shine,
shone, or sheen.
In Hebrew Albanah or Lebanah properly signifies the moon, and albon
means strength and power, but more radically these terms may be connoted
with our English surname Alibone and understood as either holy good,
wholly good, or all good.
Yellow is not only the colour of the golden sun, but it is similarly that of the
moon, and at the festivals of the yellow Lights of Heaven our ancestors
most assuredly halloe’d, yelled, yawled, and yowled. The Cornish for the
sun is houl, the Breton is heol, the Welsh is hayl, and until recently in

English churches the congregation used at Yule Tide to hail the day with
shouts or yells of Yole, Yole, Yole! or Ule, Ule, Ule! The festival of Yule is a
reunion, a coming together in amity of the All, and as in Welsh y meant the,
the words whole, and Yule were perhaps originally ye all or the all. An alloy
is a mixture or medley, anything allowed is according to law, and hallow is
the same word as holy.
The word Alban is pronounced Olbun, and in Welsh Ol, meant not only all,
but also the Supreme Being. The Dictionaries translate the Semitic El as
having meant God or Power, and it is so rendered when found amid names
such as Bethel, Uriel, Eleazar,[147] etc. But among the Semitic races the
deity El was subdivided into a number of Baalim or secondary divinities
emanating from El, and it would thus seem that although the Phœnicians
may have forgotten the fact, El meant among them what All does amongst
us. According to Anderson, El was primarily Israel’s God and only later did
He come to be regarded as the God of the Universe—“Rising in dignity as
the national idea was enlarged, El became more just and righteous, more
and more superior to all the other gods, till at last He was defined to be the
Supreme Ruler of Nature, the One and only Lord”.[148]
The motto of Cornwall is “One and All,” and among the Celtic races there
is still current a monotheistic folk-song which is supposed to be the relic of
a Druidic ritual or catechism. This opens with the question in chorus, “What
is your one O”? to which the answer is returned:—
One is all alone,
And ever doth remain so.
There figures in the Celtic memory a Saint Allen or St. Elwyn, and this
“saint” may be modernised into St. “Alone” or St. “All one”: his third
variant Elian is equivalent to Holy Ane or Holy One.[149]
The Greek philosophers entertained a maxim that Jove, Pluto, Phœbus,
Bacchus, all were one and they accepted as a formula the phrase “All is
one”. In India Brahma was entitled “The Eternal All” and in the Bhagavad
Gita the Soul of the world is thus adored:—

O infinite Lord of Gods! the world’s abode,
Thou undivided art, o’er all supreme,
Thou art the first of Gods, the ancient Sire,
The treasure-house supreme of all the worlds.
The Knowing and the Known, the highest seat.
From Thee the All has sprung, O Boundless Form!
Varuna, Vazu, Agni, Yama thou,
The Moon; the Sire and Grandsire too of men.
The infinite in power, of boundless force,
The All thou dost embrace; the “Thou art All”.
Near Stonehenge there is a tumulus known nowadays as El barrow, and
Salisbury Plain itself was once named Ellendune or Ellen Down. The
Greeks or Hellenes claimed to be descendants of the Dodonian Ellan or
Hellan, a personage whom they esteemed as the “Father of the First-born
Woman”. Ellan or Hellan was alternatively entitled Hellas, and in Greek the
word allos meant “the one”.
Tradition said that the Temple of Ellan at Dodona—a shrine which
antedated the Greek race, and was erected by unknown predecessors—was
founded by a Dove, one of two birds which flew from Thebes in Egypt. The
super-sacred tree at Dodona, as in Persia and elsewhere, was the oak, and
the rustling of the wind in the leaves of the oak was poetically regarded as
the voice of the All-Father. The Hebrew for an oak tree is allon, elon, or
allah, and Allah is the name under which many millions of our fellow-men
worship The Alone. To this day the oak tree is sacred among the folk of
Palestine,[150] particularly one ancient specimen on the site of old Beyrut or
Berut—a place-name which, as we shall see, may be connoted with Brut.

Diana, the Moon, with a Mercury with a circular
circular nimbus. (Roman nimbus. (Roman sculpture.)
sculpture.)

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

Fig. 22.—From Christian Iconography. (Didron.)
B being invariably interchangeable with P, the Ban of Alban is the same as
the Greek Pan.[151] From Pan comes the adjective pan meaning all,
universal, so that Alban may perhaps be equated with Holy Pan. Hale also
means healthy, and the circular halo symbolising the glorious sun was used

by the pagans long before it was adopted by
Christianity. By the Cabalists—who were
indistinguishable from the Gnostics—Ell
was understood to mean “the Most
Luminous,” Il “the Omnipotent,” Elo “the
Sovereign, the Excelsus,” and Eloi “the
Illuminator, the Most Effulgent”. Among
the Greeks ele meant refulgent, and Helios
was a title of Apollo or the Sun.
The Peruvians named their Bona Dea Mama
Allpa, whom they represented, like
Ephesian Diana, as having numerous
breasts, and they regarded Mama Allpa as
the dispenser of all human nourishment. In
Egypt pa meant ancestor, beginning, origin,
and the Peruvian many-breasted Mama
Allpa seemingly meant just as it does in
English, i.e., mother, All pa or All-feeder.
It is important to note that the British
Albion was not always considered as a
male, but on occasions as the “Lady
Albine”.[152]
Fig. 23.—The statue of
The Sabeans worshipped the many-breasted Diana of the Ephesians
Artemis under the name Almaquah, which worshipped at Massilia.
is radically alma, and the Greeks used the From Stonehenge (Barclay,
word alma as an adjective meaning E.).
nourishing. The river Almo near Rome was
seemingly named after the All Mother, for
in this stream the Romans used ceremoniously to bathe and purify the statue
of Ma, the World Mother, whose consort was known as Pappas. Pappas is
the Greek equivalent to Papa, and Ma or Mama meaning mother is so used
practically all the world over. Skeat is contemptuous towards mama,
describing it as “a mere repetition of ma an infantile syllable; many other
languages have something like it”. Not only all over Asia Minor but also in
Burmah and Hindustan ma meant mother; in China mother is mi or mu, and
in South America as in Chaldea and all over Europe mama meant mother;

Mammal is of course traceable to the same root, and it is evident that even
were ma merely an infantile syllable it obviously carried far more than a
contemptible or negligible meaning.
In Europe, Alma and Ilma are proper names which are
defined as having meant either Celtic all good, Latin
kindly, or Jewish maiden. In Finnish mythology the
Creatrix of the Universe, or Virgin Daughter of the Air is
named Ilmatar, which is evidently the All Mater or All
Mother. Alma was no doubt the almoner of aliment, and
her symbol was the almond. In Scotland where there is a
MA. river Almond, ben means mountain or head, and ben varies
Fig. 24.—The almost invariably into pen, from the Apennines to the
Egyptian Ma Pennine Range.
or “Truth”. 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
Phœnician, pennah had the same meaning. As, however, I have dealt
somewhat fully elsewhere with Pan the President of the Mountains, I shall
for the sake of brevity translate his name into universal or good.
In England we have the curious surname Pennefather;[153] in Cornwall,
Pender is very common, and it is proverbial that Pen is one of the three
affixes by which one may know Cornishmen.
As Pan was pre-eminently the divinity of woods and forests, Panshanger or
Pan’s Wood in Hertfordshire may perhaps be connected with him, and the
river Beane of Hertfordshire may be equated with the kindred British river-
names, Ben, Bann, Bane, Bain, Banon, Bana, Bandon, Banney, Banac, and
Bannockburn.
Bannock or Panak the Great Pan is probably responsible for the English
river name Penk, and the name Pankhurst necessarily implies a hurst or
wood of Pank. Penkhull was seemingly once Penkhill, and it is evident that
Pan or Pank, the God of the Universe, may be recognised in Panku, the
benevolent Chinese World Father, for the account of this Deity is as
follows: “Panku was the first, being placed upon the earth at a period when
sea, land, and sky were all jumbled up together. Panku was a giant, and

worked with a mallet and chisel for eighteen thousand years in an effort to
make the earth more shapely. As he toiled and struggled so he grew in
strength and stature, until he was able to push the heavens back and to put
the sea into its proper place. Then he rounded the earth and made it more
habitable, and then he died. But Panku was greater in death than he was in
life, for his head became the surface of the earth; his sinews, the mountains;
his voice, the thunder, his breath, the wind, the mist, and the clouds; one
eye was converted into the sun; the other the moon; and the beads of
perspiration on his forehead were crystallised into the scintillating stars.”
The name Panku is radically the same as Punch, and there is no doubt that
Mr. Punch of to-day represented, according to immemorial wont, with a
hunch, hill, or mountain on his back, has descended from the sacred farce or
drama. Punch and Punchinello, or Pierre and Pierrot are the father and the
son of the ancient holy-days or holidays.
At Bancroft, in the neighbourhood of St. Albans, the festivities of May-day
included “first” a personage with “a large artificial hump on his back,”[154]
and we may recognise the Kaadman of St. Albans in the Cadi of Welsh
pageantry. In Wales all the arrangements of May-day were made by the so-
called Cadi, who was always the most active person in the company and
sustained the joint rôle of marshal, orator, buffoon, and money collector.
The whole party being assembled they marched in pairs headed by the Cadi,
who was gaudily bedecked with gauds and wore a bisexual, half-male, half-
female costume. With gaud and gaudy, which are the same words as good
and cadi, may be connoted gaudeo the Latin for I rejoice.
Punch is always represented with an ample paunch, and this conspicuous
characteristic of bonhomie is similarly a feature of Chinese and Japanese
bonifaces or Bounty Gods. The skirt worn by the androgynous British Cadi
may be connoted with the kilt in which the Etrurians figured their Hercules,
and that in Etruria the All Father was occasionally depicted like Punch, is
clear from the following passage from The Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria:
“Hercules and Minerva were the most generally honoured of the Etruscan
divinities, the one representing the most valuable qualities of a man’s body
and the other of his soul. They were the excellencies of flesh and spirit, and
according to Etruscan mythology they were man and wife. Minerva has
usually a very fine face with that straight line of feature which we call
Grecian, but which, from the sepulchral paintings and the votive offerings,

would appear also to have been native. Hercules has a prominent and peaky
chin, and something altogether remarkably sharp in his features, which,
from the evidence of vases and scarabæi together, would appear to have
been the conventional form of depicting a warrior. It is probably given to
signify vigilance and energy. A friend of mine used to call it, not inaptly,
‘the ratcatcher style’. Neptune bears the trident, Jove the thunderbolt or
sceptre, and these attributes are sometimes appended to the most grotesque
figures when the Etruscans have been representing either some Greek fable,
or some native version of the same story. This may be seen on one vase
where Jove is entering a window, accompanied by Mercury, to visit
Alcmena. Jove has just taken his foot off the ladder, and in my ignorance I
looked at the clumsy but extraordinary vase, thinking that the figures
represented Punch; and though I give the learned and received version of
the story, I am at this moment not convinced that I was wrong, for I do not
believe the professor who pointed it out to me, notwithstanding all his
learning, extensive and profound as it was, knew that Punch was an
Etruscan amusement. Supposing it, however, to have been Punch, which I
think was my own very just discovery, the piece acted was certainly Giove
and Alcmena.”
It is very obvious that the term holy has changed considerably in its
meaning. To the ancients “holidays” were joy-days, pandemoniums, and the
pre-eminent emblem of joviality was the holly tree. The reason for the
symbolic eminence of the holy tree was its evergreen horned leaves which
caused it to be dedicated to Saturn the horned All Father, now degraded into
Old Nick. But “Old Nick” is simply St. Nicholas, or Santa Claus, and the
name Claus is Nicholas minus the adjective ’n or ancient. Janus, the
Latinised form of Joun, was essentially the God of 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 according to Arabian tradition ruled
over the whole world during the legendary Golden Age.
On the first of January, a month which takes its name from Janus as being
the “God of the Beginning,” all quarrelling and disturbances were shunned,
mutual good-wishes were exchanged, and people gave sweets to one

another as an omen that the New Year might bring nothing but what was
sweet and pleasant in its train.
This “execrable practice,” a “mere relique of paganism and idolatry,” was,
like the decorative use of holly, sternly opposed by the mediæval Church. In
1632 Prynne wrote: “The whole Catholicke Church (as Alchuvinus and
others write), appointed a solemn publike faste upon this our New Yeare’s
Day (which fast it seems is now forgotten), to bewail these heathenish
enterludes, sports, and lewd idolatrous practices which had been used on it:
prohibiting all Christians, under pain of excommunication, from observing
the Calends, or first of January (which we now call New Yeare’s Day) as
holy, and from sending abroad New Yeare’s Gifts upon it (a custom now too
frequent), it being a mere relique of paganisme and idolatry, derived from
the heathen Romans’ feast of two-faced Janus, and a practice so execrable
unto Christians that not only the whole Catholicke Church, but even four
famous Councils” [and an enormous quantity of other authorities which it is
useless to quote], “have positively prohibited the solemnisation of New
Yeare’s Day, and the sending abroad of New Yeare’s Gifts, under an
anathema and excommunication.”
There is little doubt that the “Saint” Concord—an alleged subdeacon in a
desert—who figures in the Roman Martyrology on January 1st, was
invented to account for the Holy Concord to which that day was dedicated.
Janus of January 1st, who was ranked by the Latins even above Jupiter, was
termed “The good Creator,” the “Oldest of the Gods,” the “Beginning of all
Things,” and the “God of Gods”. From him sprang all rivers, wells, and
streams, and his name is radically the same as Oceanus.
Before the earth was known to be a ball, Oceanus, the Father of all the
river-gods and water-nymphs, was conceived to be a river flowing
perpetually round the flat circle of the world, and out of, and into this river
the sun and stars were thought to rise and set. Our word ocean is assumed
to be from the Greek form okeanus, and the official surmise as to the origin
of the word is—“perhaps from okis—swift”. But what “swiftness” there is
about the unperturbable and mighty sea, I am at a loss to recognise. In the
Highlands the islanders of St. Kilda used to pour out libations to a sea-god,
known as Shony, and in this British Shony we have probably the truer
origin of ocean.

Fig. 25.—Personification of River.
From Christian Iconography (Didron).
The ancients generally supposed the All Good as wandering abroad and
peering unobserved into the thoughts and actions of his children. This
proclivity was a conspicuous characteristic of Jupiter, and also of the
Scandinavian All Father, one of whose titles was Gangrad, or “The
Wanderer”. The verb to gad, and the expression “gadding about,” may have
arisen from this wandering proclivity of the gods or gads, and the word
jaunt, a synonym for “gadding” (of unknown etymology), points to the
probability that the rambling tendencies of “Gangrad” and other gods were
similarly assigned by the British to their Giant, “jeyantt,” or Good John.
Jaunty or janty means full of fire or life, and the words gentle, genial, and
generous are implications of the original good Giant’s attributes.

Fig. 26.—Figure of Time with Three Faces. From
a French Miniature of the XIV. cent.
From Christian Iconography (Didron).

Fig. 27.—The Three Divine Faces with two
eyes and one single body. From a French
Miniature of the XVI. cent.
From Christian Iconography (Didron).
The coins of King Janus of Sicily bore on their obverse the figure of god
Janus; on the reverse a dove, and it is evident that the dove was as much a
symbol of Father Janus as it was of Mother Jane or Mother Juno.
Christianity still recognises the dove or pigeon as the symbol of the Holy

Ghost, and it is probable that the word pigeon may be attributed to the fact
that the pigeon was invariably associated with pi, or pa geon.[155]

Fig. 28.—Brahma.—From A Dictionary of
Non-classical Mythology
(Edwardes & Spence).
Janus, “the one by whom all things were introduced into life,” was figured
as two-faced, or time past, and time to come, and Janus was the “I was,” the
“I am,” and the “I shall be”.[156] As the “God of the Beginning,” Janus is
clearly connected with the word genesis; Juno was the goddess who
presided over childbirth, and to their names may be traced the words
generate, genus, genital, and the like. Just as January is the first or opening
month of the year, so June,[157] French Juin, was the first or opening month
of the ancient calendar. It was fabled that Janus daily threw open the gate of
day whence janua was the Latin for a gate, and janitor means a keeper of
the gate.
All men were supposed to be under the safeguard of Janus, and all women
under that of Juno, whence the guardian spirit of a man was termed his

genius and that of a woman her juno. The words genius and genie are
evidently cognate with the Arabian jinn, meaning a spirit. In Ireland the
fairies or “good people” are known as the “gentry”; as the giver of all
increase Juno may be responsible for the word generous, and Janus the
Beginning or Leader is presumably allied to General. Occasionally the two
faces of Janus were represented as respectively old and young, a symbol
obviously of time past and present, time and change, the ancient of days
and the junior or jeun. In Irish sen meant senile.
It is taught by the mothers of Europe that at Yule-Tide the Senile All Bounty
wanders around bestowing gifts, and St. Nicholas, or Father Christmas, is in
some respects the same as the Wandering Jew of mediæval tradition. The
earliest mention of the Everlasting Jew occurs in the chronicles of the
Abbey of St. Albans,[158] and is probably a faint memory of the original St.
Alban or All Bounty. It was said that this mysterious Wanderer “had a little
child on his arm,” and was an eye-witness of the crucifixion of Christ.
Varied mythical appearances of the Everlasting Jew are recorded, and his
name is variously stated as Joseph, and as Elijah. Joseph is radically Jo,
Elijah is Holy Jah, whence it may follow, that “Jew” should be spelled
“Jou,” and that the Wandering or Everlasting Jew may be equated with the
Sunshine or the Heavenly Joy.

Fig. 29.—The Three Divine Heads within a
single triangle. From an Italian Wood
Engraving of the XV. cent.
From Christian Iconography (Didron).
In France the sudden roar of the wind at night is attributed to the passing of
the Everlasting Jew. In Switzerland he is associated with the mighty
Matterhorn, in Arabia he is represented as an aged man with a bald head,
and I strongly suspect that the Elisha story of “Go up, thou bald head” arose
from the misinterpretation of a picture of the Ancient of Days surrounded
by a happy crowd of laughing youngsters. In this respect it would have
accorded with the representation of the Divine bald-head of the Celts,
leading a joyful chain of smiling captives. In England the Wandering Jew
was reputed never to eat but merely to drink water which came from a rock.
Some accounts specify his clothing sometimes as a “purple shag-gown,”
with the added information, “his stockings were very white, but whether
linen or jersey deponent knoweth not, his beard and head were white and he
had a white stick in his hand. The day was rainy from morning to night, but
he had not one spot of dirt upon his clothes”.[159] This tradition is evidently
a conception of the white and immaculate Old Alban, in the usual
contradistinction to the young or le jeun, and we still speak of an honest or
jonnock person as “a white man”. By the Etrurians it was believed that the
soul preserved after death the likeness of the body it had left and that this
elfin or spritely body composed of shining elastic air was clothed in airy
white.[160] There figures in The Golden Legend an Italian St. Albine, whose
name, says Voragine, “is as much as to say primo; as he was white and thus
this holy saint was all white by purity of clean living”. The tale goes on that
this St. Albine had two wives, also two nurses which did nourish him.
While lying in his cradle he was carried away by a she-wolf and borne into
the fields where happily he was espied by a pair of passing maidens. One of
these twain exclaimed “Would to God I had milk to foster thee withal,” and
these words thus said her paps immediately rose and grew up filled with
milk. Semblably said and prayed the second maid, and anon she had milk as
her fellow had and so they two nourished the holy child Albine.

Figs. 30 to 38.—From Les Filigranes
(Briquet, C. M.).
It has been suggested that the Wandering Jew is a personification “of that
race which wanders Cain-like over the earth with the brand of a brother’s
blood upon it”; by others the story is connected particularly with the
gipsies. The Romany word for moon is choon, the Cornish for full moon is
cann, and it is a curious thing that the Etrurian Dante entitles the Man in the
Moon, Cain:—
Now doth Cain with fork of thorns confine
On either hemisphere touching the wave
Beneath the towers of Seville. Yesternight
The moon was round.[161]

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

Fig. 39.—The Holy Ghost, as a child of
eight or ten years old, in the arms of the
Father. French Miniature of the XVI. cent.
From Christian Iconography (Didron).
In the illustrations overleaf of mediæval papermarks, some of which depict
the Man in the Moon in his conventional low-crowned, broad-brimmed hat,
there is a conspicuous portrayal of the two breasts, doubtless representative
of the milk and honey flowing in the mystic Land of Canaan. This paradise
was reconnoitred by Joshua accompanied by Caleb, whose name means
dog, and it will be remembered that dog-headed St. Christopher was said to
be a Canaanitish giant.
Irishmen assign the name Connaught to a beneficent King Conn, during
whose fabulously happy reign all crops yielded ninefold, and the furrows of
Ireland flowed with “the pure lacteal produce of the dairy”. Conn of
Connaught is expressly defined as “good as well as great,”[162] and the
Hibernian “pure lacteal produce of the dairy” may be connoted with the
Canaanitish “milk”. We shall trace King Conn of Connaught at Caen or
Kenwood, near St. John’s Wood, London, and also at Kilburn, a burn or
stream alternatively known as the Cuneburn. This rivulet comes first within

the ken of history in the time of Henry I., when a hermit named Godwyn—
query Good One?—had his kil or cell upon its banks. King Conn of
Connaught reigned in glory with “Good Queen Eda,” a Breaton princess
who was equally beloved and esteemed. This Eda is seemingly the Lady of
Mount Ida in Candia, and her name may perhaps be traced in Maida Vale
and Maida Hill. Pa Eda or Father Ida is apparently memorised at the
adjacent Paddington which the authorities derive from Paedaington, or the
town of the children of Paeda. Cynthia, the Goddess of the Moon or cann,
may be connoted with Cain the Man in the Moon, and we shall ultimately
associate her with Candia the alternative title of Crete, and with Caindea, an
Irish divinity, whose name in Gaelic means the gentle goddess.
Near Coniston in Cumberland is Yew Barrow, a rugged, cragged, pyramidal
height which like the river Yeo, rising from Seven Sisters Springs, was
probably associated with Jou or Yew. The culminating peak known as “The
Old Man” of Coniston is suggestive of the Elfin tradition:—
High on the hill-top the Old King sits
He is now so old and grey, he’s nigh lost his wits.
The Egyptians figured Ra, the Ancient of Days, as at times so senile that he
dribbled at the mouth.
The traditional attributes of Cain, the Man in the Moon, or Cann, the full
moon, are a dog, a lanthorn, and a bush of thorn. The dog is the kuon or
chien of St. Kit, the Kaadman or the Good Man, and the lanthorn is
probably Jack-a-lantern or Will-o-the-wisp, known of old as Kit-with-a-
canstick or Kitty-with-a-candlestick. The thorn bush was sacred to the Elves
for reasons which will be discussed in a subsequent chapter. It is sufficient
here to note that the equivalent of the sacred hawthorn of Britain is known
in the East as the Alvah or Elluf.[163] The Irish title of the letter a or haw is
alif, as also is the Arabian: the Greek alpha is either alpa or alfa.
The Welsh Archbard Taliesin makes the mystic statement:—

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

The wheat rich in grain
And red flowing wine
Christ’s pure body make,
Son of Alpha.

The same poet claims, “I was in the Ark with Noah and Alpha,” whence it
would seem that Alpha was Mother Eve or the Mother of All Living. Alfa
the Elf King and his followers the elves were deemed to be ever-living, and
the words love, life, and alive are all one and the same. That Spenser
appreciated this identity between Elfe and life is apparent in the passage:—
Prometheus did create
A man of many parts from beasts derived,
That man so made he called Elfe to wit,
Quick the first author of all Elfin kind,
Who wandering through the world with wearie feet
Did in the gardens of Adonis find
A goodly creature whom he deemed in mind
To be no earthly wight, but either sprite
Or angel, the author of all woman-kind.[164]
Quick as in “quick and dead” meant living, whence “Elfe, to wit Quick,”
was clearly understood by Spenser as life. It meant further, all vie or all feu,
for the ancients identified life and fire, and they further identified the fays
or elves with feux or fires. The place-name Fife is, I suspect, connected with
vif or vive, and it is noteworthy that in Fifeshire to this day a circular patch
of white snow which habitually lingers in a certain hill cup is termed
poetically “the Lady Alva’s web”. Whether this Lady Alva was supposed to
haunt Glen Alva—a name now associated with a more material spirit—I do
not know.
The dictionaries define “Alfred” as meaning “Elf in council,” and Allflatt or
Elfleet as “elf purity”. The big Alfe was no doubt symbolised by the

celebrated Alphian Rock in Yorkshire, and the little Alf was almost certainly
worshipped in his coty or stone cradle at Alvescott near Witney. That this
site was another Kit’s Coty or “Cradle of Tudno,” as at Llandudno, is
implied by the earlier forms Elephescote (1216) and Alfays (1274). The
Fays and the Elves are one and the same as the Jinns, the Genii, or “the
Gentry”.
There used to be an “Alphey” within Cripplegate on the site of the present
Church of St. Alphage in London. It was believed that the Elf King
inhabited the linden tree, and the elder was similarly associated with him.
Linden is the same word as London, and the name elder resolves into the
dre or der or abode of El: in Scandinavia the elves were known as the Elles,
whence probably Ellesmere—the Elves pool—and similar place-names.
We shall subsequently consider a humble Hallicondane or Ellie King dun
still standing in Ramsgate. There was also a famous Elve dun or Elve-haunt
at Elboton, a hill in Yorkshire, where according to local legend:—
From Burnsall’s Tower the midnight hour
Had toll’d and its echo was still,
And the Elphin bard from faerie land
Was upon Elboton Hill.
In the neighbourhood of this ton or dun of Elbo there are persistent
traditions of a spectral hound or bandog.
In the immediate neighbourhood of the London Aldermanbury—the barrow
or court of Alderman—is a church dedicated to St. Alban, and in this same
district stood the parish church of St. Alphage. There figures in the Church
Calendar a “St. Alphage the Bald,” and also a St. Alphage or Elphege,
known alternatively as Anlaf. The word Anlaf resolves into Ancient Alif,
and it may be thus surmised that “Alphage the Bald” was the Alif, Aleph, or
Alpha aged.
As has already been seen the Celts represented their Hercules as bald-
headed. St. Alban’s, Holborn, is situated in Baldwin’s Gardens where also is
a Baldwin’s Place. Probably it was the same Bald One—alias Father Time
—that originated the Baldwin Street in the neighbourhood of St. Alphage
and St. Alban, Aldermanbury.

St. Anlaf may be connoted with the St. Olave whose church neighbours
those of St. Alphage, and St. Alban. By the Church of St. Alban used to run
Love Lane, and Anlaf may thus perhaps be rendered Ancient Love, or
Ancient Life, or Ancient Elf.
The Olive branch is a universally understood emblem of love, in which
connection there is an apparition recorded of St. John the Almoner. “He saw
on a time in a vision a much fair maid, which had on her head a crown of
olive, and when he saw her he was greatly abashed and demanded her what
she was.” She answered, “I am Mercy; which brought from Heaven the Son
of God; if thou wilt wed me thou shalt fare the better”. Then he,
understanding that the olive betokened Mercy, began that same day to be
merciful.
A short distance from Aldermanbury is Bunhill Row, on the site of Bunhill
fields where used to be kept the hounds or bandogs of the Corporation of
London. The name Bunhill implies an ancient tumulus or barrow sacred to
the same Bun or Ban as the neighbouring St. Albans.
The “Coleman” which pervades this district of London, as in Coleman
Street, Colemanchurch, Colemanhawe, Colemannes, implies that a colony
of St. Colmans or “Doves” settled there and founded the surrounding
shrines. In Ireland, Kil as in Kilpatrick, Kilbride, meant cell or shrine,
whence it may be deduced that the river Cuneburn or Kilburn was a sacred
stream on the banks of which many Godwyns had their cells. In this
neighbourhood the place-names Hollybush Vale, Hollybush Tavern, imply
the existence of a very celebrated Holly Tree. The illustration herewith
represents the Twelfth Night Holly Festival in Westmorland, which
terminated gloriously at an inn:—

Fig. 40.—From The Everyday Book (Hone, W.).
To every branch a torch they tie
To every torch a light apply,
At each new light send forth huzzahs
Till all the tree is in a blaze;
Then bear it flaming through the town,
With minstrelsy and rockets thrown.[165]
At the Westmorland festival the holly tree was always carried by the biggest
man, and in all probability this was a similar custom in the Cuneburn or
Kilburn district, terminating at the Hollybush Tavern.
Scandinavian legend tells of a potent enchantress who had dwelt for 300
years on the Island of Kunnan (Canaan?) happy in the exquisite innocence
of her youth. Mighty heroes sued for the love of this fairest of giant
maidens, and the sea around Kunnan is said to be still cumbered with the
fragments of rock which her Cyclopean admirers flung jealously at one
another. Ere, however, she was married “the detestable Odin” came into the
country and drove all from the island. Refuging elsewhere the Lady of

Kunnan and her consort dwelt awhile undisturbed until such time as a
gigantic Oluf “came from Britain”. This Oluf (they called him the Holy)
making the sign of the cross with his hands drove ashore in a gigantic ship
crying with a loud voice: “Stand there as a stone till the last day,” and in the
same instant the unhappy husband became a mass of rock. The tale
continues that on Yule Eve only could the Lord of Kunnan and other
petrified giants receive back their life for the space of seven hours.[166]
Now Janus alias Saturn had on his coins the figure of a ship’s prow; he was
sometimes delineated pointing to a rock whence issued a profusion of
water; seven days were set apart for his rites in December; and the seven
days of the week were no doubt connected with his title of Septimanus. In
Britain the consort of the Magna Mater Keridwen ( = Perpetual Love) or
Ked was entitled Tegid, and like Janus and St. Peter Tegid was entitled the
Door-keeper. In Celtic te meant good, whence Tegid might reasonably be
understood as either Good God or The Good. Tegid also meant, according
to Davies, serene baldness, an interpretation which has been ridiculed, but
one which nevertheless is in all probability correct for every ancient term
bore many meanings, and because one is right it does not necessarily follow
that every other one is wrong.
Tegid and Ked were the parents of an untoward child, whose name Avagddu
is translated as having meant utter darkness, but as Davies observes
“mythological genealogy is mere allegory, and the father and the son are
frequently the same person under different points of view. Thus this
character in his abject state may be referred to as the patriarch himself
during his confinement in the internal gloom of the Ark, where he was
surrounded with utter darkness; a circumstance which was commemorated
in all the mysteries of the gentile world.... And as our complex Mythology
identified the character of the patriarch with the sun, so Avagddu may also
have been viewed as a type of that luminary in his veil of darkness and
gloom. This gloom was afterwards changed into light and cheerfulness, and
thus the son of Keridwen may be recognised in his illuminated state under
the title of Elphin, and Rhuvawn Bevyr which implies bursting forth with
radiance, and seems to be an epithet of the helio-arkite god.” Davies
continues: “Avagddu thus considered as a type of the helio-arkite god in his
afflicted and renovated state has a striking coincidence of character with
Eros the blind god of the Greeks”.[167] The Cain or “Man in the Moon,”

represented herewith, has the heart of love, or Eros, figured on his headgear,
and he is carrying the pipes of Pan, or of the Elphin Bard of Fairyland.
It was common knowledge to our predecessors, that Titania—“Our radiant
Queen”—hated sluts and sluttery and when Mrs. Page concocted her fairy
plot against Falstaff she enjoined—
Then let them all encircle him about
And Fairy-like to pinch the unclean Knight,
And ask him why that hour of fairy revel
In their so sacred paths he dares to tread.

Fig. 42.—British. From A New
Description of England and Wales
Fig. 41.—From Les (Anon., 1724).
Filigranes (Briquet, C.
M.).

The White May or Hawthorn which was so dear to the Elves was probably
the symbol of that chastity and cleanliness which was proverbially an
Elphin attribute. It is, for instance, said of Sir Thopas, when questing for the
Fairy Queen, that—
... he was chaste and no lechour
And sweet as is the bramble flower,
That beareth the red hip.
On reaching the domain of Queen Elf, Sir Thopas is encountered by a
“great giaunt” Sire Oliphaunt, who informs him—
Here the Queen of Fairie
With harpe and pipe and symphonie
Dwelleth in this place.

Sire Oliphaunt may be connoted with the Elephant which occurs on our
ancient coinage, and is also found carved on many prehistoric stones in
Scotland, notably in the cave of St. Rule at St. Andrews. The Kate Kennedy
still commemorated at St. Andrews we shall subsequently connote with
Conneda and with Caindea.
The Elephant which sleeps while standing was regarded as the emblem of
the benevolent sentinel, or watchman, and as the symbol of giant strength,
meekness, and ingenuity. According to the poet Donne:—
Nature’s great masterpiece, an Elephant
The onely harmelesse great thing; the giant
Of beasts; who thought none bad, to make him wise
But to be just and thankful, loth t’ offend
(Yet nature hath given him no knees to bend)
Himself he up-props, on himself relies
And foe to none.

Fig. 43.—From An Essay on Ancient Coins,
Medals, and Gems (Walsh, R.).
The Elephant or Oliphant (Greek elephas, “origin unknown”) is the hugest
and the first of beasts, and in India it symbolises the vanquisher of
obstacles, the leader or the opener of the way. Ganesa, the elephant-headed
Hindu god is invariably invoked at the beginning of any enterprise, and the
name Ganesa is practically the same as genesis the origin or beginning.
“Praise to Thee, O Ganesa,” wrote a prehistoric hymnist, “Thou art
manifestly the Truth, Thou art undoubtedly the Creator, Preserver, and
Destroyer, the Supreme Brahma, the Eternal Spirit.”

One of the reasons for the symbolic eminence of the Elephant seems to
have been the animal’s habit of spouting water. It is still said of the Man in
the Moon that he is a giant who at the time of the flow stands in a stooping
posture because he is then taking up water which he pours out on the earth
and thereby causes high tide; but at the time of the ebb he stands erect and
rests from his labour when the water can subside again.[168]
The moon goddess of the Muysca Indians of Bogota is named Chin (akin to
Cain, cann, and Ganesa?), and in her insensate spleen Chin was supposed at
one period to have flooded the entire world. In Mexico one of the best
represented gods is Chac the rain-god, who is the possessor of an elongated
nose not unlike the proboscis of a tapir, which, of course, is the spout
whence comes the rain which he blows over the earth.[169] The Hebrew Jah,
i.e., Jon or Joy or Jack, is hailed as the long-nosed, and Taylor in his
Diegesis[170] gives the following as a correct rendering of the original
Psalm: “Sing ye to the Gods! Chant ye his name! Exalt him who rideth in
the heavens by his name Jack, and leap for Joy before his face! For the Lord
hath a long nose and his mercy endureth for ever!” It is quite beyond the
possibilities of independent evolution or of coincidence that the divinity
with a long nose or trunk, should have been known as Chac alike in Mexico
and Asia Minor.
The spouting characteristic of the whale rendered it a marine equivalent to
the elephant. Whale is the same word as whole, and leviathan is radically
the lev of elephant. According to British mythology, Keridwen or Ked was
a leviathian or whale, whence, as from the Ark, emerged all life.
Not only is the Man in the Moon or the Wandering Jew peculiarly identified
with St. Albans in Britain, but he reappears at the Arabian city of Elvan.
This name is cognate with elephant in the same way as alpha is correlate to
alpa or alba: Ayliffe and Alvey are common English surnames. In
Kensington the memory of Kenna, a fairy princess who was beloved by
Albion a fairy prince, lingered until recently, and this tradition is seemingly
commemorated in the neighbourhood at Albion Gate, St. Alban’s Road, and
elsewhere. In St. Alban’s Road, Kensington, one may still find the family
name Oliff which, like Ayliffe and Iliffe, is the same as alif, aleph, or alpha,
the letter “a” the first or the beginning.

Panku, the great giant of the universe, is entitled by the Chinese the first of
Beings or the Beginning, and it is claimed by the Christian Church that St.
Alban was the first of British martyrs. Eastward of Kensington Gardens is
St. Alban’s Place and also Albany, generally, but incorrectly termed “The
Albany”. The neighbouring Old Bond Street and New Bond Street owe
their nomenclature to a ground landlord whose name Bond is radically
connected with Albany. The original Bond family were in all probability
followers of “Bond,” and the curiously named Newbons, followers of the
Little Bond or New Sun. In the Isle of Wight there are, half a mile apart, the
hamlets of Great Pann and Little Pann which, considered in conjunction
with Bonchurch, were probably once sacred to Old Pan and Little Pan.
According to Prof. Weekley the name Lovibond, Loveband, or Levibond,
“seems to mean ‘the dear bond’”.[171] Who or what “the dear bond” was is
not explained, but we may connote the kindred surnames Goodbon,
Goodbun, and Goodband.
By 24th December, the shortest day in the year, the Old Sun had sunk
seemingly to his death, and at Yuletide it was believed that the rejuvenate
New Sun, the Baby Sun, the Welsh Mabon, or Baby Boy, was born anew
either from the sea or from a cave or womb of the earth. The arms of the
Isle of Man, anciently known as Eubonia, are the three-legged solar wheel
of the Wandering Joy. Eu of Eubonia is seemingly the Greek eu, meaning
soft, gentle, pleasing and propitious, and the rolling wheel of Eubonia was
like the svastika, a symbol of the Gentle Bounty running his beneficent and
never-ending course. St. Andrew, with his limbs extended to the four
quarters, was, I think, once the same symbol,[172] and it is probable that the
story of Ixion bound to a burning wheel and rolling everlastingly through
space was a perversion of the same original. Ixion is phonetically Ik zion,
i.e., the Mighty Sun or Mighty Sein or Bosom. It was frankly admitted by
the Greeks that their language was largely derived from barbarians or
foreigners, and the same admission was made in relation to their theology.
[173]

The circle of the Sun or solar wheel, otherwise the wheel of Good law, is
found frequently engraved on prehistoric stones and coins. In Gaul, statues
of a divinity bearing a wheel upon his shoulder have been found, and solar
wheels figure persistently in Celtic archæology. It has been supposed, says
Dr. Holmes, that they are symbolical of Sun worship, and that the God with

the wheel was the God of the Sun. It is further probable that the wheel on
the shoulder corresponded to the child on the shoulder of St. Kit, and I am
at a loss to understand how any thinker can have ever propounded such a
proposition as to require Dr. Holmes’ comment, “the supposition that the
wheels were money is no longer admitted by competent antiquaries”.[174]
Sir James Frazer instances cases of how the so-called “Fire of Heaven”
used sometimes to be made by igniting a cart wheel smeared with pitch,
fastened on a pole 12 feet high, the top of the pole being inserted in the
nave of the wheel. This fire was made on the summit of a mountain, and as
the flame ascended the people uttered a set form of words with eyes and
arms directed heavenwards. In Norway to this day men turn cart wheels
round the bonfires of St. John, and doubtless at some time the London
urchin—still a notorious adept at cart-wheeling—once exercised the same
pious orgy.
On Midsummer Eve, when the bonfires were lighted on every hill in honour
of St. John, the Elves were at their very liveliest. Eléve in French means up
aloft, and eléve means frequently transported with excitement. Shakespeare
refers to elves as ouphes, which is the same word as oaf and was formerly
spelt aulf. Near Wye in Kent there is a sign-post pointing to Aluph, but this
little village figures on the Ordnance map as Aulph. The ouphes of
Shakespeare are equipped “with rounds of waxen tapers on their heads,”
and with Jack o’ lanthorn may be connoted Hob-and-his-lanthorn. In
Worcestershire Hob has his fuller title, and is alternatively known as
Hobredy:[175] with the further form Hobany may be correlated Eubonia, and
with Hobredy, St. Bride, the Bona dea of the Hebrides. It is probable that
“Hobany” is responsible for the curious Kentish place name Ebony, and that
the Wandering Dame Abonde, Habonde, or Abundia of French faërie, was
Hobany’s consort. The worship of La Dame Abonde, the star-crowned
Queen of Fées, is particularly associated with St. John’s Day, and there is
little doubt that in certain aspects she was cann, or the full moon:—

The moon, full-orbed, into the well looks down,
Her face is mirrored in the waters clear,
And fées are gathering in the beech shade brown,
From missions far and near.

And there erect and tall, Abonde the Queen,
Brow-girt with golden circlet, that doth bear
A small bright scintillating star between
Her braids of dusky hair.[176]

The Bretons believe in the existence of certain elves termed Sand Yan y Tad
(St. John and Father) who carry lights at their finger ends, which spin
round and round like wheels, and, according to Arab tradition, the Jinn or
Jan (Jinnee m., Jinniyeh, f. sing.) are formed of “smokeless fire”.[177] That
the ancient British, like the Peruvians, deemed themselves children of the
Fire or Sun is implied among other testimony from a Druidic folk-tale
(collected by a writer in 1795), wherein a young prince, divested of his
corporeal envelope, has his senses refined and is borne aloft into the air.
“Towards the disc of the Sun the young prince approaches at first with
awful dread, but presently with inconceivable rapture and delight. This
glorious body (the Sun) consists of an assemblage of pure souls swimming
in an ocean of bliss. It is the abode of the blessed—of the sages—of the
friends of mankind. The happy souls when thrice purified in the sun ascend
to a succession of still higher spheres from whence they can no more
descend to traverse the circles of those globes and stars which float in a less
pure atmosphere.”[178]
At New Grange in Ireland, and elsewhere on prehistoric rock tombs, there
may be seen carvings of a ship or solar barque frequently in juxtaposition to
a solar disc, and the similarity of these designs to the solar ship of Egypt
has frequently been remarked. The Egyptian believed that after death his
soul would be allowed to enter the land of the Sun, and that in the company
of the Gods he would then sail into the source of immortal Light: hence he
placed model boats in the tombs, sometimes in pairs which were entitled
Truth and Righteousness, and prayed: “Come to the Earth, draw nigh, O
boat of Ra, make the boat to travel, O Mariners of Heaven”.

It is no doubt this same Holy Pair of Virtues that suckled the Child Albine,
and that are represented as two streams of nourishment in the emblem
herewith.

Fig. 44.—From the title-page of a
seventeenth-century publication of a
Cambridge printer.
That the British were enthusiastic astronomers is testified by Cæsar, who
states that the Druids held a great many discourses about the stars and their
motion,[179] about the size of the world and various countries, about the
nature of things, about the power and might of the immortal gods, and that
they instructed the youths in these subjects. It is equally certain that the
British reverenced Sun and Fire not merely materially but as emblems of
the Something behind Matter. “Think not,” said a tenth-century Persian,
“that our fathers were adorers of fire; for that element was only an exalted

object on the lustre of which they fixed their eyes. They humbled
themselves before God, and if thy understanding be ever so little exerted
thou must acknowledge thy dependence on the Being supremely pure.”
Among the sacred traditions of the Hindus which are assigned by competent
scholars to 2400 B.C. occurs what is known as the holiest verse of the Vedas.
This reads: “Let us adore the supremacy of that Divine Sun the Deity who
illumines all, from whom all proceed, are renovated, and to whom all must
return, whom we invoke to direct our intellects aright in our progress
towards His holy Seat”. It is quite permissible to cite this Hindu evidence as
Hindus and Celts were alike branches of the same Aryan family, and
between Druids and Brahmins there has, apart from etymology,[180] been
traced the same affinity as existed between the Druids and the Magi.
The primeval symbolism of Fire as Love and Light as Intellect is stamped
indelibly on language, yet like most things which are ever seen it is now
never seen. We say “I see” instead of “I understand”; we speak of throwing
light on a subject or of warm affection, yet in entire forgetfulness of the old
ideas underlying such phraseology. When Christianity came westward it
was compelled to take over almost intact most of the customs of aboriginal
paganry, notably the Cult of Fire. The sacred fire of St. Bridget was kept
going at Kildare until the thirteenth century when it was suppressed by the
Archbishop of Dublin. It was, however, relighted and maintained by the
nineteen nuns of St. Bridget—the direct descendants of nineteen prehistoric
nuns or Druidesses—until the time of the Reformation, when it was finally
extinguished.
In old Irish MSS. Brigit—who was represented Madonna-like, with a child
in her arms—is entitled “The Presiding Care”. The name of her father,
Dagda Mor, is said by Celtic scholars to mean “The Great Good Fire”; the
dandelion is called “St. Bride’s Forerunner,” and in Gaelic its name is
“Little Flame of God”.
We have it on the authority of Shakespeare that “Fairies use flowers for
their charactery,” whence probably the pink with its pinked or ray-like
petals was a flower of Pan on High. Dianthus, the Greek for pink, means
“divine” or “day flower,” and like the daisy or Day’s Eye the Pansy was in
all probability deemed to be Pan’s eye. Among the list of Elphin names with
which, complained Reginald Scott, “our mothers’ maids have so frayed
us,”[181] he includes “Pans” and the “First Fairy” in Lyly’s The Maid’s

Metamorphosis, introduces himself by the remark, “My name is Penny”. To
this primary elf may perhaps be assigned the plant name Pennyroyal, and
his haunts may be assumed at various Pennyfields, Pandowns, and Bunhills.
Some authorities maintain that Bonfire is a corruption of Bonefire, or fire of
bones. But bones will not burn, and the “Blessing Fire,” Bonfire, Good Fire,
or Beltane is still worshipped in Brittany under the Celtic name of Tan Tad
or Fire Father. In Brittany there exists to this day a worship of the Druidic
Fire Father, which in its elaborate ritual preserves seemingly the exact spirit
and ceremony of prehistoric fire-worship. In Provence the grandfather sets
the Christmas log alight, the youngest child pours wine over it, then amid
shouts of joy the log is put upon the fire-dogs and its first flame is awaited
with reverence. This instance is the more memorable by reason of the
prayer which has survived in connection with the ceremony and has been
thus quoted in Notes and Queries: “Mix the brightness of thy flames with
that of our hearts, and maintain among us peace and good health. Warm
with thy fire the feet of orphans and of sick old men. Guard the house of the
poor, and do not destroy the hopes of the peasant or the seaman’s boat.”
The instances of Bonfire or Beltane customs collected by the author of The
Golden Bough clearly evince their original sanctity. In Greece women
jumped over the all-purifying flames crying, “I leave my sins behind me,”
and notwithstanding the strenuous efforts of Christianity to persuade our
forefathers that all who worship fire “shall go in misery to sore
punishment,” the cult of Fire still continues in out-of-the-way parts even
now. To this day children in Ireland are passed through the fire by being
caught up and whisked over it, my authority for which statement observing:
“We have here apparently an exact repetition of the worship described in
the Old Testament and an explanation of it, for there the idolatrous Israelites
are described as passing their sons and their daughters through the fire. This
the writer always thought was some purifying cruel observance, but it
seems that it could be done without in any way hurting the children.”[182]
Not only the ritual of fire, but also its ethics have largely survived, notably
in Ireland, where it was customary to ask for fire from a priest’s house. But
if the priest refused, as he usually did, in order to discountenance
superstition, then the fire was asked from the happiest man, i.e., the best
living person in the parish. When lighting a candle it was customary in

England to say “May the Lord send us the Light of Heaven,” and when
putting it out, “May the Lord renew for us the Light of Heaven”.
Originally the Persians worshipped the sacred fire only upon hill-tops, a
custom for which Bryant acidly assigns the following reason: “The people
who prosecuted this method of worship enjoyed a soothing infatuation
which flattered the gloom of superstition. The eminences to which they
retired were lonely and silent and seemed to be happily circumstanced for
contemplation and prayer. They who frequented them were raised above the
lower world and fancied that they were brought into the vicinity of the
powers of the air and of the Deity, who resided in the higher regions.”
The Druids, like the Persians, worshipped upon hill-tops or the highest
ground, doubtless because they regarded these as symbols of the Most
High, and there is really nothing in the custom flattering either to gloom or
superstition:—
Mountains are altars rais’d to God by hands
Omnipotent, and man must worship there.
On their aspiring summits glad he stands
And near to Heaven.
If our ancestors were unable to find a convenient highland, they made an
artificial mound, and such was the sacred centre or sanctuary of all tribal
activities. The celebrated McAlpine laws of Scotland were promulgated
from the Mote of Urr, which remarkable construction will be illustrated in a
later chapter.
Not only in Homeric Greece, but universally, Kings and Chiefs were once
treated and esteemed as Sun-gods. “Think not,” said a Maori chief to a
missionary, “that I am a man, that my origin is of the earth. I come from the
Heavens; my ancestors are all there; they are gods, and I shall return to
them”.[183] The notion of Imperial divinity is not yet dead; it was
flourishing in England to Stuart times, and though the spirit may now have
fled, its traces still remain in our regal ceremonial. In the Indian Code
known as the Laws of Manu, the superstition is thus enunciated: “Because a
King has been formed of particles of those Lords of the gods, he therefore
surpasses all created beings in lustre, and like the Sun he burns eyes and
hearts; nor can anybody on earth even gaze at him. Through his power he is
Fire and Wind, he the Sun and Moon, he the Lord of Justice, he Kubera, he

Varuna, he Great Indra. Even an infant King must not be despised that he is
mortal; for he is a great deity in human form.”[184]
It is obvious that the British carried this conception of the innate divinity of
man much farther than merely to the personalities of kings. The word soul,
Dutch ziel, is probably the French word ciel; to work with zeal is to throw
one’s soul into it. That the Celts, like the Chinese or Celestials, equated the
soul with the ciel or the Celestial, believing, as expressed by Taliesin, the
famous British Bard, that “my original country is the region of the summer
stars,” is unquestionable. Max Müller supposed that the word soul was
derived from the Greek root seio, to shake. “It meant,” he says, “the storm-
tossed waters in contradistinction to stagnant or running water. The soul
being called saivala (Gothic), we see that it was originally conceived by the
Teutonic nations as a sea within, heaving up and down with every breath
and reflecting heaven and earth on the mirror of the deep.”
Whatever the Teutonic nations may have fancied about their souls is
irrelevant to the Druidic teaching, which was something quite different. In
a.d. 45, a Roman author stated that the Druids (who did not flourish in
Germany) taught many things privately, but that one of their precepts had
become public, to wit, that man should act bravely in war, that souls are
immortal, and that there is another life after death. There is additional
testimony to the effect that the Druids of the Isle of Man, or Eubonia,
“raised their minds to the most sublime inquiries, and despising human and
worldly affairs strongly pressed upon their disciples the immortality of the
soul”. “Before all things,” confirmed Cæsar, “they (the Druids) are desirous
to inspire a belief that men’s souls do not perish.” That they successfully
inspired this cardinal doctrine is proved by the fact that among the Celts it
was not uncommon to lend money on the understanding that it should be
repaid in the next world. It is further recorded that the Britons had such an
utter disregard of death that they sang cheerily when marching into battle,
and in the words of an astonished Roman, Mortem pro joco habent—“They
turn death into a joke”.
It was the belief of the Celt that immediately at death man assumed a
spiritual replica of his earthly body and passed into what was termed the
Land of the Living, the White Land, or the Great Strand, or The Great Land,
and many other titles. An Elphin Land, where there was neither death nor
old age, nor any breach of law, where he heard the noble and melodious

music of the gods, travelled from realm to realm, drank from crystal cups,
and entertained himself with his beloved. In this Fairyland of happy souls
he supposed the virtuous and brave to roam among fields covered with
sweet flowers, and amid groves laden with delicious fruits. Here some, as
their taste inclined, wandered in happy groups, some reclined in pleasant
bowers, while others exercised themselves with hunting, wrestling, running
races, martial feats, and other manly exercises. No one grew old in this
Abode, nor did the inhabitants feel tedious of enjoyment or know how the
centuries passed away. In this spiritual Land of Immortal Youth “wherein is
delight of every goodness,” and “where only truth is known,” there was
believed to be “neither age, nor decay; nor gloom, nor sadness, nor envy,
nor jealousy, nor hatred, nor haughtiness”; in short, the Fairyland or
Paradise of the Britons coincided exactly with the celestial garden of the
Persians wherein, it is said, there was “no impotent, no lunatic, no poverty,
no lying, no meanness, no jealousy, no decayed tooth, no leprous to be
confined,” nor any of the brands wherewith evil stamps the bodies of
mortals.
To this day the unsophisticated Celts of Britain and Brittany believe in this
doctrine of a heavenly hereafter, and the conception of an all-surrounding
“Good People” and elemental spirits is still vividly alive. In England fairies
were known as Mawmets, meaning “little mothers,” and in Wales as y
mamau, which means “the mothers”. They were also known as “mothers’
blessings”.
To the early Christian preachers the “gentry” and the “good people” were
the troops of Satan continually to be combated and exorcised, but it was a
hard task to dispel the exquisite images of the fairy-paradise, substituting in
lieu of it the monkish purgatory. There is a tale extant of how St. Patrick
once upon a time tried to convince Oisin that the hero Fingal was roasting
in hell. “If,” cried out the old Fenian, “the children of Morni and the many
tribes of the clan Ovi were alive, we would force brave Fingal out of hell or
the habitation should be our own.”
Not only did the British believe that their friends were in Elysium, but they
likewise supposed themselves to be under the personal and immediate
guardianship of the “gentry”. The Rev. S. Baring-Gould refers to the
beautiful legends which centre around this belief as too often, alas, but
apples of Sodom, fair cheeked, but containing the dust and ashes of

heathenism. After lamenting the heresy—“too often current among the
lower orders and dissenters”—that the souls of the departed become angels,
he goes on to explain: “In Judaic and Christian doctrine the angel creation is
distinct from that of human beings, and a Jew or a Catholic would as little
dream of confusing the distinct conception of angel and soul as of believing
in metempsychosis. But not so dissenting religion. According to Druidic
dogma the souls of the dead were guardians of the living, a belief shared
with the Ancient Indians, etc. Thus the hymn, ‘I want to be an Angel,’ so
popular in dissenting schools, is founded on a venerable Aryan myth and
therefore of exceeding interest, but Christian it is not.”[185]
Lucan, the Roman poet, alluding to the Druids observed—
If dying mortals doom they sing aright,
No ghosts descend to dwell in dreadful night
No parting souls to grisly Pluto go
Nor seek the dreary silent shades below,
But forth they fly immortal to their kind
And other bodies in new worlds they find.

Fig. 45.—From Christian Iconography
(Didron).
The symbolism of the butterfly is crystallised in the word psyche, which in
Greek meant not only butterfly but also soul, and to this day butterflies in

some districts of Great Britain are considered to be souls, though this may
have arisen not from an ethereal imagination, but from the ancient doctrine
of metemphsychosis which the Druids seemingly held. It was certainly
believed that souls, like serpents, shed their old coverings and assumed
newer and more lovely forms, that all things changed, but that nothing
perished. In Cornwall moths, regarded by some as souls, by others as
fairies, are known as pisgies or piskies. The connection between the
Cornish words pisgie or piskie and the Greek psyche has been commented
upon as being “curious but surely casual”. Grimm has recorded that in old
German, the caterpillar was named Alba, and that the Alp often takes the
form of a butterfly.[186]
Referring to Ossian, Dr. Waddell states: “He recognised the Deity, if he
could be said to recognise him at all, as an omnipresent vital essence
everywhere diffused in the world, or centred for a lifetime in heroes. He
himself, his kindred, his forefathers, and the human race at large were
dependent solely on the atmosphere, their souls were identified with the air,
heaven was their natural home, earth their temporary residence.”
But, though certainly upholders of what would nowadays be termed
complacently “the Larger Hope,” it was certainly not supposed that evil was
capable of admittance to the Land of Virtues: on the contrary, the Celts
believed firmly in the existence of an underworld which their poets termed
“the cruel prison of the earth,” “the abode of death,” “the loveless land,”
etc.
According to the Bardic Triads there were “Three things that make a man
equal to an angel; the love of every good; the love of exercising charity; and
the love of pleasing God”. It was further inculcated that “In creation there is
no evil which is not a greater good than an evil: the things called rewards or
punishments are so secured by eternal ordinances, that they are not
consequences, but properties of our acts and habits.”
It was not imagined as it is to-day that “the awful wrath of God” could be
assuaged by the sacrifice of an innocent man, or that—
Believe in Christ, who died for thee,
And sure as He hath died,
Thy debt is paid, thy soul is free,
And thou art justified.[187]

It is still the doctrine of the Christian Church that infants dying unbaptised
are doomed to hell, but to the British this barbaric dogma evidently never
appealed. In the fifth century the peace of the Church was vastly disturbed
by the insidious heresy called Pelasgian, and it is a matter of some
distinction to these islands that “Pelasgus,” whose correct name was
Morgan, was British-born. Morgan or Pelasgus, seconded by Coelestius, an
Irish Scot, wilfully but gracelessly maintained that Adam’s sin affected only
himself, not his posterity; that children at their birth are as pure and
innocent as Adam was at his creation, and that the Grace of God is not
necessary to enable men to do their duty, to overcome temptations, or even
to attain perfection, but that they may do all this by the freedom of their
own wills. A Council of 214 Bishops, held at Carthage, formally
condemned these pestilent and insidious doctrines which, according to a
commentator, “strike at the root of genuine piety”.
There is no known etymology for the words God and good, and some years
ago it was a matter of divided opinion whether or not they were radically
the same. In Danish the two terms are identical, and there is very little
doubt that the one is an adjective derived from the other. Max Müller,
however, sums up the contrary opinion as follows: “God was most likely an
old heathen name of the Deity and for such a name the supposed
etymological meaning of good would be far too modern, too abstract, too
Christian”.
One might ignore this marvellous complacency were it not for the fact that
it still expresses the opinion of a considerable majority. To refute the
presumption that Christianity alone is capable of abstract thought, or of
conceiving God as good, one need only turn to any primitive philosophy. It
is, however, needless to look further afield than pagan Albion. Strabo
alludes to the Druidic teaching as “moral science,” and no phrase better
defines the pith and dignity of certain British Triads. It was daringly
maintained that God cannot be matter, therefore everything not matter was
God: that:—

In every person there is a soul,
In every soul there is intelligence:
In every intelligence there is thought,
In every thought there is either good or evil:
In every evil there is death:
In every good there is life,
In every life there is God.[188]
The Bards of Britain, who claimed to maintain the “sciences” of piety,
wisdom, and courtesy, taught that—the three principal properties of the
Hidden God were “Power, knowledge, and love”: that the three purposes of
God in his works were “to consume the evil; to enliven the dead; and to
cause joy from doing good”: that the three ways in which God worked were
“experience, wisdom, and mercy”.
It will be observed that all these axioms are in three clauses, and it was
claimed by the Welsh Bards of the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and
fifteenth centuries that they possessed many similar Triads or threefold
precepts which had been handed down by memory and tradition from
immemorial times.[189] It is generally accepted by competent scholars that
the Welsh Triads, particularly the poems attributed to “Taliesin,”
undoubtedly contain a great deal of pagan and pre-Christian doctrine, but to
what extent this material has been garbled and alloyed is, of course, a
matter of uncertainty and dispute. In some instances external and internal
evidence testify alike to their authenticity. For example, Diogenes Laertius,
who died in A.D. 222, stated: “The Druids philosophise sententiously and
obscurely—to worship the Gods, to do no evil, to exercise courage”. This
precise and comprehensive summary of the whole duty of man is to be
found among the Bardic Triads, where it has been translated to read: “The
three First Principles of Wisdom: obedience to the laws of God, concern for
the good of mankind, and bravery in sustaining all the accidents of life”.
In Celtic Heathendom Sir John Rhys prints the following noble and
majestic prayer, of which four MSS. variants are in existence:—

Grant, O God, Thy protection;
And in Thy protection, strength,
And in strength, understanding;
And in understanding, knowledge,
And in knowledge, the knowledge of justice;
And in the knowledge of justice, the love of it,
And in that love, the love of all existences;
And in that love of all existences, the love of God.
God and all goodness.
Some have supposed that Druidism learned its secrets from the Persian
Magi, others that the Magi learnt from Druidism. Pliny, speaking of the
vanities of Magiism or Magic, recorded that “Britain celebrates them to-day
with such ceremonies it might seem possible that she taught Magic to the
Persians”. In Persian philosophy the trinity of Goodness was Good
Thought, Good Deed, and Good Word, and in Britain these Three Graces
were symbolised by the three Golden Berries of the Mistletoe or Golden
Bough. They figure alternatively as Three Golden Balls or Apples growing
on a crystal tree. The Mistletoe—sacred alike in Persia and in Britain—was
worshipped as the All-Heal, and it was termed the Ethereal Plant, because
alone among the vegetable creation it springs etherially in mid-air, and not
from earth. Among the adventures of Prince Conneda of Connaught—the
young and lovely son of Great and Good King Conn and Queen Eda—was
a certain quest involving the most strenuous seeking. Aided by a Druid, the
youthful Conneda carried with him a small bottle of extracted All-Heal, and
was led forward by a magic ball, which rolled ever in advance. The story
(or rather allegory, for it is obviously such) tells us that the Three Golden
Apples were plucked from the Crystal Tree in the midst of the pleasure
garden, and deposited by Conneda in his bosom. On returning home
Conneda planted the Three Golden Apples in his garden, and instantly a
great tree bearing similar fruit sprang up. This tree caused all the district to
produce an exuberance of crops and fruits, so that the neighbourhood
became as fertile and plentiful as the dominion of the Firbolgs, in
consequence of the extraordinary powers possessed by the Golden Fruit.
[190]

The trefoil or shamrock (figured constantly in Crete) was another symbol of
the Three in One, and I have little doubt that at Tara there once existed a

picture of St. Patrick holding this almost world-wide emblem. Tara is the
same word as tri or three and in Faërie this number is similarly sacred. The
Irish used to march in battle in threes, the Celtic mairae or fairy mothers
were generally figured in groups of three, and the gown of the Fairy Queen
is said to have been—
Of pansy, pink, and primrose leaves,
Most curiously laid on in threaves.[191]
The word shamrock in Persian is shamrakh, and three to four thousand
years ago a Persian poet hymned: “We worship the pure, the Lord of purity.
We worship the universe of the true spirit, visible, invisible, and all that
sustains the welfare of the good creation. We praise all good thoughts, all
good words, all good deeds, which are and will be, and keep pure all that is
good. Thou true and happy Being! we strive to think, to speak, to do only
what, of all actions, may promote the two lives, the body and the mind. We
beseech the spirit of earth, by means of these best works (agriculture) to
grant us beautiful and fertile fields, for believer and unbeliever, for rich and
poor. We worship the Wise One who formed and furthered the spirit of the
earth. We worship Him with our bodies and souls. We worship Him as
being united with the spirits of pure men and women. We worship the
promotion of all good, all that is very beautiful, shining, immortal, bright,
everything that is good.”
The alleged author of this invocation to the God of Goodness and Beauty
lived certainly as early as 1200 B.C., some think 2000 B.C.: the hymn itself
was collected into its present canon during the fourth century of this era,
but, like the British Triads and all other Bardic lore, it is supposed to have
been long orally preserved. It is perfectly legitimate to compare the
literature of Ancient Persia with that of Britain, for the religious systems of
the two countries were admittedly almost identical; and until recently Persia
was the most generally accepted cradle of the Aryans.
It is impossible to suppose that the earliest compilers and transcribers of the
British Triads had access to the MSS. of the hymn just quoted; yet while
Persian tradition records, “We worship the promotion of all good, all that is
very beautiful, shining, immortal, bright, everything that is good,” the
British Bards seemingly worshipped the promotion of all good, in fact the
Three Ultimate Objects of Bardism are on record as being “to reform

morals and customs; to secure peace and praise everything that is good and
excellent”.
British literature, British folklore, and British custom, all alike refute Max
Müller’s preposterous supposition that the equation God = Good is “far too
modern, too abstract, too Christian,” and there is manifestly some evidence
in favour of the probability that Giant Albion was worshipped as the Holy
Good and the All Good. There is no known tribe of savages that is destitute
of some code of ethics, and it is seemingly a world-wide paradox that
spiritual wisdom and low civilisation can, and often do, exist concurrently.
Side by side with the childish notions of modern savages, one finds, not
infrequently, what Andrew Lang termed, “astonishing metaphysical hymns
about the first stirrings of light in darkness, of becoming, of being, which
remind us of Hegel and Heraclitus”.[192] The sacred Books of Christendom
emanated from one of the crudest and least cultivated of all the subject
races of the Roman Empire. It is self-evident that the Hebrews were a
predatory and semi-savage tribe who conceived their Divinity as vengeful,
cursing, swearing, vomiting, his fury coming up into his face, and his
nostrils smoking; nevertheless, as in the Psalms and elsewhere, are some of
the noblest and most lofty conceptions of Holiness and Beauty.
As a remarkable instance of this seeming universal paradox, one may refer
to Micah, a Hebrew, whose work first appeared in writing about 300 b.c.
There is in Micah some of the best philosophy ever penned, yet the status of
the tribe among whom he lived and to whom he addressed himself, was
barbarous and brutal. Of this, an example is found in Chapter III, where the
prophet writes: “And I said, Hear I pray you, O heads of Jacob and ye
princes of the house of Israel; Is it not for you to know judgement? who
hate the good, and love the evil; who pluck off their skin off them, and their
flesh from off their bones; who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay
their skin from off them, and they break their bones, and chop them in
pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the caldron”.
As a parallel to this cannibalism it is thus quite conceivable that while some
of the MacAlpines were lauding Albani, others were larding their weaker
brethren for the laird’s table: but the whole trend of Alban custom and
Alban literature renders the supposition unlikely. There is extant a British
Triad inculcating the three maxims for good health as “cheerfulness,
temperance, and early rising”. There is another enunciating the three cares

that should occupy the mind of every man as: “To worship God, to avoid
injuring any one, and to act justly towards every living thing”. The latter of
these is curiously reminiscent of Micah’s Triadic utterance: “He hath
showed thee O man what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee,
but to do justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly with God”.

FOOTNOTES:
[140] Toland, History of the Druids, p. 428.
[141] Cf. Poste, B., Britannic Researches, p. 110.
[142] The Lost Language of Symbolism, 1912.
[143] The earliest example of Irish Bardism is to the following effect:—
I invoke thee Erin
Brilliant Brilliant sea,
Fertile Fertile Hill,
Wavy Wavy Wood
Flowing Flowing stream,
Fishy Fishy Lake, etc.
[144] Haslam, W., Perran Zabuloe, p. 8.
[145] Survey of London, Ev. Lib., p. 132.
[146] Golden Legend, III, 248.
[147] Skeat postulates a mute vowel by deriving lazar or leper from Eleazer—
He whom God assists.
[148] Extinct Civilisations of the East, p. 104.
[149] I have a chapter of evidence in MSS. supporting this suggestion.
[150] Frazer, Sir J. G., Folklore in the Old Testament, iii., 45.
[151] Bulfinch put the horse before the cart when he wrote: “As the name of the
god signifies all, Pan came to be considered a symbol of the universe and
personification of nature.”
[152] Wavrin, John de, Chronicles.
[153] This name is supposed to have meant a miser or father of pennies. The
penny is said to have been so named from the pen or head figured upon it.
[154] Hone, W., Everyday Book, i., col. 566.
[155] The New English Dictionary notes the following “forms” of “pigeon,”
pejon, pejoun, pegion, pegyon, pigin, pigen, pigion, pygon. The supposed
connection between pigeon and pipio, “I chirp,” is surely remote, for young
pigeons do not “chirp”.
[156] Mrs. Hamilton Gray in The Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria, writes: “I was
particularly struck with one large carved group, which bore a greater

resemblance to a Hindoo representation of a trinity than anything not Indian I
have ever seen. Did we not know the thing to be impossible, I should be tempted
on the strength of this sculptured stone to assert that Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu
must at some former period have found adorers in Etruria. Three monstrous
faces, growing together, one full face in the middle and a profile on each side”
(p. 309).
[157] The official etymology of June is “probably from root of Latin juvenis,
junior,” but where is the sense in this?
[158] Baring-Gould, S., Curious Myths, p. 5.
[159] Curious Myths, p. 23.
[160] Gray, Mrs. Hamilton, Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria, pp. 187, 189.
[161] Hell., c. xx.
[162] Yeats, W. B., Fairy and Folk-tales of the Irish Peasantry, p. 306.
[163] “Theta,” The Thorn Tree, being a History of Thorn Worship. London,
1863, p. 127.
[164] Faërie Queene, Book XI., c. ix., st. 70-71.
[165] Hone, W., Everyday Book, 111., col. 27.
[166] Keightley, T., Fairy Mythology, p. 138.
[167] Davies, E., Myth of Brit. Druids, pp. 203, 204.
[168] Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, p. 194.
[169] Spence, Lewis, Myths of Mexico and Peru, p. 170.
[170] P. 159.
[171] Surnames, p. 230.
[172] The ecclesiastical raison d’être for St. Andrew’s situation is stated as
having been “to the end that his pain should endure the longer”.
[173] “Diogenes Lærtius, in the proem of his philosophical history, reckons the
Druids among the chief authors of the barbarous theology and philosophy, long
anterior to the Greeks, their disciples: and Phurnutus, in his treatise of the Nature
of the Gods, says most expressly that among the many and various fables which
the antient Greecs had about the Gods, some were derived from the Mages, the
Africans, and Phrygians, and others from other nations: for which he cites
Homer as a witness, nor is there anything that bears a greater witness to
itself.”—Toland, History of Druids. London, 1814, p. 106.
[174] Ancient Britain, p. 284.
[175] Keightley, Fairy Mythology, p. 818.
[176] Anon., The Fairy Family, 1857.
[177] Keightley, Fairy Mythology, pp. 25, 441.
[178] Quoted from Davies, E., Celtic Researches, p. 560.
[179] Livy mentions that during the Macedonian War a Gaulish soldier foretold
an eclipse of the moon to the Roman Army (Liber XLIV., c. xxxvii.).

[180] “A few years ago it would have been deemed the height of absurdity to
imagine that the English and the Hindus were originally one people, speaking
the same language, and clearly distinguished from other families of mankind;
and yet comparative philology has established this fact by evidence as clear and
irresistible as that the earth revolves round the sun.”—Smith, Dr. Wm., Lectures
on the English Language, p. 2.
[181] Keightley, Fairy Mythology, p. 290.
[182] Canon ffrench, Prehistoric Faith in Ireland, p. 80.
[183] Cf. Frazer, Sir J. G., Psyche’s Task, pp. 7, 14.
[184] Cf. Ibid.
[185] Curious Myths, p. 557.
[186] Cf. Keightley, T., Fairy Mythology, p. 298.
[187] There is a certain section of Christianity that still revels in hymns such as
the following:—
“His nostrils breathe out fiery streams,
He’s a consuming fire,
His jealous eyes His wrath inflame
And raise His vengeance higher.”
[188] This and the several subsequent quotations from Bardic “Philosophy” are
taken from the collection published in 1862, by the Welsh MSS. Society, under
the title Barddas. Whatever may be the precise date of these axioms the ideas
they express well repay careful consideration.
[189] According to Cæsar the Druidic philosophy was transmitted orally for the
purpose of strengthening the memory. The disciples of Pythagoras followed a
similar precept, hence when the majority of them were destroyed in a fire the
axioms of Pythagoras were largely lost. That the traditional tales of Ireland were
maintained in their verbal integrity for untold years is implied by Mr. Yeats’
statement: “In the Parochial Survey of Ireland it is recorded how the story-tellers
used to gather together of an evening, and if any had a different version from the
others, they would all recite theirs and vote, and the man who had varied would
have to abide by their verdict. In this way stories have been handed down with
such accuracy, that the long tale of Dierdre was, in the earlier decades of this
century, told almost word for word, as in the very ancient MSS. in the Royal
Dublin Society. In one case only it varied, and then the MSS. was obviously
wrong—a passage had been forgotten by the copyist. But this accuracy is rather
in the folk and bardic tales than in the fairy legends, for these vary widely, being
usually adapted to some neighbouring village or local fairy-seeing celebrity.”—
Yeats, W. B., Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, p. 11.
[190] Cf. Yeats, W.B., Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, p. 318.
[191] Keightley, T., Fairy Mythology, p. 346.
[192] Myth, Ritual and Religion, 1. 186.

CHAPTER 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
Rank vapours, gathering, on my comrades seize,
And a foul pestilence creeps down from high.”
—Virgil, The Æneid.

The British Chronicles relate that when Brute and his companions reached
these shores the island was then uninhabited, 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-command) greater
pleasure than to wrestle with the giants of whom there was a greater plenty
in Cornwall than elsewhere”. 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 Æneas, 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,
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 sons of sons unborn, and all the Trojan line.[193]

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 wrestling 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, carried to the edge of the cliff, and heaved over.
[194]

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.[195]
The untoward Goemagog was probably one of an elementary 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 themselves 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”.[196]
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.[197] 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 inherited 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 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 considerable
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 possessed
these benefices to take care of them and of their ornaments, particular
revenues being assigned for the expense of their toilettes.”[198]
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 described 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 is gogshuileach, which
the authorities refer to gog, “to move slightly” and suil, “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:—
At Giggleswick 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
constantly recurring emblem of Mother Nature. It will be noticed in Fig. 25,
p. 142, and in Fig. 256, p. 428.
The French have an expression a gogo (“origin unknown”) which means at
one’s ease, or in clover; in old French gogue (“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 gogo 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.
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 Uber.
This name Uber 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 Uber were enclosed twenty-two kings, with their people, that
dwelt between the mountains of Scythia.[199] 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 relative breadth. In other points the type
stands out distinctly. 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 becoming enamoured of them, took them to wife
and begot a race of giants. Anthropology and tradition thus alike refer the
Magogoei to Syria, or Phœnicia, 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
Baler’s eye blasted 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 Ciconian, is probable from the fact that he
was blinded by a spear driven into his ill-omened eyeball, precisely as
Polyphemus 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 supposedly 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 Belleros’”.[200]
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
From all constraint of law, the Cyclops dwell
They, trusting to the Gods, plant not, or plough
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
No councils they convene, no laws contrive
But in deep caverns dwell, found on the heads
Of lofty mountains.
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 Kig as was responsible for
giglet. There are numerous allusions in the classics to a Cyclopean rocking-
stone known as the Gigonian Rock, 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 described later. That at one time Og was a god of the ocean
may be deduced from the Rabbinic tradition that he walked by the side of
the ark during the flood, and the waters came up only to his knees. From the
measurements of Og’s famous bedstead it has been calculated that Og
himself “was about nine feet high”.[201]
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, observes: “His spy the

Sun had told him all”. To the jocund Sun, which on Easter Day in particular
was supposed 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 whirligig. 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.”[202] In London or Cockaigne,
coachmen used to swear, “By Gog and Magog,”[203] 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 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 colk, the core of an apple. It is difficult
to appreciate 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. Athenæus 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 been translated from the other.”[204] The probability is, that
the poems, like all ancient literature, were long orally preserved 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 perpetual 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 notoriously 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 surname 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 Cocklaw. Cockshott is an eminence in
Cumberland and Cocks Tor—whereon are stone circles and stone rows—is
a commanding 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 Cocknage 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 Cogynos, is interpreted as “cuckoo in the
moor,” but cuckoos 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.[205]
There is an English river Cocker: a cocker was a prize fighter, and it is
possible that the expression, “not according 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
described as gigantic for it covers an area of 62 acres, is upwards of a mile
in circuit, and has a rampart 30 to 33 feet high.[206] 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,[207] and the probability would
seem to be that Og and huge were originally the same term. There is a huge
earthwork at Uig in Scotland, the walls of which, like those at Ogbury in
Wiltshire, 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 commemorated 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 Advent 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.[208]
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!
The King Henry here mentioned is probably not one of the Tudors, but the
more primitive Nick or Old Harry, and the percipient divine who thundered
against the popular festival: “Sirs, do you know what Hagmane signifies? It
is the Devil be 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
uchman, 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!”[209]
One of the great Roman 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 cabalistically-decorated stone throne known as “the Hag’s
Chair”.
In Mid-Wales ague is known as y wrach, 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
conclusion that the aboriginal “bedrock” Og or Gog was a Tyrian or
Turanian Deity, and that in the eyes of the Hellenes and Trojans anything to
do with Og was ugly, i.e., Ug-like and ugsome.
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 is 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 unknown,” but the same root is at the
base of anima, the soul, whence animate or living. Oannes, who was
evidently 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 sea-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 enchanting 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 of
Celtic countries were known as the Mairies,[210] whence “Mary Morgan”
was no doubt “Fairy Morgan”. In Celtic mor or mawr also meant big,
whence Morgan may be equated with big 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 together” is not cogitation. The root cog
which occurs in cogent, cogitate, cognisance, and cognition is more
probably 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.

Figs. 46 and 47.—From Curious Myths of the
Middle Ages (Baring-Gould).
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
respectively 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.[211]
One of the stories of the Wandering Jew represents him as benevolently
assisting a weaver named Kokot to discover treasure, and in an Icelandic
legend of the same Wanderer he is entitled Magus. On Magus being
interrogated as to his name he replied that he was called “Vidforull,” which
looks curiously like “Feed for all,” or “Food for all”. The story relates that
Magus possessed the marvellous capability of periodically casting his skin,
and of becoming 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 suddenly 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 suddenly 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”.[212]
This magic change is not only suggestive of the two-faced Janus, but also of
Aeon, one of the British titles for the Sun:—
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”.[213] The Gnostics considered there were thirty divine Powers or
Rulers, 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 or 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, regarded as the emblem of regeneration and
rejuvenescence.[214]
The Hawk, which is the remaining symbol of the Kaadman (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 heave—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 mako or maga means “I feed”; in Welsh
magu means breed, and to nurse; in Welsh magad is brood. It is to this root
that obviously may be assigned the Gaelic Mac or Mc, 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.”[215]
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 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 invocation:—
Io! Io! Pan! Pan!
Oh Pan thou ocean Wanderer.[216]
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 outstanding 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.[217] Christ the Corner
Stone is said to have had seventy-two disciples, and the 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.

Fig. 48.—Long Meg and her Daughters. From Our
Ancient Monuments (Kains-Jackson).
The Parthenon, or Maiden’s House, at Athens was supported 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 recorded 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.[218] This is evidently the same miracle as that
illustrated in Fig. 21, on page 130, 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 unscathed.
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.[219] In the Old Testament Michal
figures as the daughter of King Saul, which is curious in view of St.
Michael’s Mount being named Dinseul. St. Michael’s in Brittany and St.
Michael’s elsewhere are dedicated ad duas tumbas, which means the two
tumuli or tumps.[220] At St. Albans, the sacred 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 nourishment: 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 Westminster the memory of St. Margaret has seemingly
survived 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,[221]
and this “long, large, and entire” piece of rock may be connoted with the
Megstone of the Fern Islands and the Long Meg of Cumberland. In 1635
there was published The Life of Long Meg of Westminster, containing the
mad merry pranks she played in her lifetime, 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
unconquerable 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
exquisite 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 reclining 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 the flower of thy bosom has given a new flower to the
hills of Cromla. 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.”[222]
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 moisture. 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. According to Owen Morgan, “Ked’s influence
from below was supposed to be exercised by exhalations, the breathings as
it were of the Great Mother,”[223] 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 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 Keynsham—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 popularly 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;
candere, 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 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 unquestionably on Lord Mayor’s
Show Day, and this used originally to fall—or rather the Lord Mayor was
usually chosen—on Michaelmas Day.[224]
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 Suffolk still
vaunts itself as Silly Suffolk. Silene or Selina would thus imply the

Innocent or Holy Una: her counterpart 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.
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,[225] and that the number
eleven was associated 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,”[226] 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.[227]
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,[228] a
measurement which seemingly has some relation to the 330 years of age
assigned 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 hagiographers to account for the “11” or 11,000 so
persistently associated with her. In his essay on the legend, Baring-Gould
refers to it as being “generated out of worse 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 the 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 disports, and all had joy and
pleasure in beholding them, and also marvel.”[229]
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 convolutions the ethereal Harmony and the ordered
movements 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 island Doliche, 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. Eventually 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”.[230] 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 Goddess 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 land of the
Rising 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.
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 einlif 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
lika, which means “remaining,” or with linguere, which means “to leave”.
In modern Etruria it is believed by the descendants 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.[231] 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.[232]
This marked connection between Maurice and eleven renders it probable
that St. Maurice was the same King Maurus of Britain as was reputed to be
the father of St. Ursula. The precise site of the monarch’s domain is not
mentioned, but as Cornwall claims him the probabilities are that his seat
was St. 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 monks. These supposed “measures” are tantamount to
St. Michael’s scales, which were sometimes assigned by Christianity to God
the Father.

Fig. 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).
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”.[233] 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 celebrated
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.[234]
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 kinds of fish”.[235]
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”.[236]
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,[237] 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 Maura’s tree, St. Maur being tantamount to St. Fairy or St. Big.
According to Sir John Rhys, 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 bod—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.[238] On the river
Can is a famous waterfall at Levens, and in the same neighbourhood a seat
of the ancient Machel family. In 1724 there existed at Winander Mere “the
carcass of an ancient city,”[239] and it is not improbable that the ander of
Winander is related to the divine Thorgut, whose effigy 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 stage of existence a principal agent in dissolving and dissipating all
putrescent bodies, was adopted as an emblem of the Deity”.[240] Thus it
would seem that 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
dispensation 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.”[241] 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 equating 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’”.
[242]
Whether these subterranean “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”.[243] The
word synagogue is understood to have meant—a bringing together, a
congregation; 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 cackling 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 kain 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 Cun, or
Chun. Etymology would suggest that the cane goose was preferably a
gander.
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 gooseberry was seemingly—judged by its
otherwise inexplicable name—likened to the Golden Egg laid by Old
Mother Goose. Among the symbols elsewhere dealt with were 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 came the Earth
who produced the mountains, and the sea, and the sky.[244]

Fig. 50.—From Christian Iconography (Didron).
In this 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 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”[245]—is proverbially blind, and the words Amor, Amour, are
probably 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 unravelled. 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 the Greek chaos: the Irish for swan is
geis, and all the geese 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,”[246] or “The Fiddler,” also a second longstone
known as “The Blind Fiddler”.[247] In because or by cause we pronounce
cause “koz,” 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,[248] 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”.[249] 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,”[250] 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 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 The
Language and Sentiment of Flowers[251] 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 regarded 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
mountains 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.[252] With alacrity it was granted, and such
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 appear 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 Etruria the diadem called Etrusca

Corona, a garland of oak leaves with jewelled acorns, was held over the
head of the victor.[253] There is little doubt that Honor Oak, Gospel Oak,
Sevenoaks, etc., derived their titles from oaks once sacred to the Uch or
High, the Allon 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 in a state of semi-barbarism saw with some of the
greatest of ancient and modern philosophers the One in the Many, and a
single Essence in all the manifold forms of life.”[254]

FOOTNOTES:
[193] Virgil, The Æneid, Bk. III., c. liii.
[194] Cf. Geoffrey’s Histories of the Kings of Britain (Everyman’s Library), p.
202.
[195] Virgil, The Æneid, Bk. III., 37.
[196] Irish Mythological Cycle, p. 50.
[197] xx. 8.
[198] Wood, E. J. Giants and Dwarfs, p. 54.
[199] Chap. xxvi.
[200] The Irish Mythological Cycle, p. 116.
[201] Wood, E.J., Giants and Dwarfs, p. 5.
[202] The Romance of Names, p. 65.
[203] Hone, W., Ancient Mysteries, p. 264.
[204] Wright, T., Patrick’s Purgatory, p. 56.
[205] Courtney, Miss M. L., Cornish Feasts and Folklore, p. 28.
[206] Bartholomew, J. G., A Survey Gazetteer of the British Islands, I. 612.
[207] The duplication cock, as in haycock, also meant a hill.
[208] Quoted from Brand’s Antiquities, p. 42.
[209] Cf. Urlin, Miss Ethel, Festivals, Holydays, and Saint Days, p. 2.
[210] Anwyl, E., Celtic Religion.
[211] Anwyl, E., Celtic Religion, p. 40.
[212] Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, pp. 637-40.
[213] “Morien” Light of Britannia, p. 262.
[214] The phallic symbolism of the serpent has been over-stressed so obtrusively
by other writers, that it is unnecessary here to enlarge upon that aspect of the

subject.
[215] Baldwin, J. D., Prehistoric Nations, p. 240.
[216] Sophocles, Ajax, 694-700.
[217] Windle, Sir B. C. A., Remains of the Prehistoric Age in Britain, p. 198.
[218] The Golden Legend, V. 182-3.
[219] 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.
[220] The Golden Legend records an apparition of St. Michael at a town named
Tumba.
[221] Wood, E. J., Giants and Dwarfs, p. 91.
[222] Cf. Friend, Rev. Hilderic, Flowers and Folklore, II., p. 455.
[223] “Morien,” Light of Brittania, p. 27.
[224] Anon, A New Description of England and Wales (1724), p. 121.
[225] Dennis, G., Cities and Centuries of Etruria, p. 31.
[226] Munro, R., Prehistoric Britain, p. 223.
[227] Barddas, p. 222.
[228] Kains-Jackson, Our Ancient Monuments, p. 112. Fergusson states “about
330 feet”.
[229] Vol. vi., p. 64.
[230] Vol. vi., p. 66.
[231] Gray, Mrs. Hamilton, Sepulchres of Etruria.
[232] Vol., iii., p. 73.
[233] Golden Legend, vol. v., p. 184.
[234] Simpkins, J. E., Fife, p. 4; County Folklore, vol. vii.
[235] Simpkins, J. E., Kinross-shire, p. 377.
[236] Ibid., p. 241.
[237] Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, p. 336.
[238] I am unable to lay my hand on the reference for this Elen’s Causeway in
Westmoreland.
[239] Anon., A New Description of England, 1724, p. 318.
[240] Symbolical Language, p. 37.
[241] Golden Legend, vol. v., p. 189.
[242] Cornish Feasts and Folklore, p. 131.
[243] Golden Legend, vol. v., p. 181.
[244] Jubainville, D’arbois de, Irish Mythological Cycle, p. 140.

[245] Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, iii., 1.
[246] Ossian, the hero poet of Gaeldom, is represented as old, blind, and solitary.
[247] Cf. Windle, Sir B.C.A., Remains of the Prehistoric Age, pp. 197-8.
[248] Salmon, A.L., Cornwall, p. 88.
[249] Wilson, J.M., The Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales, i., p. 484.
[250] Anwyl, E., Celtic Religion, p. 39.
[251] “L.V.,” London (undated).
[252] I 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 in father Darbie’s bands”. “Old Joan” figures
as one of the characters in the festivities of Plough Monday, and in Cornwall any
very ancient woman was denominated “Aunt Jenny”.
[253] Gray, Mrs. Hamilton, Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria, p. 131.
[254] The Mythology of the British Islands, p. 125.

CHAPTER 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?”—F. S. Hartland.

In British Faërie there figures prominently a certain “Man in the Oak”:
according to Keightley, Puck, alias Robin Goodfellow, was known as this
“Man in the Oak,” and he considers that the word pixy “is evidently Pucksy,
the endearing diminutive sy being added to Puck like Betsy, Nancy, Dixie”.
[255]
It is probable that this adjectival si recurring in sweet, sooth, suave,
swan, etc., may be equated with the Sanscrit su, which, as in swastika, is a
synonym for the Greek eu, meaning soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious.
When used as an affix, this “endearing diminutive” 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 was—in the modern sense—essentially ghastly. Skeat
suggests 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 derivation 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 one.[256] Puck, like Dan Cupid, figures in popular
estimation 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;
Pickthorne was presumably one of Puck’s hawthorns, and the various
Pickwells, Pickhills, Pickmeres, etc., were once, in all probability, spook-
haunted. The highest point at Peckham, near London, is Honor Oak or One
Tree Hill, and Peckhams or Puckhomes are plentiful in the South of
England. 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 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 Ribble was known as Peg O’Nell, and the nymph of the Tees, as
Peg Powler.[257] 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
observes: “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 southern fairies were light and sportive; their
resentments were satisfied with pinching or scratching the objects of their
displeasure; their peculiar sense of cleanliness rewarded 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 to believe was the case with their North British
sisterhood.”[258]
The elemental Bog is the Slavonic term for God,[259] 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 of a wheel, and hence Margaret
or Peggy may be equated with the nave or peg of the white-rayed
Marguerite or Day’s Eye.[260]
It must constantly be borne in mind that the ancients never stereotyped their
Ideal, hence there was invariably a 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 originally identical phenomenon”.[261]
In the words of an Orphic Hymn “Jove is both male and an immortal maid”:
Venus was sometimes represented with a beard, and as the Supreme Parent
was indiscriminately 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 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 essentially a symbol of the Mother, was among
some races, e.g., the Teutons and the Egyptians, regarded as masculine. 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 ak
ann or great one, and this word can, or khan, meaning prince, ruler, king or
great one, is traceable 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 Cunobelinus,
Cunoval, Cunomor and the like. The same affix was used in a similar sense
by the Greeks, whence Apollo was styled Cunades and also Cunnins. The
Cornish for prince was kyn, and this term, as also the Irish cun, meaning
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
identifies it with the old High German chunig. Other authorities 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 originally
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 kona, and there is no more radical distinction between king and the
disyllabic kween, than there is between the Christian names Ion, Ian, and
the monosyllabic Han.
Janaka, the Sanscrit for father, is seemingly allied to the English adjective
jannock or jonnack, which may be equated more or less with canny.
Uncanny means something unwholesome, unpleasant, disagreeable; in
Cornish cun meant sweet or affable, and we still speak of sweets as candies.

Fig. 51.—From The Sepulchres of Etruria
(Gray, Mrs. Hamilton).
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 cone or 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.[262] In times gone by
khans, 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
complicated 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 importance; 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.”[263]
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 Bigha, 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 highlands also
known as Bigbury, and it is probable that all these sites were named after
beguia, the Big Eye, or Buggaboo, 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, according 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 community 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.[264] 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
popularly 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 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
Phœnician letter alef”.[265]
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
discussed 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
appellations of ancient Ireland was Muc Inis,[266] or Hog Island and
Moccus, or the pig, was one of the Celtic sobriquets for Mercury. The
Druids termed themselves “Swine of Mon,”[267] the Phœnician 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 venerated British emblem is evident from the coins here
illustrated, and that CUNO was the Spook King is obvious from Figs. 52
and 57, where the features face fore and aft like those of Janus. The word
Cunobeline, Cunbelin, or Cymbeline, described by the dictionaries as a
Cornish name meaning “lord of the Sun,” is composed seemingly of King
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 associated with the ded pillar is evident from Fig. 59.

Figs. 52 to 57.—British. From Ancient Coins
(Akerman, J. Y.).

Figs. 58 to 59.—Gaulish. From 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
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 archæologist to imagine that the dragon
incident on our modern sovereigns was an episode 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 bucolic. The
cattle of Apollo, or the Sun, are a familiar feature of Greek mythology.

Fig. 60.—Gaulish. From Akerman.
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
associated 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 suggestion, I strongly suspect that the scavenging habits
of the moch 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 between hog and cock is apparent in the French coche
or cochon (origin unknown). Cochon is allied to cigne, the French for swan,
Latin, cygnus, Greek, kuknos; 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 improbable
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 Fig. 61.—Swan with Two
word as geeser, and there was a famous swan Necks. (Bank’s Collection,
with two necks at Goswell Road, where the 1785).
word Goswell implies an erstwhile well of From The History of
Signboards (Larwood &
Gos, Goose, or the Gush.[268] A Wayzgoose is
Hotten).
a jovial holiday or festival, gust or gusto
means enjoyment, and the Greengoose Fair,
which used to be held at Stratford, may be connoted with the “Goose-
Intentos,” 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.
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 generally supposed to have derived their title because they
depicted 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 obviously
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 Rhys:—
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 all-
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 cheerless 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,[269] every member of the family threw a white or “Alban,” or
an elphin stone, kneeling in prayer around the dying fire.[270] In the Isle of
Man Hallowtide was known as Hollantide,[271] 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 a fiery fury—the words are the same; and that
bake (or beeak as in Yorkshire dialect) meant fire is obvious from the
synonymous 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.”[272] In Hertfordshire during a corresponding period of “joy,
plenty, and universal benevolence,” the young men assembled 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.[273] 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
connoted with Backwell or Bachwell in Somerset. In Herefordshire 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”.
[274]

Figs. 62 to 64.—Iberian. From Akerman.
Bacon, radically bac, in neighbouring tongues varies into baco, bakke, bak,
and bache. Bacon is a family name immortally associated with St. Albans,
and it is probable 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 Romance
there figures 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 reputed Father of Giant Albion, and the shell-haired deity
represented on Figs. 62 to 64 is probably Albon, for the 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.... Speaking conjecturally, but with certain sidelights to
encourage, this seems a case of the insensible degradation of rite into
custom.”[275]
Shells are one of the most common deposits in prehistoric 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, situated on the
Ichenield Way, and the echinea or concha. As the cockle was particularly
the symbol of Birth, the 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 Life.
The word inimical implies un-amicable, or unfriendly, whence Michael was
seemingly the Friend of Man. Maculate 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 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 English breeth, is evidently the Welsh brith which means
spotted, and it is to this root that Sir John Rhys attributes the term Brython
or Britain, finding in it a reference to that painting or tattooing of the body
which distinguished the Picts.[276] 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
totem or caste-mark.

Figs. 65 and 66.—British. From Akerman.
In the Old English representation here illustrated either St. Peter or God the
Father is conspicuously tattooed or spotted; Pan was always assigned a
panther’s 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 understood in a personal and a cosmic sense, the little speck
and circle representing the soul surrounded by its round of influence and
duties; the Cosmic speck, the Supreme Spirit, and the circle the entire
Universe. In many instances the dot and ring seems to have stood for the
pupil in the iris of the eye. In addition it is evident that ⨀ was an emblem
of the Breast, and hieroglyphed the speck in the centre of the zone or sein,
for the Greek letter theta written—⨀ is identical with teta, teat, tada, dot or
dad. The dotted effigy on the coins supposedly minted at St. Albans may be
connoted with the curious fact that in Welsh the word alban meant a
primary point.[277]

Fig. 67.—Christ’s Ascent from Hell. From Ancient
Mysteries (Hone, W.).
Speck 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 sunlight on to
the crowd by means of what was termed by the 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 sprek—to make a noise”.

Fig. 68.—The Mirror of Thoth.
From The Correspondences of
Egypt (Odhner, C.T.)

Fig. 69.

Figs. 70 to 72.—British. From
English Coins and Tokens
(Jewitt & Head).

The Egyptian hieroglyph here illustrated depicts the speculum of Thoth, a
deity whom the Phoenicians rendered Taut, and to whom they attributed the
invention of the alphabet and all other arts. The whole land of Egypt was
known among other designations as “the land of the Eye,” and by the
Egyptians as also by the Etrurians, the symbolic 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 British 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 propitious Tat. That the utat or eye was
familiar in Europe is evidenced by the Kio coin here illustrated.

Fig. 73.—From The Correspondences of
Egypt
(Odhner, C. T.).
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 loof, is the same word as
life. Not infrequently the Bona Dea was represented
holding a loaf in her extended hand, and the same
idea was doubtless expressed by the two breasts Fig. 74.—From
upon a dish with which St. Agatha, whose name Numismatique
means Good, is represented. Christianity accounts Ancienne
for this curious emblem by a legend that St. Agatha (Barthelemy,
was tortured by having her breasts cut off, and it is J.B.A.A.)
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 herewith the Phrygian-capped Deity is holding, like St. Agatha, the
symbol of the teat or feeder, or fodder.[278]
The wheatear or spica, or buck-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 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 variously 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,’
amulet, which was the symbol of the backbone of
Osiris, was laid on the neck of the Egyptian Fig. 75.—From
Symbolism of the
mummy”.[279] Frequently this “ded” emblem took
East and West
the form of a column or pillar, which symbolised (Aynsley, Mrs.
the eternal support and stability of the universe. On
Murray).
the summit of Fig. 85 is a bug, cockroach, or
cockchafer: in Etruria as in Egypt the bug amulet or
scarabeus was as popular as the Eye of Horus.

Figs. 76 and 77.—Iberian. From Akerman.

Figs. 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).

Fig. 85.—From The Correspondences of
Egypt (Odhner, C. T.).
In Fig. 68 the spectral Eye was supported by Thoth, whose name varies into
Thot, Taut, and numerous intermediate forms, which equate it with ded or
dad: similarly it will be found that practically every place-name constituted
from Tot or Tat varies into Dot or Dad, e.g., Llandudno, where is found the
cradle of St. Tudno. Sometimes the Egyptians represented two or more
pillars termed deddu, 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 evidently a very old Iberian word, for its
British form was drindod, as in the place-name Llandrindod or “Holy
Enclosure of the Trinity”. The three great mounts on Trinidad, and the three
famous medicinal springs at Llandrindod Wells render it probable that the
site of Llandrindod 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 connoted 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 Illtyd with All-tyd or All Father, in which respect
Illtyd corresponds with the Scandinavian Ilmatar, Almatar, 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
Road of the Deer”. The branching antlers of the
Fig. 86.—From
deer being emblems of the dayspring, the rising or
Numismatique
new sun, is a fact somewhat confirmatory of the
Ancienne.
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 stags.
Among the golden treasures found by Schliemann at Mykenæ, were
ornaments representing two stags on the top of a date palm tree with three
fronds.[280] The date palm may be connoted with the ded pillar, and the
triple-fronded date of Mykenæ with the trindod or drindod of Britain.

Assyrian Ornament.
(Nimroud.)

Greek Honeysuckle Ornament.

Greek Honeysuckle Ornament. Sacred Tree (N.W. Palace,
Nimroud).

Ornament on the Robe of King.
Fig. 87.—From Nineveh (Layard).
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 remarks, “how a knowledge of this Eastern plant
reached New Grange is by no means clear”.[281] 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 to the fern, a sprig 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 a sprout well budded out, whence to this day at Saffron
Walden 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.

Fig. 88.—From Irish Antiquities Pagan and
Christian (Wakeman).
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 is noteworthy that the sway of the pre-Grecian Pelasgians

extended over the whole of the Ionian coast “beginning from Mykale”:[282]
this Mykale (Megale or Michael?) district is now Albania, and its capital is
Janina, query Queen Ina?
It is probable that Kenna, the fairy princess of Kensington who is reputed to
have loved Albion, was canna, the New King or New Queen. On the river
Canna in Wales is Llangan or Llanganna: Llangan on the river Taff is
dedicated to St. Canna, and Llangain 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 Honeybourne,
and in Sussex is a Honey Child. Upon Honeychurch 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,”[283] and
as the earth is proverbially God’s footstool, the Toad-stool was held
seemingly to be the stool of earth supported on the ded, or pillar of Titan.
The Fairy Titania, who probably once held sway in Tottenham Court Road,
may be connoted with the French teton, a teat; tetine, an udder; teter, to
milk; and tetin, a nipple.

Fig. 89.—From Christian Iconography
(Didron).

Fig. 90.—The Spirit of Youth. From a
French Miniature of the fourteenth century.
From Christian Iconography (Didron).

It is probable that “The Five Wells” at Taddington, “the Five Kings at
Doddington,” where also is “the Duddo Stone,” likewise Dod Law at
Doddington; Dowdeswell, Dudsbury, and the Cornish Dodman, are all
referable originally to the fairy Titan or the celestial Daddy.

Fig. 91.—From Christian Iconography
(Didron).
In accordance with universal wont this Titan or Almighty, “this senior-junior,
giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid,” was conceived 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 or jackal-headed maker-of-tracts or guide: thought is invariably 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 suppose that the Dog-
headed titanic Christopher, who is said to have ferried travellers pick-a-back

across a river, was at one time an exquisite conception of Great Puck or 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 invariably 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.

Fig. 92.—Figure of Christ, beardless.
Roman Sculpture of the IV. cent.
From Christian Iconography (Didron).

Fig. 93.—Iberian. From Akerman.

Fig. 94.—From Christian Iconography
(Didron).
The Christian emblems herewith represent Christ supported by the Father or
Mother upon a veil or scarf, which is probably intended for the rainbow or
spectrum: the pagan Europa was represented, vide Fig. 93, holding a similar
emblem. According to mythology, Iris or the 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
anything 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,[284] 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 Inachus[285]—probably the Gaelic divinity Oengus[286]—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(?).
Among the ferns whose spine-like fishbone fronds seemingly 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 St. Olaf’s 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, organie, or origane, all of which
are radically the same as origin.

Figs. 95 to 102.—British. Nos. to from
Akerman. Nos. to from Evans.
The British coins inscribed Ver are believed to have
emanated from Verulam or St. Albans, but the same VER,
VIR, 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 Durovern.
The ancient name of Canterbury is supposed to have been
bestowed upon it by the Romans, and to have denoted
Fig. 103.—Green evergreen; but Canterbury is not physically more
Man (Roxburghe evergreen than every other spot in verdant England:
Ballads, circa Canterbury is, however, permeated with relics, memories,
1650).—From The and traditions of St. George; and St. George is still
History of addressed in Palestine as the “evergreen green one”.
Signboards Green was the symbol of rejuvenescence and immortality,
(Larwood & and “the Green Man” of our English Inn Signs, as also the
Hotten). 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 represented

clad in green. In Gaul the Green Man was evidently conceived as Ver Galant,
and the two cups, one inverted, in all probability implied Life and Death.
According to Christian Legend, St. George was tortured by being forced to
drink two cups, whereof the one was prepared 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 misconceptions of men whose minds dwelt
normally on things most miserable and conceived little higher. Thus seemingly
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 imply the solar wheel of Kate or
Catarina: the posts to which he was fastened by the feet and hands were
seemingly a variant of the deddu, and the sledge hammers with which he was
beaten were, like many other of the excruciating torments of the “saint,”
merely and inoffensively the emblems of the Heavenly Hercules or Invictus.

Fig. 104.—From The Everyday Book (Hone,
W.).

Fig. 106.—Green Man and
Still
Fig. 105.—Ver Galant (Rue (Harleian Collection, 1630).
Henri, Lyons, 1759). From Ibid.
The History of Signboards.

Maid Marion, who was not infrequently associated with 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
ensign 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 been identified by Baring-Gould with Tammuz, the Adonis,
or Beauty, who is identified with the Sun:[287] “Thou shining and vanishing in
the beauteous circle of the Horæ, dwelling at one time in gloomy Tartarus, at
another elevating thyself to Olympus, giving ripeness to the fruits”.[288]

Fig. 107.—From The Everyday Book (Hone, W.).
The St. George of Diospolis, the City of Light, who by the early Christians was
hailed as “the Mighty Man,” the “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 Regions, but St.
Michael met Satan carrying it and made him drop it.
It is unnecessary to labour the obvious identity between Saints George and
Michael: “George,” meaning husbandman, i.e., the Almighty in a bucolic
aspect, is merely another 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”:[289] 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 a certain
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 Horæ or hours, and the English dragon-slayer Conyers of Sockburn is
presumably King Yers, whose burn or brook was presumably 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 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 Ruler 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 deduced 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
seemingly 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 immediately 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.[290] 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.[291] The dragon was the emblem of the Cynbro 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.
In the reign of Elizabeth an injunction was issued that “there shall be neither
George nor Margaret,” an implication 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 generally 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 Hannafore: at
Hinover in Sussex a white horse was carved into the hillside.

Fig. 108.—From The Scouring of the White
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 Akerman. No. 113
from Evans.

Fig. 114.—Iberian. From Akerman.

Figs. 115 and 116.—British. From Akerman.

Fig. 117.—Iberian. From Akerman.

Fig. 118.—
British. From Fig. 119.—British. From
Evans. Akerman.

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.[292] It will be noticed
that the White Horse at Uffington as reproduced overleaf is beaked like a bird,
and has a remarkable dot-and-circle eye: in Figs. 110 to 113 the animal is
similarly beaked, and in Fig. 111 the object in the bill is seemingly an egg. The
designer of Fig. 109 has introduced apparently a goose or swan’s head, and
also a sprig or branch. The word BODUOC may or may not have a relation to
Boudicca or Boadicea of the Ikeni—whose territories are marked by the
Ichnield Way of to-day—but in any case Boudig in Welsh meant victory or
Victorina, whence the “very peculiar horse” on this coin may be regarded as a
prehistoric Invicta. The St. George of Persia there known as Mithras 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
flying,” 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 Red 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.

Fig. 121.
The story of St. George treading on the Padstow Rock, and the subsequent
gush of water, is immediately suggestive of the Pegasus legend. Pegasus, the
winged steed of the Muses, which, with a stroke of its hoof, caused a fountain
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—
occasionally astral-winged and hawk-headed—was very much at home in
these regions, and it is not improbable that pegasus 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 Jubainville with
Cuchulainn, the Achilles or Young Sun God of Ireland.[293] 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 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.[294]

The inscription CUN or CUNO which occurs so frequently on the horse coins
of Western Europe is seemingly akin to ken, the root of 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 EPPILLUS and EPPI[295] occur on the Kentish
coins, Figs. 122 and 123; hipha or hippa was the Phœnician for a mare; in
Scotland the nightmare is known as ephialtus; a hippodrome is a horse course,
whence, perhaps, Bukephalus may be translated Big Eppilus. The little elf or
elve under a bent sprig is presumably Bog or Puck, and in connection with the
Eagle-headed Pegasus of Fig. 164 may be noted the Puckstone by the
megalithic Aggle Stone at Purbeck, where is a St. Alban’s Head.[296]

Figs. 122 and 123.—British. From Akerman.
Whether or not Pegasus was Big Esus 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 represent a horse,” “barbarous imitation,” and so forth; but I am
persuaded that the craftsmen who fabricated these archaic coins were quite
competent to draw straightforward objects had such been their intent. Akerman
is 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 representation may be as much the result of
incompetent workmanship as of successive fruitless attempts at imitation.[297]

Figs. 124 to 127.—Iberian. From
Barthelemy.

Figs. 128 and 129.—Iberian. From
Akerman.

Fig. 130.—Gaulish. From Akerman.
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 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 Vero 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”:
[298]
it is probable that the Jehu 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, originated 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 mouche is implied by the term gad: the
inscription Kio on Fig. 74 (p. 253) reads Great Io or Great Eye, and in
connection 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 Shropshire is suggestive of Big Jew or Joy: the blue-crested
monarch of the woods we call a jay (Spanish, gayo, “of doubtful origin”) was
probably the bird of Jay or Joy—just as picus or the crested woodpecker was
admittedly Jupiter’s bird—and the Jaye’s Park in Surrey, which is in the
immediate neighbourhood of Godstone, Gadbrooke, and Kitlands, was
seemingly associated at some period with Good Jay or Joy.
We speak ironically to-day of our “Jehus,” and the word hack still survives: in
Chaucer’s time English carters encouraged their horses with the exclamation
Heck![299] the Irish for horse was ech, and the inscription beneath the effigy on
Fig. 131, a Tarragonian coin, reads, according to Akerman, Ekk. That the hack
was connected in idea with the oak is somewhat implied by a horse ornament
in my possession, 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 Cæsar’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
European side of the Pillars of Hercules. From the surnames 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. 131.—Iberian. From Akerman.

Fig. 132.—British. From Fig. 133.—Channel Islands.
Akerman. From Barthelemy.

The Welsh form of Alphin is Elphin, and the Cornish height known as
Godolphin—whence the family name Godolphin—implies, like Robin
Goodfellow, Good Elphin. With Elphin, Alban, and Hobany may be connected
the Celtic Goddess Epona, “the tutelar deity of horses and 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 opine, for

according to Plato the horse signified “reason and opinion coursing about
through natural things”.[300]
British horses used to be known familiarly as Joan, and the term jennet
presumably meant Little Joan: the Italian for a hackney 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 contained the Manor of Hoxton) is Mare Street; and
this mare was seemingly the Kenmure whose traces are perpetuated in
Kenmure Road, Hackney. At the corner of Seven Sisters Road is the church of
St. Olave, and the neighbouring Alvington Street suggests that this Kingsland
Road 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 congregating “Londons,” and
we may recognise Elen or Ollan in London Fields, London Lane, Lyne Grove,
Olinda (or Good Olin) Road, Londesborough Road, Ellingfort (or Strong Ellin)
Road, Lenthall (or Tall Elen) Road. In Linscott Street there stood probably at
one time a Cot, Cromlech, or “Kit’s Coty,” and at the neighbouring
Dalston[301] was very possibly a Tallstone, equivalent to the Cornish tal carn or
high rock.
The adjective long or lanky is probably of Hellenic origin, and the giants or
long men sometimes carved in 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). Nos. 1-8
represent forms of the crescent amulet; Nos. 8-11,
the horseshoe. No. 12 is a well-known mystic
symbol. No. 15 shows the cross potencée, and No. 16
the cross patée: these seem to denote Christian
influence. Nos. 13 and 14 indicate the decay of folk
memory 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.).

Fig. 135.—
Fig. 136.—British. From
Iberian. From
Evans.
Akerman.

The Town Hall at Hackney stands on a plot of ground known as Hackney
Grove, and the neighbouring Mildmay 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”:[302] but
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. 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[303] at the end of the Marylebone Road
now known as St. Pancras or King’s Cross: at King’s Cross there is a locality
still known as Alpha Place.
At Hackney is a Gayhurst Road, which may imply an erstwhile hurst or wood
of Gay or Jay, and “at the south end of Springfield Road 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.”[304] 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”.[305] That Mount Pleasant at Hackney or Hackoney was
similarly dedicated to High Aine or Ana is an inference to which the facts seem
clearly to point.
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 Rest, was a world-famous “Mount
Pleasant,” and on its most elevated height there stands St. Michael’s Tower.
Glastonbury itself,[306] “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,
saintuarie 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 Ridge, which may be connoted with Aubrey
Walk, the highest spot in Kensington, and it would seem that Abury’s, abris, or
“Mount Pleasants” were once plentiful in the bundle of communities,
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 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 Ramsgate 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.
[307]
This Ramsgate 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 Cuin (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 Ridge”.[308]
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 or pock, and the pykes of Cumberland are 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 worshipped either
Bacchus, i.e., St. Baccho, or the gentle Baucis who merged into a Linden tree.

Fig. 137.—Ancient Pagan Altar on Tory Hill. From
Sketches of Irish History (Anon., 1844).
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
respectively “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 number 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”.[309] The fairy
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
Akakia, 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 Moonshine, “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.[310] On p. 149—a mediæval 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-canstick 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.[311] In Rome and elsewhere a
suspended bush was the sign of an inn, whence the expression “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
nourishment. Peck is also an old word for provender, and we still speak of
feeling peckish.[312]
The word bucket—allied to Anglo-Saxon buc, meaning a pitcher—implies that
this variety of large can or mug was used for peck purposes: the illustration
herewith, representing the decoration on a bronze bucket found at Lake
Maggiore, consists of speck-centred circles, and dotted, spectral, or maculate
geese, bucks, and horses.

Fig. 139.—Bronze from bucket, Sesto Calendo,
Lake Maggiore. From the British Museum’s
Guide to the Antiquities of the 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, make it almost certain that churches once dispensed food
and drink and that inn was originally an earlier name for church. Among the
inscriptions of the catacombs 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,”[313] the Lord of the Vineyard, or the Vinedresser. The Green Man
with his Still implies a brewer; the distilling of Benedictine 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
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.”

Fig. 140.—From Christian Iconography
(Didron).
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 symbolic connection with
Sun or Golden Ball. At Jerusalem, the ideal city which was always deemed to
be the hub, bogel, or navel of the world, there are some extraordinary 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
associated 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 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.

Fig. 141.—Gaulish. From Fig. 142.—Iberian. From
Akerman. Akerman.

Fig. 144.—From
Fig. 143.—From Barthelemy.
Barthelemy.

Fig. 145.—Iberian. From Akerman.
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 Ab 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 inscription on Fig. 145 are Phœnician characters, reading The

[314]
sun, 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 or Wisdom, as also is solemn: in Latin solemn is solennis, upon
which Skeat comments: “Annual, occurring yearly, like a religious rite,
religious, solemn, Latin sollus, entire, complete: annus, a year. Hence solemn
—returning at the end of a complete year. The old Latin sollus is cognate with
Welsh holl, whole, entire.” The cognomen Solomon occurs several times in the
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 Silly[315] (innocent) man, or the
Sly man, the Cunning man, or Magus. The “Sea horse” 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 Honeykhan, 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, sometimes 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 without that acknowledgment; but one must expect nothing here but bare
walls. As for other accommodations of meat, drink, bed, fire, provender, with
these it must be every one’s care to furnish himself.”[316]
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,” find their parallel in the
enclosed form of all primitive shelters, and the words close and cloister are
radically eccles, eglos, or eglise. Whence the authorities suppose Beccles in
Silly Suffolk to be a corruption of beau eglise or Beautiful Church: but to

whom was this “beautiful church” first reared and dedicated, and by what
name did the inhabitants 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
frequented by travellers and pilgrims.”[317] 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,[318] or Johns, or Khans. Under 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.

Figs. 146 and 147.—Gaulish. From Akerman.
Fig. 146, a coin of the Turones, whose ancient capital is now Tours, consists of
a specky or spectral horse accompanied by an urn: this urn was the symbol of
the Virgin, 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 Rhys, “the old Irish ri, genitive rig, king, and rigan queen would be
somewhat analogous, although the Welsh rhian, the equivalent of the Irish
rigan, differs in being mostly a poetic term for a lady who need not be royal”.
[319]
The name Maria, which in Spain is bestowed indiscriminately upon men
and women, would therefore seem to be Mother Queen, and Rhea, the Great
Mother of Candia, might be interpreted as the Princess or the Queen.

Fig. 150.—
British. From A
Fig. 149.—Etrurian. From
Fig. 148.— New Description
Cities and Cemeteries of
Egyptian. of England and
Etruria (Dennis, G.).
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 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 becher, Greek bikos, and all these terms including beaker are

radically Peggy, Puck or Big. Pitchers are one of the commonest sepulchral
offerings, 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.”[320]
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 Mykenæ in connection with
which Schliemann 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 cities which, as before stated, were covered by an
eruption of that great central volcano which is believed by competent
geologists to have sunk and disappeared about 1700 to 1800 B.C.”.[321] 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 modern, 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.
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 Ruler of the Golden Age. That Cupid was known among the Tartars is
somewhat 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 I 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 executed 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 a people who
inscribed their tokens Pooctika, Bucato, Pixtil, and Pichtil, i.e., Pich tall or
chief(?).

Figs. 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 Description of England and
Wales.

Figs. 159 to 163.—Channel Islands. From
Akerman.

Figs. 164 to 167.—British. From Akerman.
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 Sunday and dress one of their playmates with shoots and sprigs:

he was covered so thoroughly as to be rendered 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, 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:—
We have carried away Death,
And brought back Life.[322]
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 symbolised 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.

FOOTNOTES:
[255] Fairy Mythology, p. 298.
[256] Courtney, Miss, Cornish Feasts and Folklore, p. 129.
[257] Hope, R. C., Sacred Wells.
[258] Demonology and Witchcraft.
[259] At the time of writing the Servians say they are putting their trust in “Bog and
Britannia”.
[260] This is an official etymology. It is the one and only poetic idea admitted into
Skeat’s Dictionary.
[261] Cf. Johnson, W., Folk Memory, p. 159.
[262] 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 himself in
rectangular stone. Each side was 300 feet long and 50 feet high, and within the
basement he made an inextricable labyrinth, into which if anyone ventured without
a clue, there he must remain, for he never could find the way out again. Above this
base stood five pyramids, one in the centre and four at the angles, each of them 75
feet in circumference at the base, and 150 feet high, tapering to the top so as to be
covered by a cupola of bronze. From this there hung by chains a peal of bells,
which, when agitated by the wind, sounded to a great distance. Above this cupola
rose four other pyramids, each 100 feet high, and above these again, another story
of five pyramids, which towered to a height so marvellous and improbable, that
Varro hesitates to affirm their altitude.” And in this he was wise, for he had already
said more upon the subject than was credible. 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, which, comparing small things with great, existed between the
monuments of father and son. Those who have never been in Italy may like to know
that this tomb of Aruns is said to have been built by Porsenna, for the young Prince
who fell there in battle with the Latins, and 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.
[263] Taylor, R., Te Ika A Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants, p. 352.
[264] Cf. Stow, London.

[265] Evans, Sir Arthur, quoted in Crete of Pre-hellenic Europe, p. 32.
[266] Bonwick Irish Druids and Old Irish Religion, p. 230.
[267] Anwyl, E.
[268] It is not unlikely that the Goss and Cass families of to-day are the descendants
of the British tribe referred to by the Romans as the Cassi.
[269] The Welsh for alban or alpin is elphin.
[270] Urlin, Miss Ethel M., Festivals, Holy Days, and Saints’ Days, p. 192.
[271] Ibid., p. 196.
[272] Cf. Hone, W., Everyday Book, vol. i., col. 1340.
[273] Cf. Hone, W., Everyday Book, vol. i., col. 1340.
[274] xli. 19.
[275] Faiths and Folklore, i., 332.
[276] Celtic Britain, p. 211. Sir John frequently changed his mind.
[277] Barddas, p. 416.
[278] The Phrygian Cap was symbolic.
[279] Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe, p. xxxii.
[280] Mykenæ, p. 179.
[281] Rude Stone Monuments, p. 207.
[282] Baldwin, J. G., Prehistoric Nations, p. 162.
[283] Keightley, Fairy Mythology, p. 317.
[284] Hazlitt, W. Carew, Faiths and Folklore, ii., 608.
[285] Rhys, Sir J., Celtic Britain, p. 271.
[286] The Celtic Angus is translated excellent virtue.
[287] Cf. Baring-Gould, Rev. S., Curious Myths, pp. 266-316.
[288] Orphic Hymn, lv., 5, 10, and 11.
[289] Courtney, Miss M. L., Cornish Feasts and Folklore, p. 136.
[290] From prehistoric times this ensign seems to have been known as “the Jack,”
and the immutability of the fabulous element was evidenced anew during the
present year when on 23rd 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”.
[291] 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 Dglev to make this gun.
Wherever it goes it burns up lives,
It spits forth flames like a dragon.
It sets the world of the Turks on fire.”
[292] Wise, T. A., History of Paganism in Caledonia, p. 114.
[293] Irish Mytho. Cycle, p. 229.
[294] The Norwegian for neigh is kneggya, the Danish, gnegge.
[295] There is no evidence to support the supposition that Eppillus may have been
an English king.
[296] An omniscient eagle was associated with Achill (Ireland).
[297] Ancient Coins of the Romans Relating to Britain, p. 197.
[298] Faiths and Folklore, vol. i., p. 329.
[299] Faiths and Folklore, vol. i., p. 329.
[300] Madeley, E., The Science of Correspondence, p. 194.
[301] Dalston in Cumberland is assumed to have been a town in the dale or dale’s
town. But surely “towns” were never thus anonymous?
[302] P. 299.
[303] Compare also Shadwell in East London, “said to be St. Chad’s Well”.
[304] Mitton, G. E., Hackney, p. 11.
[305] Cf. Westropp, T. J., Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy, vol. xxxiv., Sec. C.,
Nos. 3 and 4.
[306] Walters, J. Cuming, The Lost Land of King Arthur, p. 219.
[307] One of these has been slightly diverted by the exigencies of the railway
station.
[308] Macalister, R. A. S., Temair Breg: A Study of the Remains and Traditions of
Tara, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, sec. C., Nos. 10 and 11, p. 284.
[309] Picard, Ceremonies of Idolatrous People, vol. iv., p. 291.
[310] Weekley, E., Romance of Names, p. 224.
[311] Survey of London (Everyman’s Library), p. 416.
[312] The Peck family may have been inn-keepers or dealers in peck or fodder, but
more probably, like the Bucks and the Boggs, they may trace their descent much
farther.
[313] See infra, p. 689.
[314] Akerman, J. Y., Ancient Coins, p. 17.
[315] There is a river Slee or Slea in Lincolnshire.
[316] Travels in the East (Bohn’s Library), p. 384.
[317] Larwood & Hotten, The History of Signboards, p. 285.

[318] It is simply futile to refer the word inn to “within, indoors” (see Skeat).
[319] Celtic Britain, p. 66. It is therefore feasible that Wrens Park, by Mildmay
Park, Hackney, was primarily reines Park.
[320] Prehistoric Britain, p. 247.
[321] Mykenæ, p. 293.
[322] Ancient Art and Ritual, pp. 70 and 71.

CHAPTER VII
OBERON

“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, Æneid, I., lxix., 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 Constantinople 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, and on account of these things were they called
the three pillars of the Cymry.”[323]
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 occurring 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

imposed upon it precisely the same meaning as synagogue, i.e., a coming
together or congregation, and it remains to inquire why this was so.
The Kymbri were also known as Cynbro, and the interchangeability of kym and
kin is seemingly universal: the Khan of Tartary was synonymously the Cham
of Tartary; our Cambridge is still academically Cantabrigia, a compact is a
contract, and the identity between cum and con 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, Aberystwith, 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 Hibernians used to rush into battle with perfervid cries of Aber!
[324]
It is a recognised peculiarity of the Gaelic language to 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 Ægean, it is permissible 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 Prydain, 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 originally to the
same race.
Hyper, the Greek for upper, is radically the same word as Iupiter or Iu 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 Iupiter.
Hu the Mighty, the National Pillar or ded, who has survived as the “I’ll be He”
of children’s games, was indubitably the Jupiter of Great Britain, and he was
probably 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; divided

them into federated tribes as a first step towards civil government, and laid the
foundations of literature and history by the institution of Bardism.[325] In
Celtic, barra meant a Court of Justice, in which sense it has survived in
London, at Lothbury and Aldermanbury. 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 Bri 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.[326] A parish, Greek paroika, 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.[327]
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 Broadmoot: there is a
Bradstone 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 Britain probably
differed but slightly, if at all, from the perii or peris of Persia.[328]
Among the Greeks every town and village had its so-called “Luck,” or
protecting Goddess who specially controlled 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 assigned by the authorities to
peru a pear, and supposed to have been pear-tree meadows or pear-tree hills,
but I question whether pear-growing was ever the national industry that the
persistent prevalence of peru 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 interrupted 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 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 successfully restored
the patient to life, in view of which miracle Guedianus and all his tribe
prostrated themselves at St. Sampson’s feet, and “utterly destroyed the idol”.
[329]

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 scryfa or “inscribed rock,” and the inscription running from top to bottom
reads—RIALOBRAN CUNOVAL FIL.

Fig. 169—From Symbolism of the East and West. (Aynsley,
Mrs. Murray.)
As history knows nothing of any “Rialobran, son of Cunoval,” one may
suggest that Rialobran was the Ryall or Royal Obran, Obreon or Oberon, the
bren or Prince of Phairyland who figures so largely in the Romance of
mediæval Europe. The Rialobran stone of Cornwall may be connoted with the
ceremonial perron du roy still standing in the Channel Islands, and with the
numerous Browny stones of Scotland. In Cornwall the phairy brownies seem to
have been as familiar as in Scotland[330]: 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
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 milk 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 Rialobran was in all probability originally the same as the local
St. Perran or St. Piran, whose sanctuary was marked by the parish of Lanbron
or Lamborne. There is a Cornish circle known as Perran Round and the
celebrated Saint who figures as, Perran, Piran, Bron, and Borne,[331] 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”.[332] Thus possibly St. Perran was not only the original of
the modern Perrin family, but also of the far larger Byrons and Brownes.
Further inquiry will probably permit the equation of Rialobran 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 Brinsmead implies
the existence here or elsewhere a Brin’s mead 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.[333]
Legend at Kensington—in which neighbourhood is not only Bryanstone
Square but also on the summit of Campden 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.[334] Mediæval 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.
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 child
A lily stalk his graceful limbs, sustain’d
Round 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.[335]
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 Rialobran, 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 Carn Galva, for this Carn of Galva, Mighty Elf or
Alva, was, it is said, once the seat of a benignant giant named Holiburn. The
existence of Alva or Ellie-stones is implied by the fairly common surnames
Alvastone, Allistone, and Ellistone, and it is probable that Livingstone was
originally the same name as Elphinstone.
From the Aubry, Obrean, Peron stones, or Brownlows were probably
promulgated the celebrated Brehon laws:[336] 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 subordinate 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 connotes Presteign, and he
adds: “In Welsh Presteign is Llanandras, or Church of St. Andrews”.[337] This
illuminating 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 implied 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 opposite the town of
Candia or Herakleion, lies the islet of Dhia: in Celtic dia, dieu, or duw meant
God,[338] and as in 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 Perriwiggen, Perriwinkle, 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 pourtrays “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 represented with the face of Apollo, as the hub
or bogel, and the ancient name of Sicily was Hypereia. 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 the Virgin twelve little children turn vertically, representing
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
horizontally 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
assumption. 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.[339]

Not only this Hypereian Feast but the machine itself is 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 Phœnician deity Aion, and according to
Akerman the type was doubtless chosen in compliment to Albinus, who was
born at Hadrumetum, a town not far from Carthage.[340] What was the precise
connection between this Aion and Albinus I am unaware.
Among the coins of Iberia some bear the inscriptions Iliberi, Ilibereken, and
Iliberineken, 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 Liberins deified these virtues as attributes of
the Holy Aubrey or the Holy Brain-King.

Fig. 170.—Iberian. From Akerman.
Directly opposite Albania, the country of the Epirotes—known anciently as
Epirus—is Cantabria at the heel of 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 supersacred 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:—

The untended, 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 abhorrence.[341] Of the Spanish Cantabres
we are told that the consciousness 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.”[342]
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 considered too
polluted to repose in their native soil.[343]
Lardner refers to the unbending resolution, persevering energy, and native
grandeur of the Cantabrians, but he contemptuously rejects Strabo’s “precious
information” that some of the Spanish tribes had for 6000 years possessed
writing, metrical poems, and even laws. In view of the 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 Boreadæ
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
territory, in the midst of which they have a magnificent round temple,

replenished with the richest offerings. Their very city is dedicated to him, and
is full of musicians and players on various instruments, who every day
celebrate his benefits and perfections.”
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 brow is the seat of the brain, and the
two 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
possesses 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 remained 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 or Genius.
If my suggestion that Taliesin
or Radiant Brow was a
generic title assumed by every
Primary-Chief-Bard in Britain

Fig. 171.—From Barthelemy. 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 Perugia—probably the
same word as Phrygia. The local saint of Perugia, the land of Peru (?) was
known as Good John of Perugia: in Hibernia St. Ibar is mentioned as being
“like John the Baptist”.[344]
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 boreadæ. 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 the early centuries in this era. I have found in
Wigtownshire the image of a bird in bronze. It belongs to a time early in this
era. It occurs within the pentacle 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 Shandwick 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 disembodied spirit which was reputed to voyage here and there
with a lightning celerity, like the flash of a swallow on the wing.”[345]
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.