Archaic England
by Harold Bayley · English · Gutenberg #41785 · 1,453,920 chars · public domain (US)
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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
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41785
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARCHAIC ENGLAND ***
Transcriber's Note
Most spelling variants are retained. Punctuation is occasionally
corrected, especially in the index and in footnotes, to maintain
consistency.
The titles and page references for the five appendices have been added
to the table of contents.
The 'oe' ligature is represented as 'oe'. Italicized letters are
delimited with _underscore_ characters.
A Transcriber's Endnote at the end of this text contains more detailed
information about corrections made.
ARCHAIC ENGLAND
AN ESSAY IN DECIPHERING PREHISTORY
FROM MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS, EARTHWORKS,
CUSTOMS, COINS, PLACE-NAMES, AND
FAERIE SUPERSTITIONS
BY
HAROLD BAYLEY
AUTHOR OF "THE SHAKESPEARE SYMPHONY," "A NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE,"
"THE LOST LANGUAGE OF SYMBOLISM," ETC.
[Illustration]
"One by one tiny fragments of testimony accumulate attesting such a
survival and continuance of folk memory as few men of to-day have
suspected."--JOHNSON
LONDON
CHAPMAN & HALL LTD.
11 HENRIETTA STREET
1919
TO
W. L. GROVES
WHO HAS GREATLY AIDED ME
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. INTRODUCTORY 1
II. THE MAGIC OF WORDS 34
III. A TALE OF TROY 78
IV. ALBION 124
V. GOG AND MAGOG 186
VI. PUCK 230
VII. OBERON 309
VIII. SCOURING THE WHITE HORSE 389
IX. BRIDE'S BAIRNS 455
X. HAPPY ENGLAND 522
XI. THE FAIR MAID 593
XII. PETER'S ORCHARDS 663
XIII. ENGLISH EDENS 710
XIV. DOWN UNDER 764
XV. CONCLUSIONS 832
APPENDIX 871
Appendix A: Ireland and Phoenicia 871
Appendix B: Perry-Dancers and Perry Stones. 873
Appendix C: British Symbols. 874
Appendix D: Glastonbury. 875
Appendix E: The Druids and Crete. 875
INDEX 877
"Of all the many thousands of earthworks of various kinds to be
found in England, those about which anything is known are very few,
those of which there remains nothing more to be known scarcely
exist. Each individual example is in itself a new problem in
history, chronology, ethnology, and anthropology; within every one
lie the hidden possibilities of a revolution in knowledge. We are
proud of a history of nearly twenty centuries: we have the
materials for a history which goes back beyond that time to
centuries as yet undated. The testimony of records carries the tale
back to a certain point: beyond that point is only the testimony of
archæology, and of all the manifold branches of archæology none is
so practicable, so promising, yet so little explored, as that which
is concerned with earthworks. Within them lie hidden all the
secrets of time before history begins, and by their means only can
that history be put into writing: they are the back numbers of the
island's story, as yet unread, much less indexed."--A. HADRIAN
ALLCROFT.
"It is a gain to science that it has at last been recognised that
we cannot penetrate far back into man's history without appealing
to more than one element in that history. Some day it will be
recognised that we must appeal to _all_ elements in that
history."--GOMME.
"History bears and requires Authors of all sorts."--CAMDEN.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is
because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music
which he hears, however measured or far away."--H. D. THOREAU.
This book is an application of the jigsaw system to certain
archæological problems which under the ordinary detached methods of the
Specialist have proved insoluble. My fragments of evidence are drawn as
occasion warrants from History, Fairy-tale, Philosophy, Legend,
Folklore--in fact from any quarter whence the required piece
unmistakably fulfils the missing space. It is thus a mental medley with
all the defects, and some, I trust, of the attractions, of a mosaic.
Ten years ago I published a study on Mediæval Symbolism, and subsequent
investigation of cognate subjects has since put me in possession of some
curious and uncommon information, which lies off the mainroads of
conventional Thought.
The consensus of opinion upon _A New Light on the Renaissance_,[1] was
to the effect that my theories were decidedly ingenious and up to a
point tenable, yet nevertheless at present they could only be regarded
as non-proven. In 1912[2] I therefore endeavoured to substantiate my
earlier propositions, pushing them much further to the point of
suggesting an innate connection between Symbolism and certain
words--such, for example, as _psyche_, which means a butterfly, and
_psyche_ the _anima_ or _soul_ which was symbolised or represented by a
butterfly. Of course I knew only too well the tricky character of the
ground I was exploring and how open many of my propositions would be to
attack, yet it seemed preferable rather to risk the Finger of Scorn than
by a superfluity of caution ignore clues, which under more competent
hands might yield some very interesting and perhaps valuable
discoveries.
In the present volume I piece together a mosaic of visible and tangible
evidence which is supplementary to that already brought forward, and the
results--at any rate in many instances--cannot by any possibility be
written off as due merely to coincidence or chance. That they will be
adequate to satisfy the exacting requirements of modern criticism is,
however, not to be supposed. Referring to _The Lost Language_, one of my
reviewers cheerfully but disconcertingly observed: "He must deal as
others of his school have done with all the possible readings of the
history of the races of men".[3] To sweeping and magnanimous advice of
this character one can only counter the untoward experiences of the
hapless "Charles Templeton," as recounted by Mr. Stephen McKenna: "At
the age of three-and-twenty Charles Templeton, my old tutor at Oxford,
set himself to write a history of the Third French Republic. When I made
his acquaintance, some thirty years later, he had satisfactorily
concluded his introductory chapter on the origin of Kingship. At his
death, three months ago, I understand that his notes on the precursors
of Charlemagne were almost as complete as he desired. 'It is so
difficult to know where to start, Mr. Oakleigh,' he used to say, as I
picked my steps through the litter of notebooks that cumbered his
tables, chairs, and floor."[4]
But Mr. Templeton's embarrassments were trifling in comparison with
mine. Templeton was obviously a man of some leisure, whereas my literary
hobbies have necessarily to be indulged more or less furtively in
restaurants, railway trains, and during such hours and half-hours of
opportunity as I can snatch from more pressing obligations. Moreover,
Mr. Templeton could concentrate on one subject--History--whereas the
scope of my studies compels me to keep on as good terms as may be with
the exacting Muses of History, Mythology, Archæology, Philosophy,
Religion, Romance, Symbolism, Numismatics, Folklore, and Etymology. I
mention this not to extenuate any muzziness of thought, or sloppiness of
diction, but to disarm by confession the charge that my work has been
done hurriedly and here and there superficially.
With the facilities at my disposal I have endeavoured to the best of my
abilities to concentrate a dozen rays on to one subject, and to mould
into an harmonious and coherent whole the pith of a thousand and one
items culled during the past seven years from day to day and noted from
hour to hour. Differing as I do in some respects from the accepted
conclusions of the best authorities, it is a further handicap to find
myself in the position of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah, who was
constrained by force of circumstance to build with a sword in one hand
and a trowel in the other.
To the heretic and the wayfarer it is, however, a comfortable reflection
that what Authority maintains to-day it generally contradicts
to-morrow.[5] Less than a century ago contemporary scholarship knew the
age of the earth with such exquisite precision that it pronounced it to
a year, declaring an exact total of 6000 years, and a few odd days.
When the discoveries in Kent's Cavern were laid before the scientific
world, the authorities flatly denied their possibility, and the proofs
that Man in Britain was contemporary with the mammoth, the lion, the
bear, and the rhinoceros[6] were received with rudeness and inattention.
Similarly the discovery of prehistoric implements in the gravel-beds at
Abbeville was treated with inconsequence and insult, and it was upwards
of twenty years before it was reluctantly conceded that: "While we have
been straining our eyes to the East, and eagerly watching excavations in
Egypt and Assyria, suddenly a new light has arisen in the midst of us;
and the oldest relics of man yet discovered have occurred, not among the
ruins of Nineveh or Heliopolis, not on the sandy plains of the Nile or
the Euphrates, but _in the pleasant valleys of England and France_,
along the banks of the Seine and the Somme, the Thames and the
Waveney."[7]
The fact is now generally accepted as proven by both anthropologists and
archæologists, that the most ancient records of the human race exist not
in Asia, but in Europe. The oldest documents are not the hieroglyphics
of Egypt, but the hunting-scenes scratched on bone and ivory by the
European cave-dwelling contemporaries of the mammoth and the woolly
rhinoceros. Human implements found on the chalk plateaus of Kent have
been assigned to a period prior to the glacial epoch, which is surmised
to have endured for 160,000 years, from, roughly speaking, 240,000 to
80,000 years ago.
It is now also an axiom that the races of Europe are not colonists from
somewhere in Asia, but that, speaking generally, they have inhabited
their present districts more or less continuously from the time when
they crept back gradually in the wake of the retreating ice.
"Written history and popular tradition," says Sir E. Ray Lankester,
"tell us something in regard to the derivation and history of existing
'peoples,' but we soon come to a period--a few thousand years
back--concerning which both written statement and tradition are dumb.
And yet we know that this part of the world--Europe--was inhabited by an
abundant population in those remote times. We know that for at least
500,000 years human populations occupied portions of this territory, and
that various races with distinguishing peculiarities of feature and
frame, and each possessed of arts and crafts distinct from those
characteristic of others, came and went in succession in those
incredibly remote days in Europe. We know this from the implements,
carvings, and paintings left by these successive populations, and we
know it also by the discovery of their bones."
Anthropology, however, while admitting this unmeasurable antiquity for
mankind, takes no count of the possibility of an amiable or cultured
race in these islands prior to the coming of the Roman legions. It
traces with equanimity the modern Briton evolving in unbroken sequence
from the primitive cave-dweller, and it points with self-complacency to
the fact that even as late as the Battle of Hastings some of Harold's
followers were armed with _stone_ axes. There has, however, recently
been unearthed near Maidstone the skull of a late palæolithic or early
neolithic man, whose brain capacity was rather above the average of the
modern Londoner. The forehead of this 15,000 year-old skull is well
formed, there are no traces of a simian or overhanging brow, and the
individual himself might well, in view of all physical evidence, have
been a primeval sage rather than a primeval savage.
The high estimation in which the philosophy of prehistoric Briton was
regarded abroad may be estimated from the testimony of Cæsar who states:
"It is believed that this institution (Druidism) was founded in
Britannia, and thence transplanted into Gaul. Even nowadays those who
wish to become more intimately acquainted with the institution generally
go to Britannia for instruction's sake."
It has been claimed for the Welsh that they possess the oldest
literature in the oldest language in Europe. Giraldus Cambrensis,
speaking of the Welsh Bards, mentions their possession of certain
ancient and authentic books, but whether or not the traditionary poems
which were first committed to writing in the twelfth century retain any
traces of the prehistoric Faith is a matter of divided opinion. To those
who are not experts in archaisms and are not enamoured of ink-spilling,
the sanest position would appear to be that of Matthew Arnold, who
observes in _Celtic Literature_: "There is evidently mixed here, with
the newer legend, a _detritus_, as the geologists would say, of
something far older; and the secret of Wales and its genius is not truly
reached until this _detritus_, instead of being called recent because it
is found in contact with what is recent, is disengaged, and is made to
tell its own story."[8]
The word "founded," as used by Cæsar, implies an antiquity for British
institutions which is materially confirmed by the existence of such
monuments as Stonehenge, and the more ancient Avebury. Whether these
supposed "appendages to Bronze age burials" were merely sepulchral
monuments, or whether they ever possessed any intellectual significance,
does not affect the fact that Great Britain, and notably England, is
richer in this class of monument than any other part of the world.[9]
Circles being essentially and pre-eminently English it is disappointing
to find the most modern handbook on Stonehenge stating: "In all matters
of archæology it is constantly found that certain questions are better
left in abeyance or bequeathed to a coming generation for solution".[10]
Every one sympathises with that weary feeling, but nevertheless the
present generation now possesses quite sufficient data to enable it to
shoulder its own responsibilities and to pass beyond the stereotyped and
hackneyed formula "sepulchral monument". I hold no brief on behalf of
the Druids--indeed one must agree that the Celtic Druids were much more
modern than the monuments associated with their name--nevertheless the
theory that these far-famed philosophers were mere wise men or witch
doctors, with perhaps a spice of the conjuror, is a modern
misapprehension with which I am nowise in sympathy. Valerius Maximus
(_c._ A.D. 20) was much better informed and therefore more cautious in
his testimony: "I should be tempted to call these breeches-wearing
gentry fools, were not their doctrine the same as that of the
mantle-clad Pythagoras".
Druids or no Druids there must at some period in our past have been
interesting and enterprising people in these islands. At Avebury, near
Marlborough, is Silbury Hill, an earth mound, which is admittedly the
vastest artificial hill in Europe. Avebury itself is said to constitute
the greatest megalithic monument in Europe, and nowhere in the world are
tumuli more plentiful than in Great Britain. On the banks of the Boyne
is a pyramid of stones which, had it been situated on the banks of the
Nile, would probably have been pronounced the oldest and most venerable
of the pyramids. In the Orkneys at Hoy is almost the counterpart to an
Egyptian marvel which, according to Herodotus, was an edifice 21 cubits
in length, 14 in breadth, and 8 in height, the whole consisting only of
one single stone, brought thither by sea from a place about 20 days'
sailing from Sais. The Hoy relic is an obelisk 36 feet long by 18 feet
broad, by 9 feet deep. "No other stones are near it. 'Tis all hollowed
within or scooped by human art and industry, having a door at the east
end 2 feet square with a stone of the same dimension lying about 2 feet
from it, which was intended no doubt to close the entrance. Within,
there is at the south end of it, cut out, the form of a bed and pillow
capable to hold two persons."[11]
Sir John Morris-Jones has noted remarkable identities between the syntax
of Welsh and that of early Egyptian: Gerald Massey, in his _Book of the
Beginnings_, gives a list of 3000 close similarities between English and
Egyptian words; and the astronomical inquiries of Sir Norman Lockyer
have driven him to conclude: "The people who honoured us with their
presence here in Britain some 4000 years ago, had evidently, some way or
other, had communicated to them a very complete Egyptian culture, and
they determined their time of night just in the same way that the
Egyptians did".
It used to be customary to attribute all the mysterious edifices of
these islands, including stones inscribed with lettering in an unknown
script, to hypothetical wanderers from the East. Nothing could have been
more peremptory than the manner in which this theory was enunciated by
its supporters, among whom were included all or nearly all the great
names of the period. To-day there is a complete _volte face_ upon this
subject, and the latest opinion is that "not a particle of evidence has
been adduced in favour of any migration from the East".[12] When one
remembers that only a year or two ago practically the whole of the
academic world gave an exuberant and unqualified adherence to the theory
of Asiatic immigration it is difficult to conceive a more chastening
commentary upon the value of _ex cathedra_ teaching.
Happily it was an Englishman[13] who, seeing through the futility of the
Asiatic theory, first pointed out the now generally accepted fact that
the cradle of Aryan civilisation, if anywhere at all, was inferentially
_in Europe_. The assumption of an Asiatic origin was, however, so firmly
established and upheld by the dignity of such imposing names that the
arguments of Dr. Latham were not thought worthy of reply, and for
sixteen years his work lay unheeded before the world. Even twenty years
after publication, when the new view was winning many adherents, it was
alluded to by one of the most learned Germans as follows: "And so it
came to pass that in England, the native land of fads, there chanced to
enter into the head of an eccentric individual the notion of placing the
cradle of the Aryan race in Europe".
The whirligig of Time has now once again shifted the focus of
archæological interest at the moment from Scandinavia to Crete, where
recent excavations have revealed an Eldorado of prehistoric art. It is
now considered that the civilisation of Hellas was a mere offshoot from
that of Crete, and that Crete was veritably the fabulous Island of
Atlantis, a culture-centre which leavened all the shores of the
Mediterranean.
According to Sir Arthur Evans: "The high early culture, the equal rival
of that of Egypt and Babylon, which began to take its rise in Crete in
the fourth millennium before our era, flourished for some 2000 years,
eventually dominating the Ægean and a large part of the Mediterranean
basin. The many-storeyed palaces of the Minoan Priest-Kings in their
great days, by their ingenious planning, their successful combination of
the useful with the beautiful and stately, and last but not least, by
their scientific sanitary arrangements, far outdid the similar works, on
however vast a scale, of Egyptian or Babylonian builders."
The sensational discoveries at Crete provide a wholly new standpoint
whence to survey prehistoric civilisation, and they place the evolution
of human art and appliances in the last Quaternary Period on a higher
level than had ever previously been suspected.
Not only have the findings in Crete revolutionised all previously
current ideas upon Art, but they have also condemned to the melting-pot
the cardinal article of belief that the alphabet reached us from
Phoenicia. Prof. Flinders Petrie has now clearly demonstrated that
even in this respect, "Beside the great historic perspective of the long
use of signs in Egypt, other discoveries in Europe have opened entirely
new ground. These signs are largely found used for writing in Crete, as
a geometrical signary; and the discovery of the Karian alphabet, and its
striking relation to the Spanish alphabet, has likewise compelled an
entire reconsideration of the subject. Thus on all sides--Egyptian,
Greek, and Barbarian--material appears which is far older and far more
widespread than the Græco-Phoenician world; a fresh study of the whole
material is imperatively needed, now that the old conclusions are seen
to be quite inadequate."
The striking connection between the Karian and the Spanish alphabet may
be connoted with the fact that Strabo, mentioning the Turdetani whom he
describes as the most learned tribe of all Spain, says they had reduced
their language to grammatical rules, and that for 6000 years they had
possessed metrical poems and even laws. Commenting upon this piece of
precious information, Lardner ironically observed that although the
Spaniards eagerly seized it as a proof of their ancient civilisation,
they are sadly puzzled how to reconcile these 6000 years with the Mosaic
chronology. He adds that discarding fable, we find nothing in their
habits and manners to distinguish them from other branches of that great
race, except, perhaps, a superior number of Druidical remains.[14]
This "_except_" is noteworthy in view of the fact that the Celtiberian
alphabet of Spain is extremely similar to the Bardic or Druidic
alphabet of Britain, and also to the hitherto illegible alphabet of
Ancient Crete.
Cæsar has recorded that the Druids thought it an unhallowed thing to
commit their lore to writing, though in the other public and private
affairs of life they frequently made use of the Greek alphabet. That the
Celts of Gaul possessed the art of writing cannot be questioned, and
that Britain also practised some method of communication seems a
probability. There are still extant in Scotland inscriptions on stones
which are in characters now totally unknown. In Ireland, letters were
cut on the bark of trees prepared for that purpose and called poet's
tables. The letters of the most ancient Irish alphabet are named after
individual trees, and there are numerous references in Welsh poetry to a
certain secret of the twigs which lead to the strong inference that
"written" communication was first accomplished by the transmission of
tree-sprigs.
The alphabets illustrated on pages 14 and 15 have every appearance of
being representations of sprigs, and it is a curious fact that not only
in Ireland, but also in Arabia, alphabets of which every letter was
named after trees[15] were once current.
[Illustration: BRITISH ALPHABET.
FIG. 1.--From _Celtic Researches_ (Davies, E.).]
In _The Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe_, Dr. Mackenzie inquires:
"By whom were Egyptian beads carried to Britain, between 1500 B.C. and
1400 B.C.? Certainly not the Phoenicians. The sea traders of the
Mediterranean were at the time the Cretans. Whether or not their
merchants visited England we have no means of knowing."[16]
[Illustration: CELTIBERIAN ALPHABET, SHEWING THE DESCRIPTION OF
CHARACTERS FOUND ON THE COINS OF TARRACONENSIS AND
BÆTICA.
FIG. 2.--From _Ancient Coins_ (Akerman, J. Y.).]
The material which I shall produce establishes a probability that the
Cretans systematically visited Britain, and further that the tradition
of the peopling of this island by men of Trojan race are well founded.
According to the immemorial records of the Welsh Bards: "There were
three names imposed on the Isle of Britain from the beginning. Before it
was inhabited its denomination was Sea-Girt Green-space; after being
inhabited it was called the Honey Island, and after it was formed into a
Commonwealth by Prydain, the Son of Aedd Mawr, it was called the Isle of
Prydain. And none have any title therein but the nation of the Kymry.
For they first settled upon it, and before that time no men lived
therein, but it was full of bears, wolves, beavers, and bisons."[17]
In the course of these essays I shall discuss the Kymry, and venture a
few suggestions as to their cradle and community of memories and hopes.
But behind the Kymry, as likewise admittedly behind the Cretans, are the
traces of an even more primitive and archaic race. The earliest folk
which reached Crete are described as having come with a form of culture
which had been developed elsewhere, and among these neolithic settlers
have been found traces of a race 6 feet in height and with skulls
massive and shapely. Moreover Cretan beliefs and the myths which are
based upon them are admittedly older than even the civilisation of the
Tigro-Euphrates valley: and they belong, it would appear, to a stock of
common inheritance from an uncertain culture centre of immense
antiquity.[18]
The problem of Crete is indissolubly connected with that of Etruria,
which was flourishing in Art and civilisation at a period when Rome was
but a coterie of shepherds' huts. Here again are found Cyclopean walls
and the traces of some most ancient people who had sway in Italy at a
period even more remote than the national existence of Etruria.[19]
We are told that the first-comers in Crete ground their meal in stone
mortars, and that one of the peculiarities of the island was the
herring-bone design of their wall buildings. In West Cornwall the stone
walls or Giants' Hedges are Cyclopean; farther north, in the Boscastle
district, herring-bone walls are common, and in the neighbourhood of St.
Just there are numerous British villages wherein the stone mortars are
still standing.
The formula of independent evolution, which has recently been much
over-worked, is now waning into disfavour, and it is difficult to
believe otherwise than that identity of names, customs, and
characteristics imply either borrowing or descent from some common,
unknown source.
That the builders of our European tumuli and cromlechs were maritime
arrivals is a reasonable inference from the fact that dolmens and
cromlechs were built almost invariably near the sea.[20] These peculiar
and distinctive monuments are found chiefly along the _Western_ coasts
of Britain, the _Northern_ coast of Africa, in the isles of the
Mediterranean, in the isolated, storm-beaten Hebrides, and in the remote
islands of Asia and Polynesia.
By whom was the Titanic art of cromlech-building brought alike to the
British Isles and to the distant islands of the Pacific? By what
guidance did frail barques compass such terrifying sea space? How were
these adequately victualled for such voyages, and why were the mainlands
ever quitted? How and why were the colossal stones of Stonehenge brought
by ship from afar, floated down the broad waters of the prehistoric
Avon, and dragged laboriously over the heights of Oare Hill? Who were
the engineers who constructed artificial rocking stones and skilfully
poised them where they stand to-day? "To suspend a stupendous mass of
abnormous shape in such an equilibrium that it shall oscillate with the
most trivial force and not fall without the greatest, is a problem
unsolved so far as I know by modern engineers."[21]
Who were the indefatigable people who, prior to all record, reclaimed
the marshes of the Thames-mouth by an embankment which is intact to-day
all round the river coast of Kent and Essex? Who were the
horticulturists who evolved wheat and other cereals from unknown grasses
and certain lilies from their unknown wild? And who were the
philosophers who spun a delicate gossamer of fairy-tales over the world,
and formulated the cosmic ideas which are in many extraordinary respects
common alike to primitive and more advanced peoples? And why is the
symbol generally entitled the Swastika cross found not only under the
ruins of the most ancient Troy but also in the Thames at Battersea, and
elsewhere from China to Zimbabwe? How is it that Ireland, that remote
little outpost of Europe, possesses more Celtic MSS. than all the rest
of Celtic Europe put together?
The most rational explanation of these and similar queries is seemingly
a consideration of the almost world-wide tradition of a lost island, the
home of a scientific world-wandering race. The legend of submerged
Atlantis was related to Solon by an Egyptian priest as being historic
fact, and the date of the final catastrophe was definitely set down by
Plato from information given to Solon as having been about 9000 B.C.
Solon was neither a fool himself nor the man to suffer fools gladly. It
is admitted by geology that there actually existed a large island in the
Atlantic during tertiary times, but this we are told is a pure
coincidence and it is impossible to suppose any tradition existing of
such an island or land.
Science has very generally denied the credibility of tradition, yet
tradition has almost invariably proved truer than contemporary
scholarship. Scholarship denied the possibility of finding Troy,
notwithstanding the steady evidence of tradition to the mound at
Hissarlik where it was eventually disclosed. Even when Schliemann had
uncovered the lost city the scientists of every European capital
ridiculed his pretensions, and it was only gradually that they
ungraciously yielded to the irresistible evidence of their physical
senses. Science similarly denied the possibility of buried cities at the
foot of Vesuvius, yet popular tradition always asserted the existence of
Pompeii and Herculaneum; indeed, contemporary science has so
consistently scouted the possibility of every advance in discovery that
mere airy dismissal is not now sufficient to discredit either the
Atlantean, or any other theory. From China to Peru one finds the
persistent tradition of a drowned land, a story which is in itself so
preposterous as unlikely to arise without some solid grounds of reality.
Thierry has observed that legend is living tradition, and three times
out of four it is truer than what we call history. Sir John Morris Jones
would seemingly endorse this proposition, for he has recently contended
that tradition is _itself a fact_ not always to be disposed of by the
hasty assumption that all men are liars.[22]
The Irish have their own account of the Flood, according to which three
ships sailed for Ireland, but two of them foundered on the way. The
Welsh version runs that the first of the perilous mishaps which occurred
in Britain was "The outburst of the ocean 'Torriad lin lion,' when a
deluge spread over the face of all lands, so that all mankind were
drowned with the exception of Duw-van and Duw-ach, the divine man and
divine woman, who escaped in a decked ship without sails; and from this
pair the island of Prydain was completely re-peopled".
Correlated with this native version is a peculiar and, so far as my
information goes, a unique tradition that previous disasters had taken
place, causing the destruction of animals and vegetables then existing,
of which whole races were irrevocably lost. This tradition, which is in
complete harmony with the discoveries of modern geology, is thus
embodied in the thirteenth Triad: "The second perilous mishap was the
terror of the torrent-fire, when the earth was cloven down to the abyss,
and the majority of living things were destroyed".
It is a singular coincidence that evidence of a prehistoric
torrent-fire exists certainly in Ireland, where bog-buried forests have
been unearthed exhibiting all the signs of a flowing torrent of molten
fire or lava. According to the author of _Bogs and Ancient Forests_,
when the Bog of Allen in Kildare was cut through, oak, fir, yew, and
other trees were found buried 20 or 30 feet below the surface, and these
trees generally lie prostrated in a horizontal position, and _have the
appearance of being burned at the bottom of their trunks and roots_,
fire having been found far more powerful in prostrating those forests
than cutting them down with an axe; and the great depth at which these
trees are found in bogs, shows that they must have lain there for many
ages.[23]
No ordinary or casual forest fire is capable of prostrating an oak or
fir tree, and the implement which accomplished such terrific devastation
must have been something volcanic and torrential in its character.
I am, however, not enamoured of the Atlantean or any other theory. My
purpose is rather to collate facts, and as all theorising ends in an
appeal to self-evidence, it is better to allow my material, for much of
which I have physically descended into the deeps of the earth, to speak
for itself:--we must believe the evidence of our senses rather than
arguments, and believe arguments if they agree with the phenomena.[24]
Although my concordance of facts is based upon evidence largely visible
to the naked eye, in a study of this character there must of necessity
be a disquieting percentage of "probablys" and "possiblys". This is
deplorable, but if license be conceded in one direction it cannot be
withheld in another. The extent to which guess-work is still rampant in
etymology will be apparent in due course; the extent to which it is
allowed license in anthropology may be judged from such reveries as the
following: "Did any early members of the human family commit suicide?
Probably they did; the feeble, the dying, the maimed, the weak-headed,
the starving, the jealous, would be tired of life; these would throw
themselves from heights or into rivers, or stab themselves or cut their
throats with large and keen-edged knives of flint."[25]
Although my own inquiries deal intimately with graves and names and
epitaphs, it still seems to me a possibility that the brains which
fashioned exquisitely barbed fish-hooks out of flint, and etched vivid
works of art upon pebble, may also have been capable of poetic and even
magnanimous ideas. It is quite certain that the artistic sense is
superlatively ancient, and it is quite unproven that the lives of these
early craftsmen were protracted nightmares.
Although not primarily written with that end, the present work will
_inter alia_ raise not a few doubts as to the accuracy of Green's
dictum: "What strikes us at once in the new England is that it was the
one purely German nation that rose upon the wreck of Rome". In the
opinion of this popular historian the holiest spot in all these islands
ought in the eyes of Englishmen to be Ebbsfleet, the site where in Kent
the English visitors first landed, yet inconsequently he adds: "A
century after their landing the English are still known to their British
foes only as 'barbarians,' 'wolves,' 'dogs,' 'whelps from the kennel of
barbarism,' 'hateful to God and man'. Their victories seemed victories
for the powers of evil, chastisement of a divine justice for natural
sin."[26]
It is an axiom among anthropologists that race characteristics do not
change and that tides of immigration are more or less rapidly absorbed
by the aboriginal and resident stock. Assuredly the characteristics of
the German tribes have little changed, and it is extraordinary how from
the time of Tacitus they have continued to display from age to age their
time-honoured peculiarities. Invited and welcomed into this country as
friends and allies, "in a short time swarms of the aforesaid nations
came over into the island, and they began to increase so much that they
became terrible to the natives themselves who had invited them".[27]
According to Bede the first symptoms of the frightfulness which was to
come were demands for larger rations, accompanied by the threat that
unless more plentiful supplies were brought them they would break the
confederacy and ravage all the island. Nor were they backward in putting
their threats in execution. Just as the Germans ruined Louvain so the
Angles razed Cambridge,[28] and in the words of Layamon "they passed to
and fro the country carrying off all they found". Already in the times
of Tacitus famous for their frantic Hymns of Hate, so again we find
Layamon recording "they breathed out threatenings and slaughter against
the folk of the country". Indeed Layamon uses far stronger expressions
than any of those quoted by Green, and the British chronicler almost
habitually refers to the alien intruders as "swine," and "the loathest
of all things".
Instead, therefore, of being thrilled into ecstasy by the landing of the
Germans at Ebbsfleet, one may more reasonably regard the episode as
untoward and discreditable. It is more satisfactory to contemplate the
return in the train of Duke William of Normandy of those numerous
Britons who "with sorrowful hearts had fled beyond the seas," and to
appreciate that by the Battle of Hastings the temporary ascendancy of
Germanic kultur was finally and irrevocably destroyed.
It is observed by Green that the coins which we dig up in our fields are
no relics of our English fathers but of a Roman world which our fathers'
sword swept utterly away. This is sufficiently true as regards the Saxon
sword, but as some of the native coins in question are now universally
assigned to a period 200 to 100 years earlier than the first coming of
the Romans, it is obvious that there must have been sufficient
civilisation then in the country to require a coinage, and that the
native Britons cannot have been the poor and backward barbarians of
popular estimation.
A coin is an excessively hard fact, and should be of just as high
interest to the historian as a well-formed skull or any other document.
To Englishmen our prehistoric coinage--a national coinage "scarcely if
at all inferior to that of contemporary Rome"--[29] ought to possess
peculiar and special interest, for it is practically in England alone
that early coins have been discovered, and neither Scotland, Wales, nor
Ireland can boast of more than very few. It is, however, an Englishman's
peculiarity that possessing perhaps the most interesting history, and
some of the most fascinating relics in the world, he is either too
modest or too dull to take account of them. The plate of coins
illustrated on page 364, represents certain _sceattae_ which, according
to Hawkins, may have been struck during the interval between the
departure of the Romans and the arrival of the Saxons. One would at
least have thought that such undated minor-monuments would have
possessed _per se_ sufficient interest to ensure their careful
preservation. Yet, according to Hawkins, these rude and uncouth pieces
are scarce, "because they are rejected from all cabinets and thrown away
as soon as discovered".[30]
It is the considered opinion of certain British numismatists that not
only all English but also Gaulish coins are barbarous and degraded
imitations of a famous Macedonian original which at one time circulated
largely in Marseilles. This supposititious model is illustrated on page
394, and the reader can form his own opinion as to whether or not the
immense range of subjects which figure on our native money could by any
possibility have unconsciously evolved from carelessness. Sir John
Evans, by whom this theory was, I believe, first put forward, is himself
at times hard-driven to defend it; nevertheless he does not hesitate to
maintain: "The degeneration of the head of Apollo into two boars and a
wheel, impossible as it may at first appear, is in fact but a
comparatively easy transition when once the head has been reduced into
a form of regular pattern".[31]
My irregularity carries me to the extent of contending that our native
coins, crude and uncouth as some of them may be, are in no case
imitations but are native work reflecting erstwhile national ideas. The
weird designs and what-nots which figure on these tokens almost
certainly were once animated by meanings of some sort: they thus
constitute a prehistoric literature expressed in hieroglyphics for the
correct reading of which one must, in the words of Carlyle, consider
History with the beginnings of it stretching dimly into the remote time,
emerging darkly out of the mysterious eternity, the true epic poem and
universal divine scripture.
According to Tacitus the British, under Boudicca, brought into the field
an incredible multitude; that Cæsar was impressed by the density of the
inhabitants may be gathered from his words: "The population is immense;
homesteads closely resembling those of the Gauls are met with at every
turn, and cattle are very numerous".[32] That the handful of Roman
invaders eliminated the customs and traditions of a vast population is
no more likely than the supposition that British occupation has
eradicated or even greatly interfered with the native faiths of India.
It is generally admitted that the Romans were most tolerant of local
sensibilities, and there is no reason to assume that existing British
characteristics were either attacked or suppressed. To assume that some
hundreds of years later the advent of a few boat-loads of Anglo-Saxon
adventurers wiped out the Romano-British inhabitants and eradicated all
customs, manners, and traditions is an obvious fallacy under which the
evidence of folklore does not permit us to labour. The greater
probability is that the established culture imposed itself more or less
upon the new-comers, more particularly in those remote districts which
it was only after hundreds of years that the Saxons, by their
conventional policy of peaceful penetration, punctuated by flashes of
frightfulness, succeeded in dominating.
Even after the Norman Conquest there are circumstances which point to
the probability that the Celtic population was much larger and more
powerful than is usually supposed. Of these the most important is the
fact that the signatures to very early charters supply us with names of
persons of Celtic race occupying positions of dignity at the courts of
Anglo-Saxon kings.[33]
The force of custom and the apparently undying continuance of
folk-memory are among the best attested phenomena of folklore. It was
remarked by the elder Disraeli that tradition can neither be made _nor
destroyed_, and if this be true in general it is peculiarly true of the
stubborn and pig-headed British. Our churches stand to-day not only on
the primeval inconvenient hill-sites, but frequently within the
time-honoured earthwork, or beside the fairy-well. On Palm Sunday the
villagers of Avebury still toil to the summit of Silbury Hill, there to
consume fig cakes and drink sugared water; and on the same festival the
people even to-day march in procession to the prehistoric earthwork on
the top of Martinshell Hill. Our country fairs are generally held near
or within a pagan earthwork, and instance after instance might be
adduced all pointing to the immortality of custom and the persistent
sanctity of pagan sites.
In the sixth century of our era the monk Gildas referred complacently
but erroneously to the ancient British faith as being dead. "I shall
not," he says, "enumerate those diabolical idols of my country, which
almost surpassed in number those of Egypt, and of which we still see
some mouldering away within or without the deserted temples, with stiff
and deformed features as was customary. Nor will I cry out upon the
mountains, fountains, or hills, or upon the rivers, which now are
subservient to the use of men, but once were an abomination and
destruction to them, and to which the blind people paid divine honour."
Notwithstanding the jeremiads of poor Gildas[34] the folk-faith
survived; indeed, as Mr. Johnson says, the heathen belief has been
present all the time, and need not greatly astonish us since the most
advanced materialist is frequently a victim of trivial superstitions
which are scouted by scientific men as baseless and absurd.
The Augustine of Canterbury, who is recorded to have baptised on one day
10,000 persons in the river Swale, recommended with pious ingenuity that
the heathen temples should not be destroyed, but converted to the honour
of Christ by washing their walls with holy water and substituting holy
relics and symbols for the images of the heathen gods. This is an
illuminating sidelight on the methods by which the images of the heathen
idols were gradually transformed into the images of Christian saints,
and there is little doubt that as the immemorial shrines fell into ruin
and were rebuilt and again rebuilt, the sacred images were scrupulously
relimned.
Even to-day, after 2000 years of Christian discipline, the clergy dare
not in some districts interfere with the time-honoured tenets of their
parishioners. In Normandy and Brittany the priests, against their
inclination, are compelled to take part in pagan ceremonials,[35] and in
Spain quite recently an archbishop has been nearly killed by his
congregation for interdicting old customs.[36]
The earliest British shrines were merely stones, or caves, or holy
wells, or sacred trees, or tumuli, preferably on a hill-top or in a
wood. The next type is found in the monastery of St. Bride, which was
simply a circular palisade encircling a sacred fire. This was in all
probability similar to the earliest known form of the Egyptian temple, a
wicker hut with tall poles forming the sides of the door; in front of
this extended an enclosure which had two poles with flags on either side
of the entrance. In the middle of the enclosure or court was a staff
bearing the emblem of the God.
Later came stone circles and megalithic monuments in various forms,
whence the connection is direct to cathedrals such as Chartres, which is
said to be built largely from the remains of the prehistoric megaliths
which originally stood there. There are chapels in Brittany and
elsewhere built over pagan monoliths; indeed no new faith can ever do
more than superimpose itself upon an older one, and statements about the
wise and tender treatment of the old nature worship by the Church are
euphemisms for the bald fact that Christianity, finding it impracticable
to wean the heathen from their obdurate beliefs, made the best of the
situation by decreeing its feasts to coincide with pre-existing
festivals.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Section of the Dolmen Chapel of the Seven
Sleepers near Plouaret.]
It has long been generally appreciated that the lives of saints are not
only for the most part mythical, but that even documentary evidence on
that subject is equally suspect.[37] There is, indeed, no room to doubt
that the majority of the ancient saint-stories are Christianised
versions of such scraps and traditions of prehistoric mythology as had
continued to linger among the folk. To the best of my belief I am the
first folklorist who has endeavoured to treat _The Golden Legend_ in a
sympathetic spirit as almost pure mythology.
It is usually assumed that at any rate the Christian Church tactfully
decanted the old wine of paganism into new bottles; but Christianity, as
will be seen, more often did not trouble to provide even new bottles,
and merely altered a stroke here and there on the labels, transforming
_San tan_, the _Holy Fire_, into St. Anne, _Sin clair_, the _Holy
Light_, into St. Clare, and so forth.
The first written record of Christianity in Britain is approximately
A.D. 200, whence it is claimed that the Christian religion must have
been introduced very near to, if not in, apostolic times. In 314 three
British bishops, each accompanied by a priest and a deacon, were present
at the Council at Arles, and it is commonly maintained by the Anglican
Church that only a relatively small part of England owes its conversion
to the Roman mission of the monk Augustine in 597.
We have it on the notable authority of St. Augustine that: "That very
thing which is now designated the Christian religion _was in existence
among the ancients_, nor was it absent even from the commencement of the
human race up to the time when Christ entered into the flesh, after
which true religion, _which already existed_, began to be called
Christian".
We should undoubtedly possess more specific evidences of the ancient
faith but for the edicts of the Church that all writings adverse to the
claims of the Christian religion, in the possession of whomsoever they
should be found, should be committed to the fire. It is claimed for St.
Patrick that he caused to be destroyed 180--some say 300--volumes
relating to the Druidic system. These, said a complacent commentator,
were stuffed with the fables and superstitions of heathen idolatry and
unfit to be transmitted to posterity.
Mr. Westropp considers that much of value escaped destruction, for
Christianity in Ireland was a tactful, warm-hearted mother, and learned
the stories to tell to her children. This is true to some extent, but in
Britain there are extant many bardic laments at the intolerance with
which old ideas were eradicated, _e.g._, "Monks congregate like wolves
wrangling with their instructors. They know not when the darkness and
the dawn divide, nor what is the course of the wind, or the cause of its
agitation; in what place it dies away or on what region it expands." And
implying that although one may be right it does not follow that all
others must be wrong the same bard exclaims, "For one hour persecute me
not!" and he pathetically asks: "Is there but _one_ course to the wind,
but _one_ to the waters of the sea? Is there but _one_ spark in the fire
of boundless energy?"
In the same strain another bard, in terms not altogether inapplicable
to-day, alludes to his opponents as "like little children disagreeing on
the beach of the sea".
Although bigotry and materialism have suppressed facts, stifled
testimony, misrepresented witnesses, and destroyed or perverted
documents, the prehistoric fairy faith was happily too deeply graven
thus to be obliterated, and it is only a matter of time and study to
reconstruct it. Most of the suggestions I venture to put forward are
sufficiently documented by hard facts, but some are necessarily based
upon "hints and equivocal survivals".[38] At the threshold of an essay
of the present character one can hardly do better than appropriate the
words of Edmund Spenser:--I do gather a likelihood of truth not
certainly affirming anything, but by conferring of times, language,
monuments, and such like, I do hunt out a probability of things which I
leave to your judgment to believe or refuse.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Dent, 1909.
[2] _The Lost Language of Symbolism_: An inquiry into the origin
of certain letters, words, names, fairy-tales, folklore, and
mythologies. 2 vols. London, 1912 (Williams & Norgate).
[3] _Manchester Guardian_, 23rd December, 1912.
[4] _Sonia._
[5] "Topographical comment--I will not say criticism--has been
equally inefficient. A theory is not refuted by saying 'all
the great antiquarians are against you,' 'the Psalter of Tara
refutes that,' or 'O'Donovan has set the question past all
doubt'. These remarks only prove that we have hardly
commenced scientific archæology in this country."--Westropp,
Thos. J., _Proc. of Royal Irish Acad._, vol. xxxiv., C., No.
8, p. 129.
[6] We found precisely the same things as were found by our
predecessors, remains of extinct animals in the cave earth,
and with them flint implements in considerable numbers. You
want, of course, to know how the scientific world received
these latter discoveries. They simply scouted them. They told
us that our statements were impossible, and we simply
responded with the remark that we had not said that they were
possible, only that they were true.--Pengally, W., _Kent's
Cavern. Its Testimony to the Antiquity of Man_, p. 12.
[7] Lubbock, J., _Prehistoric Times_.
[8] In the course of his criticism the same writer pertinently
observes:--
"Why, what a wonderful thing is this! We have, in the first
place, the most weighty and explicit testimony--Strabo's,
Cæsar's, Lucan's--that this race once possessed a special,
profound, spiritual discipline, that they were, to use Mr.
Nash's words, 'Wiser than their neighbours'. Lucan's words
are singularly clear and strong, and serve well to stand as a
landmark in this controversy, in which one is sometimes
embarrassed by hearing authorities quoted on this side or
that, when one does not feel sure precisely what they say,
how much or how little. Lucan, addressing those hitherto
under the pressure of Rome, but now left by the Roman Civil
War to their own devices, says:--
"'Ye too, ye bards, who by your praises perpetuate the memory of
the fallen brave, without hindrance poured forth your
strains. And ye, ye Druids, now that the sword was removed,
began once more your barbaric rites and weird solemnities. To
you only is given the knowledge or ignorance (whichever it
be) of the gods and the powers of heaven; your dwelling is in
the lone heart of the forest. From you we learn that the
bourne of man's ghost is not the senseless grave, not the
pale realm of the monarch below; in another world his spirit
survives still.'"
[9] "Circles form another group of the monuments we are about to
treat of.... In France they are hardly known, though in
Algeria they are frequent. In Denmark and Sweden they are
both numerous and important, but it is in the British Islands
that circles attained their greatest
development."--Fergusson, J., _Rude Stone Monuments_, p. 47.
Referring to Stanton Drew the same authority observes:
"Meanwhile it may be well to point out that this class of
circles is peculiar to England. They do not exist in France
or Algeria. The Scandinavian circles are all very different,
so too are the Irish."--_Ibid._, p. 153.
[10] Stevens, F., _Stonehenge To-day and Yesterday_, 1916, p. 14.
[11] Toland, _History of the Druids_, p. 163.
[12] Schrader, O., _cf._ Taylor, Isaac, _The Origin of the
Aryans_, p. 48.
[13] Latham, Dr. R. G.
[14] _Spain and Portugal_, vol. i., p. 16.
[15] Mr. Hammer, a German who has travelled lately in Egypt and
Syria, has brought, it seems, to England a manuscript written
in Arabic. It contains a number of alphabets. Two of these
consist entirely of trees. The book is of authority.--Davies,
E., _Celtic Researches_, 1804, p. 305.
[16] The Cretans were rulers of the sea, and according to
Thucydides King Minos of Crete was "the first person known to
us in history as having established a navy. He made himself
master of what is now called the Hellenic Sea, and ruled over
the Cyclades, into most of which he sent his first colonists,
expelling the Carians and appointing his own sons governors;
and thus did his best to put down piracy in those waters."
[17] Jones, J. J., _Britannia Antiquissima_, 1866.
[18] Mackenzie, D. A., _Myths of Crete_, p. xxix.
[19] Gray, Mrs. Hamilton, _The Sepulchres of Etruria_, p. 223.
[20] This might be due to the coasts being less liable to the
plough. See, however, the map of distribution, published by
Fergusson, in _Rude Stone Monuments_.
[21] Herbert, A., _Cyclops Britannica_, p. 68.
[22] _Taliesin_, p. 23.
[23] Connellan, A. F. M., p. 337.
[24] Aristotle.
[25] Smith, Worthington, G., _Man the Primeval Savage_, p. 53.
[26] _Short History_, p. 15.
[27] Bede.
[28] The cities which had been erected in considerable numbers by
the Romans were sacked, burnt, and then left as ruins by the
Anglo-Saxons, who appear to have been afraid or at least
unwilling to use them as places of habitation. An instance of
this may be found in the case of Camboritum, the important
Roman city which corresponded to our modern Cambridge, which
was sacked by the invaders and left a ruin at least until the
time of the Venerable Bede, 673-735.--Windle, B. C. A., _Life
in Early Britain_, p. 14.
[29] Hearnshaw, F. J. C., _England in the Making_, p. 14.
[30] Hawkins, E., _The Silver Coins of England_, p. 17.
[31] _Coins of the Ancient Britons_, p. 121.
[32] _Bello Gallico_, Bk. v., 12, § 3.
[33] Smith, Dr. Wm., _Lectures on the English Language_, p. 29.
[34] The Americans would describe Gildas as a "Calamity-howler".
[35] Le Braz, A., _The Night of Fires_.
[36] A Cantanzaro, dans la Calabre, la cathédrale fut le théâtre
de scènes de désordre extraordinaires. Le nouvel archevêque
avait dernièrement manifesté l'intention de mettre un terme à
certaines coutumes qu'il considérait comme entachées de
paganisme. Ses instructions ayant été méprisées, il frappa
d'interdit pour trois jours un édifice religieux. La
population jura de se venger et, lorsque le nouvel archevêque
fit son entrée dans la cathédrale, le jour de Pâques pour
célébrer la grand' messe, la foule, furieuse, manifesta
bruyamment contre lui. Comme on craignait que sa personne fût
l'objet de violences, le clergé le fit sortir en hâte par une
porte de derrière. Les troupes durent être réquisitionnées
pour faire évacuer le cathédrale.--_La Dernière Heure_,
April, 1914.
[37] There is a story told of a certain Gilbert de Stone, a
fourteenth century legend-monger, who was appealed to by the
monks of Holywell in Flintshire for a life of their patron
saint. On being told that no materials for such a work
existed the _litterateur_ was quite unconcerned, and
undertook without hesitation to compose a most excellent
legend after the manner of Thomas à Becket.
[38] "Ireland being 'the last resort of lost causes,' preserved
record of a European 'culture' as primitive as that of the
South Seas, and therefore invaluable for the history of human
advance; elsewhere its existence is only to be established
from hints and equivocal survivals. Our early tales are no
artificial fiction, but fragmentary beliefs of the pagan
period equally valuable for topography and for
mythology."--Westropp, Thos. J., _Proceedings of the Royal
Irish Academy_, vol. xxxiv. sec. C, No. 8, p. 128.
CHAPTER II
THE MAGIC OF WORDS
"As the palimpsest of language is held up to the light and looked
at more closely, it is found to be full of older forms beneath the
later writing. Again and again has the most ancient speech
conformed to the new grammar, until this becomes the merest surface
test; it supplies only the latest likeness. Our mountains and
rivers talk in the primeval mother tongue whilst the language of
men is remoulded by every passing wave of change. The language of
mythology and typology is almost as permanent as the names of the
hills and streams."--GERALD MASSEY.
It is generally admitted that place-names are more or less impervious to
time and conquests. Instances seemingly without limit might be adduced
of towns which have been sacked, destroyed, rebuilt, and rechristened,
yet the original names--_and these only_--have survived. Dr. Taylor has
observed that the names of five of the oldest cities of the
world--Damascus, Hebron, Gaza, Sidon, and Hamath--are still pronounced
in exactly the same manner as was the case thirty, or perhaps forty
centuries ago, defying oftentimes the persistent attempts of rulers to
substitute some other name.[39]
As another instance of the permanency of place-names, the city of
Palmyra is curiously notable. Though the Greek Palmyra is a title of
2000 years' standing, yet to the native Arab it is new-fangled, and he
knows the place not as Palmyra but as Tadmor, its original and
infinitely older name. Five hundred years B.C. the very ancient city of
Mykenæ was destroyed and never rose again to any importance: Mykenæ was
fabulously assigned to Perseus, and even to-day the stream which runs at
the site is known as the Perseia.[40]
If it be possible for local names thus to live handed down humbly from
mouth to mouth for thousands of years, for aught one knows they may have
endured for double or treble these periods; there is no seeming limit to
their vitality, and they may be said to be as imperishable and as
dateless as the stones of Avebury or Stonehenge.
History knows nothing of violent and spasmodic jumps; the ideas of one
era are impalpably transmitted to the next, and the continuity of custom
makes it difficult to believe that the builders of Cyclopean works such
as Avebury and Stonehenge, have left no imprint on our place-names, and
no memories in our language. Even to-day the superstitious veneration
for cromlechs and holy stones is not defunct, and it is largely due to
that ingrained sentiment that more of these prehistoric monuments have
not been converted into horse-troughs and pigsties.
If, as now generally admitted, there has been an unbroken and continuous
village-occupation, and if, as is also now granted, our sacred places
mostly occupy aboriginal and time-honoured sites, it is difficult to
conceive that place-names do not preserve some traces of their
prehistoric meanings. In the case of villages dedicated to some saintly
man or sweetest of sweet ladies, the connection is almost certainly
intact; indeed, in instances the pagan barrows in the churchyard are
often actually dedicated to some saint.[41]
That memories of the ancient mythology sometimes hang around our British
cromlechs is proved by an instance in North Wales where there still
stands a table stone known locally as _Llety-y-filiast_, or _the stone
of the greyhound bitch_. "This name," says Dr. Griffith, "was given in
allusion to the British Ceres or Keridwen who was symbolised by the
greyhound bitch".[42] I shall have much to say about Keridwen--"the most
generous and beauteous of ladies"--meanwhile it is sufficient here to
note that her symbol, the greyhound bitch, is found unmistakably upon
our earliest coinage.
[Illustration: BRITISH. FIG. 4.--From Evans. FIG. 5.--From
Akerman.]
All place-names of any real antiquity are generally composed of various
languages, and like compound rocks contain fragments in juxtaposition
which belong properly to different ages. The analysis of these is not
difficult, as the final -_hill_, -_ton_, -_ville_, -_ham_, and so forth
is usually the comparatively modern work of newcomers. Frequently the
later generations forgot the original meanings of the ancient terms; and
thus, for instance, at Brandon Hill in Suffolk there is the curious
phenomenon of _Hill Hill Hill_--in three languages, _i.e._, _bran_,
_don_, and _hill_. On this site the flint knappers are still at work,
using practically the same rude tool as their primitive woad-painted
ancestors. At Brandon not only has the art of flint-making survived,
but anthropologists have noted the persistence of a swarthy and most
ancient type--a persistence the more remarkable as Suffolk was supposed
to be a district out of which the Britons had been wholly and
irretrievably eradicated. Whether there is anything in the world to
parallel the phenomenon of the Brandon flint knappers I do not know, and
it may well be questioned. In the words of Dr. Rice Holmes:--The
industry has been carried on since neolithic times, and even then it was
ancient: for Brandon was an abode of flint makers in the Old Stone Age.
Not only the pits but even the tools show little change: the picks which
the modern workers use are made of iron, but here alone in Britain the
old one-sided form is still retained, only the skill of the workers has
degenerated: the exquisite evenness of chipping which distinguished the
neolithic arrow heads is beyond the power of the most experienced
knapper to reproduce.[43]
At Brandon is Broomhill; the words _bran_ and _broom_ will be
subsequently shown to be radically the same, and I shall suggest reasons
why this term, even possibly in Old Stone times, meant _hill_.
During recent years the study of place-names has been passing through a
period of spade-work, and every available document from Doomsday Book to
a Rent Roll has been scrupulously raked. The inquirer now therefore has
available a remarkably interesting record of the various forms which our
place-names have passed through, and he can eliminate the essential
features from the non-essential. Although the subject has thus
considerably been elucidated, the additional information obtained has,
however, done nothing to solve the original riddle and in some cases
has rendered it more complex.
The new system which is popularly supposed to have eliminated all
guesswork has in reality done nothing of the kind. In place of the older
method, which, in the words of Prof. Skeat, "exalted impudent assertions
far above positive evidence," it has boldly substituted a new form of
guesswork which is just as reckless and in many respects is no less
impudent than the old. The present fashion is to suppose that the river
_x_ or the town of _y_ _may_ have been the property of, or founded by,
some purely hypothetical Anglo-Saxon. For example: the river Hagbourne
of Berkshire is guessed to have been _Hacca's burn or brook_, which
possibly it was, but there is not a scintilla of real evidence one way
or the other.
If one is going to postulate "Hacca's" here and there, there is
obviously a space waiting for a member of the family on the great main
road entitled Akeman Street. As this ancient thoroughfare traverses Bath
we are, however, told that it "received in Saxon times the significant
name of Akeman Street from the condition of the gouty sufferers who
travelled along it".[44] One would prefer even a phantom Hacca to this
_aching man_, nor does the alternatively suggested _aqua_, water, bring
us any nearer a solution.
There sometimes appears to be no bottom to the vacuity of modern
guesswork. It is seriously and not _pour rire_ suggested that
Horselydown was where horses could lie down; that Honeybrook was so
designated because of its honey-sweet water, and that the name Isle of
Dogs was "possibly because so many dogs were drowned in the Thames
here".[45] In what respect do these and kindred definitions, which I
shall cite from standard authors of to-day, differ from the "egregious"
speculations, the "wild guesses," and the "impudent assertions" of
earlier scholars?
There is in Bucks a small town now known as Kimball, anciently as
Cunebal. Tradition associates this site with the British King Cymbeline
or Cunobelin, and as the place further contains an eminence known as
Belinsbury or Belinus Castle, the authorities can hardly avoid accepting
the connection and the etymology. But for Kimbolton, which stands on a
river named the Kym, the authorities--notwithstanding the river
Kym--provide the purely supposititious etymology "Town of Cynebald".
There were, doubtless, thousands of Saxons whose name was Cynebald, but
why Kimbolton should be assigned to any one of these hypothetical
persons instead of to Cymbeline is not in any way apparent. The river
name Kym is sufficient to discredit Cynebald, and the greater
probability is that not only the Kym but also all our river and mountain
names are pre-Saxon.
It will be seen hereafter that the name Cunobelin or Cymbeline, which
the dictionaries define as meaning _splendid sun_, was probably adopted
as a dynastic title of British chiefs, and that the effigies of
Cymbeline on British coins have no more relation to any particular king
than the mounted figure on our modern sovereign has to his Majesty King
George V. The prefix _Cym_ or _Cuno_ will subsequently be seen to be the
forerunner of the modern _Konig_ or _King_. Hence like Kimball or
Cunebal, Kimbolton on the Kym was probably a seat of a Cymbeline, and
the imaginary Saxon Cynebald may be dismissed as a usurper.
Kim_bolton_ used at one time to be known as Kinne_bantum_, whence it is
evident that the essential part of the word is Kinne or Kim, and as
another instance of the perplexing variations which are sometimes found
in place-names the spot now known as Iffley may be cited. This name
occurs at various periods as follows: Gifetelea, Sifetelea, Zyfteleye,
Yestley, Iveclay and Iftel. This is a typical instance of the
extraordinary variations which have perplexed the authorities, and is
still causing them to cast vainly around for some formula or law of
sound-change, which shall account satisfactorily for the problem. "We
are at present," says Prof. Wyld, "quite unable to formulate the laws of
the interchange of stress in place-names, or of the effects of these in
retaining, modifying, or eliminating syllables.... Until these laws are
properly formulated, it cannot be said that we have a scientific account
of the development of place-names. The whole thing is often little
better than a conjuring trick."[46]
No amount of brainwork has conjured any sense from Iffley, and the
etymology has been placed on the shelf as "unknown". I shall venture to
suggest that the initial G, S, Z, or Y, of this name, and of many others
being adjectival, the radical Ive or Iff, as being the essential, has
alone survived. It will be seen that Iffley was in all probability a lea
or meadow dedicated to "The Ivy Girl" or May Queen, and that quite
likely it was one of the many sites where, in the language of an old
poet--
Holly and his Merry men they dawnsin and they sing,
_Ivy and her maydons_ they wepen and they wryng.
I shall connote with Ivy and her maidens, not only Mother
Eve, but also the clearly fabulous St. Ive. We shall see that the Lady
Godiva of Coventry fame was known as God_gifu_, just as Iffley was once
_Gife_telea, and we shall see that St. Ives in Cornwall appears in the
registers alternatively as St. Yesses, just as Iffley was alternatively
Yestley. Finally we shall trace the connection between Eve, the Mother
of all living, and _Ave_bury, the greatest of all megalithic monuments.
If it be objected that my method is too meticulous, and that it is
impossible for mere farm- and field-names to possess any prehistoric
significance, I may refer for support to the Sixth Report of the Royal
Commission appointed to inventory the ancient monuments of Wales and
Monmouthshire.[47] In the course of this document the Commissioners
write as follows:--
"The Tithe Schedules, unsatisfactory and disappointing though many of
them are, contain such a collection of place-names, principally those of
fields, that the Commissioners at the outset of their inquiry determined
upon a careful investigation of them. The undertaking involved in the
first place the examination of hundreds of documents, many of them
containing several thousands of place-names; secondly, in the case of
those names which were noted for further inquiry, the necessity of
discovering the position of the field or site upon the tithe map; and,
thirdly, the location of the field or site on the modern six-inch
ordnance sheet. This prolonged task called for much patience and care,
as well as ingenuity in comparing the boundaries of eighty years ago
with those of the present time.
"Of the value of this work there can be no doubt. We do not venture to
express any opinion on the question whether, or to what extent, farm and
field names are of service to the English archæologist; but with regard
to their importance to the Welsh archæologist there can be no two
opinions. The fact that the Welsh place-names are being rapidly replaced
by English names, so that the local lore which is often enshrined in the
former is in danger of being lost, was in itself a sufficient reason for
the undertaking. The results have more than justified our decision.
There is hardly a parish, certainly not one of the ancient parishes, of
the principality, where the schedule of field names has not yielded some
valuable results. Scores of small but in some cases important
antiquities would have passed unrecorded, had it not been for the clue
to their presence given by the place-name which was to be found only in
the schedule to the Tithe Survey."
In Cornwall almost every parish is named after some saintly apostle, and
many of these saints are alleged to have travelled far and wide in the
world founding towns and villages. It is almost a physical impossibility
that this was literally true, and it becomes manifestly incredible on
consideration of the miracles recorded in the lives of the travellers.
As already suggested the greater probability is that the lives of the
saints enshrine almost intact the traditions of pre-Christian
divinities. Of the popular and most familiar St. Patrick, Borlase (W.
C.), writes: "Of the reality of the existence of this Patrick, son of
Calporn, we feel not the shadow of a doubt. But he was not _the only_
Patrick, and as time went on traditions of one other Patrick at least
came to be commingled with his own. We have before us the names of ten
other contemporary Patricks, all ecclesiastics, and spread over Wales,
Ireland, France, Spain, and Italy. The name appears to be that of a
grade or order in the Church rather than a proper name in the usual
sense. Thus Palladius is called also Patrick in the 'Book of Armagh' and
_the_ Patrick (whichever he may have been) is represented as styling
Declan 'the Patrick of the Desii,' and Ailbhe 'the Patrick of Munster'.
When Patrick sojourned in a cave in an island in the Tyrrhene Sea he
found three other Patricks there." Precisely: and there is little doubt
that our London Battersea or Patrixeye was originally an _ea_ or island
where the patricks or padres of St. Peter's at Westminster once
congregated.
The arguments applied to St. Patrick apply equally to, say, St. Columba,
or the Holy Dove, and similarly to St. Colman, a name also meaning
_Dove_. In Ireland alone there are 200 dedications to St. Colman, and
evidence will be brought forward that the archetype of all the St.
Colmans and all the St. Columbas and all the Patricks was Peter the
_Pater_, who was symbolised by _petra_, the stone or rock.
The so-called Ossianic poems of Gaeldom, although of "a remarkably
heathenish character," preserve the manners of and opinions of what the
authorities describe as "a semi-barbarous people who were endowed with
strong imagination, high courage, childlike tenderness, and gentle
chivalry for women,"[48] and that the ancients were tinctured through
and through with mysticism and imagination, finding tongues in trees,
books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything,
is a fact which can be denied. When our words were framed and our
ancient places, hills, and rivers named, I am persuaded that the world
was in its imaginative childhood, and hence that traces of that state of
mind may reasonably be anticipated. It is remarkable that the skulls
found in the first or oldest Troy exhibit the most intellectual
characteristics,[49] and in many quarters seemingly the remoter the
times the purer was the theology whether in Phrygia, Egypt, India,
Persia, or Great Britain. Among the Cretans "religion entered at every
turn" of their social system; in Egypt even the very games and dances
had a religious significance, and the evidence of folklore testifies to
the same effect in Britain. It was one among the many grievances of the
pessimistic Gildas that the British were "slaves to the shadows of
things to come," and this usually overlooked aspect of their character
must, I think, be recognised in relation to their place-names. To a
large degree the mystical element still persists in Brittany, where even
to-day, in the words of Baring-Gould:--At a Pardon one sees and marvels
at the wondrous faces of this remarkable people: the pure, sweet, and
modest countenances of the girls, and those not less striking of the old
folk. "It is," says Durtal, "the soul which is everything in these
people, and their physiognomy is modelled by it. There are holy
brightnesses in their eyes, on their lips, those doors to the borders of
which the soul alone can come, from which it looks forth and all but
shows itself. Goodness, kindness, as well as a cloistral spirituality,
stream from their faces."[50]
What is still true of Brittany was once equally true of Britain, and
although the individuality of the Gael has now largely been submerged by
prosaic Anglo-Saxondom, the poetic temperament of the chivalrous and
dreamy Celt was essentially a frame of mind that cared only for the
heroic, the romantic, and the beautiful.
The science of etymology as practised to-day is unfortunately blind to
this poetic element which was, and to some extent still is, an innate
characteristic of "uncivilised" and unsophisticated peoples. Archbishop
Trench, one of the original planners and promoters of _The New English
Dictionary_, was not overstating when he wrote: "Let us then acknowledge
man a born poet.... Despite his utmost efforts, were he mad enough to
employ them, he could not succeed in exhausting his language of the
poetical element which is inherent in it, in stripping it of blossom,
flower, and fruit, and leaving it nothing but a bare and naked stem. He
may fancy for a moment that he has succeeded in doing this, but it will
only need for him to become a little better philologer to go a little
deeper into the study of the words which he is using, and he will
discover that he is as remote from this consummation as ever."
Nevertheless, current etymology _has_ achieved this inanity, and has so
completely dismissed the animate or poetic element from its
considerations that one may seek vainly the columns of Skeat and Murray
for any hint or suggestion that language and imagination ever had
anything in common. According to modern teaching language is a mere
cluster of barbaric yawps: "No mystic bond linked word and thought
together; utility and convenience alone joined them".[51]
Words, nevertheless, were originally born not from grammarians but amid
the common people, and _pace_ Mr. Clodd they enshrine in many instances
the mysticism and the superstitions of the peasantry. How can one
account, for instance, for the Greek word _psyche_, meaning _butterfly_,
and also _soul_, except by the knowledge that butterflies were regarded
by the ancients as creatures into which the soul was metamorphosised?
According to Grimm, the German name for stork means literally _child-_,
or _soul-bringer_; hence the belief that the advent of infants was
presided over by this bird. But why "_hence_"? and why put the cart
before the horse? If one may judge from innumerable parallels of
word-equivocation the legends arose not from the accident of similar
words, nor from "misprision of terms," or from any other "disease of
language," but the creatures were named _because of_ the attendant
legend. It is common knowledge that in Egypt the animal sacred to a
divinity was often designated by the name of that deity; similarly in
Europe the bee, a symbol of the goddess _Mylitta_, was called a
_mylitta_, and a bull, the symbol of the god _Thor_, was named a _thor_.
We speak to-day of an _Adonis_, because Adonis was a fabulously lovely
youth, and parallel examples may be found on almost every hand. Irish
mythology tells of a certain golden-haired hero named Bress, which means
_beautiful_, whence we are further told that every beautiful thing in
Ireland whether plain, fortress, or ale, or torch, or woman, or man, was
compared with him, so that men said of them "That is a Bress". Elsewhere
and herein I have endeavoured to prove that this principle was of
worldwide application, and that it is an etymological key which will
open the meaning of many words still in common use. It is a correlative
fact that the names of specific deities such as Horus, Hathor, Nina,
Bel, etc., developed in course of time into generic terms for any _Lord_
or _God_.
Very much the same principles are at work with us to-day, whence _a_
dreadnought from the prime "Dreadnought," and the etymologer of the
future, who tries by strictly scientific methods to unravel the meaning
of such words as _mackintosh_, _brougham_, _Sam Browne_, _gladstone_,
_boycott_, etc., will find it necessary to investigate the legends
attendant on those names rather than practice a formal permutation of
vowels and consonants.
By common consent the quintessence of the last fifty years' philological
progress is being distilled into Sir James Murray's _New English
Dictionary_, and in a conciser form the same data may be found in Prof.
Skeat's _Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language_. Both
these indispensable works are high watermarks of English scholarship,
and whatever absurdities they contain are shortcomings not of their
compilers but of the Teutonic school of philology which they exemplify.
If these two standard dictionaries were able to answer even the
elementary questions that are put to them it would be both idle and
presumptuous to cavil, but one has only to refer to their pages to
realise the ignorance which prevails as to the origin and the meaning of
the most simple and everyday words.
It is unfortunately true that "in philology as in all branches of
knowledge it is the specialist who most strongly opposes any attempt to
widen the field of his knowledge".[52] Hence, as was only to be
expected, one of the reviewers of my _Lost Language of Symbolism_ deemed
it quite insufferable that I should throw to the winds the laborious
work on the science of phonetics built up by generations of careful
research.
But in point of fact I discarded none of the sound work of my
predecessors; I only tried to supplement it and fished deeper. My
soundings do not begin until I am well beyond the limits of modern
etymology, and they are no more affected by the cross-currents of
historic languages than the activities of a deep-water fisherman are
interrupted or affected by the tide eddies on the shore. The defect of
official philology is that it offers no explanation for radicals. It
does not, for example, attempt to explain why the word _ap_ was the
Sanscrit for water, why _pri_ was the Sanscrit for love, or why _pat_
was the Sanscrit for fly. It refers the word oak to the Anglo-Saxon
_ac_, Dr. Murray merely describing it as "a consonantal stem, ulterior
meaning obscure". Etymology to-day is in fact very much in the situation
of an insolvent bank which, unable to satisfy its creditors with cash on
demand, blandly endeavours to satisfy them with corresponding cheques of
equally uncashable face value. Words can never properly be interpreted
merely by parallel words: originally they must have expressed ideas, and
it is these underlying ideas that I am in search of. My previous work
was a pioneer, and in many respects bungling attempt to pick up the
threads where at present philology is content to lose them. Using the
same keys as hitherto, I shall attempt to explore further the darkness
which is at present the only achieved goal of the much trumpeted Science
of Language.
In a moment of noteworthy frankness Prof. Skeat has admitted that
"Scientific etymology is usually clumsy and frequently wrong".
Similarly, Prof. Sayce issues the warning: "Comparative philology has
suffered as much from its friends as from its opponents; and now that it
has at last won its way to general recognition and respect, there is a
danger that its popularity may lead to the cessation of sound and honest
work, and to an acquiescence in theories which, however plausible, are
not yet placed upon a footing of scientific certainty. It is much easier
for the ordinary man to fill in by patient elaboration what has already
been sketched for him in outline, than to venture upon a new line of
discovery, in which the sole clue must be the combinative powers of his
own imagination and comprehensive learning. And yet, now as much as
ever, comparative philology has need at once of bold and wide-reaching
conceptions, of cautious verification, and of a mastery of facts. It is
true the science is no longer struggling for mere life, and the time is
gone by for proving the possibility of its existence. But it is still
young, scarcely, indeed, out of its nursery; a small portion only of its
province has hitherto been investigated, and much that is at present
accepted without hesitation will have to be subjected to a searching
inquiry, and possibly be found baseless after all."[53]
The value of any system must be measured by its results, and the fruits
of philology as formulated only a year or so ago were unquestionably
false. Where now are the "successes" of the Max Müller school which were
advertised in such shrill and penetrating tones? Sanscrit is deposed
from its pride of place, it being now recognised that primitive sounds
are preserved more faithfully in Europe than elsewhere. Who to-day
admits there is any basis for the Disease of Language theory, or that
all fairy-tales and myths are resolvable into the Sun chasing the
Dawn?[54] What anthropologist accepts the theory of Aryan overland
immigration from somewhere in Asia? The archæologists of the last
generation were, in the light of modern findings, quite justified when,
contrary to the then stereotyped idea, they maintained that skulls were
harder things than consonants. In short, large sections of the
card-castle of German philology have more or less crumbled, and in the
cruel words of a modern authority on Crete: "Happily, archæology has
emerged from the slough into which the philologists had led her".
For the causes of this fiasco it is unnecessary to seek further than the
fundamental fallacy upon which the "Science of Language" has been
erected. According to Max Müller, "etymology is indeed a science in
which identity, or even similarity, whether of sound or meaning, is of
no importance whatever. Sound etymology has nothing to do with sound. We
know words to be of the same origin which have not a single letter in
common, and which differ in meaning as much as black and white."
To maintain that "_sound etymology has nothing to do with sound_," is
tantamount to the contention that language is not sound, which is
obviously absurd. In the saner view of Dr. Latham: "language begins with
voice, language ends with voice". The Germans, Poles, and Russians had
no acquaintance with letters until the ninth century, and speech, which
certainly existed for unnumbered centuries before either writing or
spelling was evolved, must, primarily and essentially, have been a
system of pure and simple phonetics, spreading, as a mother teaches her
child, syllable by syllable, word upon word, and line upon line. To rule
sound out of language, is, indeed, far more fatal than to purge Hamlet
out of _Hamlet_. One may prove by super-ingenious logic and an
elaborate code of cross references that black is white and white black,
yet common sense knows all the time that it is not so. There are, I am
aware, certain races who are unable to vocalise certain sounds and
accordingly modify them. The obscure causes governing these phonetic
changes must be taken into account, and as far as possible formulated
into "laws," but the pages of Skeat and Murray demonstrate beyond
refutation two very simple but very certain fundamental, universal
facts, to which hitherto wholly insufficient attention has been given.
These elementary and seemingly never-varying facts are: (1) That
originally vowel sounds were of no importance whatever, for in the same
word they vary to the utmost limits, not only in different areas and in
different eras, but contemporaneously in different grades of society;
(2) that heavy and light consonants such as _b_ and _p_, _d_ and _t_,
_f_ and _v_, _g_ and _k_, etc., are always interchangeable. Whether in
place-names, words, or proper names, the changes are found _always_ to
occur, and they are precisely those variations which common sense would
suggest must occur in every case where words travel _viva voce_ and not
via script or print. A man suffering from what Shakespeare would term "a
whoreson rheum," says, for instance, _did vor dad_ instead of _tit for
tat_, and there is, so far as I can discover, not a single word or a
solitary place-name in which a similar variation of thin and thick
consonants is not traceable.
The formidable Grimm's Law, any violation of which involves summary and
immediate condemnation, is merely a statement of certain phonetic facts
which happen invariably--unless they are interfered with by other facts.
The permutations of sound codified by Grimm are as follows:--
Greek _p_ Gothic _f_ Old High German _b_(_v_)
" _b_ " _p_ " _f_
" _ph_ " _b_ " _p_
" _t_ " _th_ " _d_
" _d_ " _t_ " _z_
" _th_ " _d_ " _t_
" _k_ " (_h_) " _g_(_h_)
" _g_ " _k_ " _ch_
" _kh_ " _g_ " _k_
It is said that the causes which brought about the changes formulated in
Grimm's Law are "obscure" (they may have been due to nothing more
obscure than a prevalence to colds in the head), and that they were
probably due to the settlement of Low German conquerors in Central and
Southern Germany. The changes above formulated all fall, however, within
the wider theory I am now suggesting, with the exception of _d_ and _t_
becoming in High German _z_. This particular syllabic change was, I
suggest, due to _z_ at one time being synonymous with _d_ or _t_, and
not to any inability of certain tribes to vocalise the sound _t_.
Max Müller observes that "at first sight the English word _fir_ does not
look very like the Latin word _quercus_, yet it is the same word". _Fir_
certainly does not look like _quercus_, nor, of course, is it any more
the "same word" than _six_ is the same word as _half a dozen_. There are
a thousand ways of proving _six_ to be radically and identically the
same as _half a dozen_, and the ingenious system of permutations by
which philologists identify _fir_ with _quercus_, and _alphana_ with
_equus_,[55] are parallel to some of the methods by which common sense,
by cold gradation and well-balanced form, would quite correctly equate
_six_ with _half a dozen_.
The term "_word_" I understand not in the loose sense used by Max
Müller, but as the dictionary defines it--"an oral or written sign
expressing an idea or notion". Thus I treat John as the same word as
_Jane_ or _Jean_, and it is radically the same word as _giant_, old
English _jeyantt_, French _geante_, Cornish _geon_. Jean is also the
same word as _chien_, a dog, Irish _choin_; Welsh _chin_ or _cyn_, and
all these terms by reason of their radical _an_ are cognate with the
Greek _kuon_, a dog, whence _cyn_ical. The Gaelic for _John_ is _Jain_,
the Gaelic for _Jean_ or _Jane_ is _Sine_, with which I equate _shine_,
_shone_, and _sheen_, all of which have respect to the _sun_, as also
had the Arabic _jinn_, _genii_, and "_Gian Ben Gian_," a title of the
fabulous world-ruler of the Golden Age. Among the Basques _Jaun_ means
Lord or Master, and the Basque term for God, _Jainko_, _Jeinko_, or
_Jinko_, is believed to have meant "Lord or Master on High". The Irish
Church attributes its origin to disciples of St. _John_--Irish _Shaun_,
and one may detect the pre-Christian _Sinjohn_ in the British divinity
Shony, and evolving from the primeval _Shen_ at Shenstone near
Litchfield. Here, a little distance from the church, was a well, now
called _St. John's_ Well, after the saint in whose honour the parish
church is dedicated. In all probability the present-day church of St.
John was built on the actual site of the original _Shen stone_ or rock;
and that John stones were once plentiful in Scotland is probably implied
by the common surname Johnstone. Near the Shannon in Ireland, and in
close proximity to the church and village of Shanagolden, is "castle"
_Shenet_ or Shanid, attached to which is a rath or earthwork of which
the ground-plan, from Mr. Westropp's survey, is here reproduced. As it
is a matter of common knowledge that the worldwide wheel cross was an
emblem of the sun, I should therefore have no scruples in connoting
Castle Shenet with the primeval _jeyantt_ or the Golden _Shine_; and
suggesting that it was a sanctuary originally constructed by the
Ganganoi, a people mentioned by Ptolemy as dwelling in the neighbourhood
of the Shannon. The eponymous hero of the Ganganoi was a certain
Sengann,[56] who is probably the original St. Jean or Sinjohn to whom
the fires of St. Jean and St. John have been diverted.
We shall see that _Giant_ Christopher was symbolically represented as
_chien_ headed, that he was a personification of the _Shine_ or _Sheen_
of the _Sun_, and that he was worshipped as the solar dog at the holy
city of Cynopolis or _dog-town_. We have already noted English "_chien_"
or _cyn_ coins inscribed _cun_, which is seemingly one of the
innumerable puns which confront philology.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--From _Proc. of the Royal Irish Acad._,
xxxiii., C., No. 2.]
Years ago Bryant maintained that "the fable of the horse certainly arose
from a misprision of terms, though the mistake be as old as Homer".
There was nothing therefore new in the theories of the Max Müller school
that all mythologies originated from a "disease of language". Dr.
Wilder, alluding to symbolism, speaks of the punning so common in those
days, often making us uncertain whether the accident of similar name or
sound led to adoption as a symbol or was merely a blunder. It was, I
think, neither, and many instances will be adduced in favour of the
supposition, that words originated from symbolic ideas, and not _vice
versa_. That symbolism existed before writing is evident from the
innumerable symbols unearthed at Mykenæ, Troy, and elsewhere, where few
traces of script or inscriptions have been found. By symbolism,
primitive man unquestionably communicated ideas, and, as has already
been pointed out, the roots of language bear traces of the rudimentary
symbolism by which our savage forefathers named the objects around them
as well as the conceptions of their primitive religion.[57] Faced by the
"curiosity" that the Greek and Latin words for _archaic_, _arch_, _ark_,
_arc_, are all apparently connected in an intricate symbolism in which
there is more than a suspicion that there is an etymological as well as
a mystical interconnection, a writer in _The Open Court_ concludes: "it
would seem as though the roots of such words derived their meaning from
the Mysteries rather than that their mystical meaning was the result of
coincidence".[58]
That the Mysteries--or in other words dramatised mythology--Symbolism,
and Etymology, are all closely connected with each other is a certitude
beyond question. The theory, so pertinaciously put forward by Max
Müller, was that myths originated from a subsequent misunderstanding of
words. Using the same data as Max Müller, I suggest that words
originated from the mysteries and not myths from the words.
In _The Holy Wells of Cornwall_, Mr. T. Quiller Couch observes that Dr.
Borlase, learned, diligent, and excellent antiquary as he was, to whom
we are all indebted in an iconoclastic age for having copied for us fair
things which time had blurred, seems to have had little sympathy with
the faiths of the simple, silly, country folk (I use these adjectives in
their older meaning), and to have passed them with something like
contempt. At present the oral traditions of a people, their seeming
follies even, have become of value as indicating kinship between nations
shunted off by circumstances, to use the most modern term, in divergent
ways.
Dr. Johnson would not admit _fun_ into his Dictionary as he deemed it a
"low word": I turn up my nose at nothing, being convinced that it is to
low origins that the great lexicographers will eventually have to stoop.
In truth, the innate strength of the English language, which is becoming
more and more the Master Tongue of the world, lies in its homely,
trivial, and democratic origin.[59] This origin, as I have elsewhere
endeavoured to show, is due largely to symbolism, which is merely
another term for metaphor. We used to be taught that every language was
a dictionary of faded metaphor, and such an origin is undoubtedly more
true than the current theory of barbaric yawps. The essence of symbolism
is its simplicity. Who, for instance, does not understand that the Lion
is the symbol of High Courage, and the Bull-dog of Tenacity, or holding
on? At the present day the badge of one of His Majesty's warships is the
picture of a butting goat, accompanied by the words "Butt in". This, as
the authorities rightly describe it, is "pure symbolism," but to a
symbolist the legend "Butt in" is superfluous, as the mere butting goat
adequately carries the idea. As Prof. Petrie has well said: "To
understand the position and movement of thought in a primitive age, it
must be approached on a far simpler plane than that of our present
familiarity with writing. To reach the working of the childhood of our
races we should look to the minds of children. If the child passes
through ancestral changes in its bodily formation, so certainly it
passes through such stages in the growth and capacity of its
brain."[60] I shall push the childish and extremely simple theory of
symbolism to its logical conclusions, and shall show, for instance, that
the Boar, because it burrowed with its plough-like snout, was the emblem
of the ploughman, and that thus, _boar_ and _boer_ are the same word.
Or, to take another instance, I shall show that probably because the cat
sits washing herself, and is a model of cleanliness in sanitary
respects, the cat who figures on the head of the Magna Mater of Crete
was elevated into a symbol of the Immaculate or Pure One, and that the
word _cat_, German _kater_, is identical with the name Kate or Caterina
which means _purity_. The Sanscrit word for _cat_ means literally _the
cleanser_, whence it is obvious that the cleanly habits of the cat
strongly impressed the Aryan imagination.
Whether or not my theories are right, it is undeniable that the
etymologies of Skeat and Murray are very often painfully wrong. The
standard explanation, for instance, of the word _haha_, meaning a sunk
fence, is that it is from the French ha-ha, "an interjection of
laughter, hence a surprise in the form of an unexpected obstacle that
laughs at one". This may be so, but it is a far wilder guess than
anything to be found in my pages, or that I should ever dare to venture.
In 1913 I suggested in _Notes and Queries_ that the word ha-ha or
haw-haw was simply a re-duplication or superlative of the French _haie_,
a fence or hedge, old English _haw_. In the new edition of Skeat I am
glad to find this suggestion accepted, and that _ha-ha!_ has been
expunged. It still figures in Dr. Murray.
In his Canons of Etymology, Prof. Skeat observes:--"The history of a
nation accounts for the constituent parts of its language. When an
early English word is compared with Hebrew or Coptic, as used to be done
in the _old_ editions of Webster's Dictionary, history is set at
defiance; and it was a good deed to clear the later editions of all such
rubbish".
This is curiously parochial, yet it seems to have been seriously
accepted by etymologers. But what would Science say nowadays to that
geologist or anthropologist who committed the foul deed of discarding or
suppressing a vast body of facts simply because they clashed with, or
"set at defiance," the "historic" assertions of the Pentateuch? It is
true that the history of a nation, _if it were fully known_, must
account for the constituent parts of its language, but how much British
history do we pretend to know? To suggest that philology must limit its
conclusions by the Roman invasion, or bound its findings by the pages of
Mrs. Markham, is ludicrous, yet, nevertheless, these fictitious
boundaries are the mediæval and pre-Darwinian limits within which the
Science of Language is now coffined. Prof. Skeat was reluctantly
compelled to recognise a Semitic trace in words such as _bad_ and
_target_, but was unable to accept the connection owing to the absence
of any historic point of contact between Syria and this country prior to
the Crusades! So, too, M. Sebhlani observed numerous close similarities
between Arabic and English, but was "unable to press them for lack of a
theory as to how they got into English!"
As history must be constructed from facts, and facts must not be
peremptorily suppressed simply because at present they clash with the
meagre record of historians, I shall have no scruples in noting a word
from Timbuctoo if it means precisely what it does in English, and
proves reasonably to be a missing piece. As Gerald Massey thirty or
forty years ago very properly observed: "We have to dig and descend mine
under mine beneath the surface scratched with such complacent
twitterings over their findings by those who have taken absolute
possession of this field, and proceeded to fence it in for themselves,
and put up a warning against everybody else as trespassers. We get
volume after volume on the 'science of language' which only make us
wonder when the 'science' is going to begin. At present it is an opera
that is all overture. The comparative philologists have not gone deep
enough, as yet, to see that there is a stage where likeness may afford
guidance, because there was a common origin for the primordial stock of
words. They assume that Grimm's Law goes all the way back. They cling to
their limits, as the old Greek sailors hugged the shore, and continually
insist upon imposing these on all other voyagers, by telling terrible
tales of the unknown dangers beyond."[61]
As soon as etymologists appreciate the value of the comparative method
it is undeniable that a marked advance will be made in the "Science of
Language," but during the last few decades it must be confessed that
that science--_pace_ the bombastic language of some of its
adherents--has retrogressed rather than moved forward.
Prof. Skeat was admittedly a high authority on early English, and his
Dictionary of the English Language is thus almost inevitably conspicuous
for its Anglo-Saxon colouring. Had, however, the influence of the Saxons
been as marked and immediate as he assumes, the language of
Anglo-Saxondom would have coincided exactly or very closely with the
contemporary German. But, according to Dr. Wm. Smith, "There is no
proof that Anglo-Saxon was ever spoken anywhere but on the soil of Great
Britain; for the 'Heliend,' and other remains of old Saxon, are not
Anglo-Saxon, and I think it must be regarded, not as a language which
the colonists, or any of them, brought with them from the Continent, but
as a new speech resulting from the fusion of many separate elements. It
is, therefore indigenous, if not aboriginal, and as exclusively local
and national in its character as English itself."[62]
That modern English contains innumerable traces of pure Celtic words
used to be a matter of common acceptance, and in the words of Davies,
the stoutest assertor of a pure Anglo-Saxon or Norman descent is
convicted by the language of his daily life, of belonging to a race that
partakes largely of Celtic blood. If he calls for his _coat_ (W. _cota_,
Germ. _rock_), or tells of the _basket_ of fish he has caught (W.
_basged_, Germ. _korb_), or the _cart_ he employs on his land (W.
_cart_, from _càr_, a dray, or sledge, Germ. _wagen_), or of the
_pranks_ of his youth, or the _prancing_ of his horse (W. _prank_, a
trick, _prancio_, to frolic), or declares that he was _happy_ when a
_gownsman_ at Oxford (W. _hap_, fortune, chance, Germ. _glück_, W.
_gwn_), or that his servant is _pert_ (W. _pert_, spruce, dapper,
insolent); or if, descending to the language of the vulgar, he affirms
that such assertions are _balderdash_, and the claim a _sham_ (W.
_baldorddus_, idle prating; _siom_, _shom_, a deceit, a sham), he is
unconsciously maintaining the truth he would deny. Like the M. Jourdain
of Molière, who had been talking prose all his life without knowing it,
he has been speaking very good Celtic without any suspicion of the
fact.[63]
It is noteworthy that in his determination to ignore the Celtic
influence, Prof. Skeat concedes only one among the above-mentioned words
to the British--(_gwn_). The Welsh _hap_ "_must_," he says, be borrowed
from the Anglo-Saxon _gehoep_, and the remainder he ascribes to Middle
English or to an "origin unknown".
Tyndall has observed that imagination, bounded and conditioned by
co-operant reason, is the mightiest instrument of the physical
discoverer. It is to imagination that words born in the fantastic and
romantic childhood of the world were due, and it is only by a certain
measure of imagination that philology can hope to unravel them. The
extent to which mythology has impressed place-names may be estimated
from the fact that to King Arthur alone at least 600 localities owe
their titles. That Arthur himself has not been transmogrified into a
Saxon settler[64] is due no doubt to the still existing "Bed," "Seat,"
"Stables," etc., with which popular imagination connected the mystic
king.
"Geographical names," says Rice Holmes, "testify to the cult of various
gods," and he adds: "it is probable that every British town had its
eponymous hero. The deities, however, from whom towns derived their
names, were doubtless often worshipped near the site long before the
first foundations were laid: the goddess Bibracte was originally the
spirit of a spring reverenced by the peasants of the mountain upon which
the famous Aeduan town was built".[65]
I shall not lead the reader into the intricacies of British mythology
deeper than is requisite for an understanding of the words and
place-names under consideration, nor shall I enlarge more than is
necessary upon the mystic elements in that vast and little known
mythology.
It has been said that the mediæval story-teller is not unlike a peasant
building his hut on the site of Ephesus or Halicarnassus with the stones
of an older and more majestical architecture. That Celtic mythology
exhibits all the indications of a vast ruin is the opinion not only of
Matthew Arnold, but of every competent student of the subject, and it is
a matter of discredit that educated Englishmen know so little about it.
Among the phenomena of Celtic mythology are numerous identities with
tales related by Homer. Sir Walter Scott, alluding to one of these many
instances, expresses his astonishment at a fact which, as he says, seems
to argue some connection or communication between these remote highlands
of Scotland, and the readers of Homer of former days which one cannot
account for.[66] His explanation that "After all, perhaps, some
Churchman, more learned than his brethren, may have transferred the
legend from Sicily to Duncrune, from the shores of the Mediterranean to
those of Loch Lomond," is not in accord with any of the probabilities,
and it is more likely that both Greek and Highlander drew independently
from some common source. The astonishing antiquity of these tales may be
glimpsed by the fact that the Homeric poems themselves speak of a store
of older legends from an even more brilliant past.
Somebody once defined symbolism as "silent myth". To what extent it
elucidates primeval custom has yet to be seen, but there is
unquestionably an intimate connection between symbolism and burial
customs. Among some prehistoric graves disclosed at Dunstable was one
containing the relics of a woman and of a child. The authorities
suggest that the latter _may have been buried alive with its mother_,
which is a proposition that one cannot absolutely deny. But there is
just as great a possibility that neither the mother nor the child came
to so sinister and miserable an end. Apart from the pathetic attitude of
the two bodies, the skulls are as moral and intellectual as any modern
ones, and in face of the simple facts it would be quite justifiable to
assume that the mother and the child were not buried alive, nor
committed suicide, but died in the odour of sanctity and were reverently
interred. The objects surrounding the remains are fossil echinoderms,
which are even now known popularly among the unlettered as fairy loaves,
and as there is still a current legend that whoso keeps at home a
specimen of the fairy loaf will never lack bread,[67] one is fairly
entitled to assume that these "fairy loaves" were placed in the grave in
question as symbols of the spiritual food upon which our
animistic-minded ancestors supposed the dead would feed. It is well
known that material food was frequently deposited in tombs for a similar
purpose, but in the case of this Dunstable grave there must have been a
spiritual or symbolic idea behind the offering, for not even the most
hopeless savage could have imagined that the soul or fairy body would
have relished fossils--still less so if the material bodies had been
buried alive.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.--From _Man the Primeval Savage_ (Smith, G.
Worthington).]
I venture to put forward the suggestion that primeval stone-worship,
tree-worship, and the veneration paid to innumerable birds and beasts
was largely based upon symbolism. In symbolism alone can one find any
rational explanation for the intricacies of those ancient mysteries the
debris of which has come down to us degraded into between symbolism and
burial customs. Among some prehistoric graves disclosed at Dunstable was
one containing the relics of a woman and of a child. The authorities
superstitious "custom" and it is probable that in symbolism may also be
found the origin of totemism.
Is symbol the husk, the dry bone,
Of the dead soul of ages agone?
Finger-post of a pilgrimage way
Untrodden for many a day?
A derelict shrine in the fane
Of an ancient faith, long since profane?
A gew-gaw, once amulet?
A forgotten creed's alphabet?
Or is it....[68]
Whatever symbolism may or may not be it has certainly not that close and
exclusive connection with phallicism which some writers have been
pleased to assign it. On the contrary, it more often flushes from
unlikely quarters totally unexpected coveys of blue birds. Symbolism was
undeniably a primitive mode of _thinging_ thought or expressing abstract
ideas by things. As Massey says of mythology: "There is nothing insane,
nothing irrational in it, ... the insanity lies in mistaking it for
human history or Divine Revelation. Mythology is the depository of man's
most ancient science, and what concerns us chiefly is this--when truly
interpreted once more it is destined to be the death of those false
theologies to which it has unwittingly given birth."[69] That the
ancients were adepts at constructing cunningly-devised fables is
unquestionable: to account for the identities of these pagan fables with
certain teachings of the New Testament it was the opinion of one of the
Early Fathers--Tertullian, I believe--that "God was rehearsing
Christianity".
In the opinion of those best able to judge, Druidism originated in
neolithic times. Just as the Druid sacrificed white bulls before he
ascended the sacred oak, so did the Latin priest in the grove, which was
the holy place of Jupiter. "But," says Rice Holmes, "while every ancient
people had its priests, the Druids alone were a veritable clergy".[70]
The clergy of to-day would find it profitable to study the symbolism
which flourished so luxuriously among their predecessors, but,
unfortunately, with the exception of a few time-honoured symbols such as
the Dove, the Anchor, and the Lamb, symbolism in the ecclesiastical and
philosophic world is now quite dead. It still, however, lingers to a
limited extent in Art, and it will always be the many-coloured radiancy
which colours Poetry. The ancient and the at-one-time generally accepted
idea that mythology veiled Theology, has now been discarded owing to the
disconcerting discovery that myths were seemingly not taught to the
common people by the learned, but on the contrary spread upwards from
the vulgar to the learned. This latter process has usually been the doom
of Religion, and it is quite unthinkable that fairy-tales could survive
its blighting effect. As a random instance of the modern attitude
towards Imagination, one may cite the Rev. Prof. Skeat, who, commenting
upon the Music of the Spheres, gravely informs the world that: "Modern
astronomy has exploded the singular notion of revolving hollow
concentric spheres". "These spheres," he adds, "have disappeared and
their music with them except in poetry."[71]
Whether or not our predecessors really heard the choiring of the
young-eyed cherubim, or whether the music was merely in their souls is a
point immaterial to the present inquiry, which simply concerns itself
with the physical remains of that poetic once-upon-a-time temperament
which at some period or other was prevalent,[72] and has left its
world-wide imprints on river names, such as the Irish "Morning
Star".[73] One would have supposed it quite superfluous at this time of
day to have to claim imagination for the anonymous ancients who mapped
the whole expanse of heaven into constellations, and wove fairy-tales
around the Pleiades and every other group of stars, and it is simply
astonishing to find a Doctor of Divinity writing to-day in kultured
complacency: "It is to the imagination of us moderns _alone_ that the
grandeur of the universe appeals,[74] and it was relatively late in the
history of religion--so far as can be reconstructed from the scanty data
in our possession that the higher nature cults were developed."[75]
Is it wonderful that again and again the romantic soul of the Celtic
peasantry has risen against the grey dogmas of official Theology, and
has expressed itself in terms such as those taken down from the mouth of
a Gaelic old woman in 1877: "We would dance there till we were seven
times tired. The people of those times were full of music and dancing
stories, and traditions. The clerics have extinguished these. May ill
befall them! And what have the clerics put in their place? Beliefs about
creeds and disputations about denominations and churches! May lateness
be their lot! It is they who have put the cross round the heads and the
entanglements round the feet of the people. The people of the Gaeldom of
to-day are anear perishing for lack of the famous feats of their
fathers. The black clerics have suppressed every noble custom among the
people of the Gaeldom--precious customs that will never return, no,
never again return."[76]
There are features about the wisdom of the ancients which the theologian
neither understands nor tries to understand,[77] and it is like a breath
of fresh air to find the Bishop of Oxford maintaining, "We have got to
get rid of everything that makes the sound of religion irrational, and
which associates it with bygone habits of thought in regard to science
and history". Sir Gilbert Murray has recently expressed the opinion that
"it is the scholar's special duty to trim the written signs in our old
poetry now enshrined back into living thought and feeling"; but at
present far from forwarding this desideratum scholarship not only
discountenances imagination, but even eliminates from consideration any
spiritual idea of God. To quote from a modern authority: "Track any God
right home and you will find him lurking in a ritual sheath from which
he slowly emerges, first as a _dæmon_ or spirit of the year, then as a
full-blown divinity.... The May King, the leader of the choral dance,
gave birth not only to the first actor of the drama, but also, as we
have just seen, to the God, be he Dionysus or be he Apollo."[78]
The theory here assumed grossly defies the elementary laws of logic, for
every act of ritual must essentially have been preceded by a thought:
Act is the outcome and offspring of Thought: Idea was never the
idiot-child of Act. The assumption that the first idea of God evolved
from the personation of the Sun God in a mystery play or harvest dance
is not really or fundamentally a mental tracking of that God right home,
but rather an inane confession that the idea of God cannot be traced
further backward than the ritual of ancient festivals.
Speaking of that extremely remote epoch when the twilight and mists of
morning shed dim-looming shapes and flickering half lights about the
path of our scarcely awakened race, _The Athenæum_ a year or two ago
remarked: "No wonder that to such purblind eyes men appear as trees, and
trees as men--Balder the Beautiful as the mystic oak, and the oak as
Balder". This passage forms part of a congratulation that the work of
Sir James Frazer is now complete, and that _The Golden Bough_ "has at
length carried us forward into broad daylight".
I have studied the works of Sir James Frazer in the hope of finding
therein some insight as to the origin and why of custom, but I have
failed to perceive the broad daylight of _The Athenæum's_ satisfaction.
One might lay down _The Golden Bough_ without a suspicion that our
purblind ancestors ever had a poetic thought or a high and beautiful
ideal, and it is probable that scholarship will eventually arraign Sir
James Frazer for this _suggestio falsi_. In the meanwhile it should
hardly be necessary to enter a _caveat_ against the popular idea that we
are now "in broad daylight". The value of _The Golden Bough_ lies
largely in the evidence therein adduced of what may be termed universal
ritual. But all ritual must have originated from ideas, and these
original ideas do not seem to have entered the horizon of Sir James
Frazer's speculations. What reason does he suppose lurked necessarily
behind, say, the sacred fire being kindled from _three_ nests in _three_
trees, or by _nine_ men from _nine_ different kinds of wood? And why do
the unpleasant Ainos scrupulously kill their sacred bear by _nine_ men
pressing its head against a pole?
It is now the vogue to resolve every ancient ceremony into a magic charm
for producing fire, or food, or rain, or what not, and there is very
little doubt that magic, or sacred ceremonies, verily sank, in many
instances, to this melancholy level. But, knowing what history has to
tell us of priestcraft, and judging the past from the present, is it not
highly likely that the primitive divine who found his tithes and
emoluments diminishing from a laxity of faith would spur the public
conscience by the threat that _unless_ sacred ceremonies were faithfully
and punctually performed the corn would not flourish and the rain would
either overflow or would not fall?[79]
It is now the mode to trace all ceremonial to self-interest, principally
to the self-interest of fear or food. But on this arbitrary, stale, and
ancient theory[80] how is it possible to account for the almost
universal reverence for stone or rock? Rocks yield neither food, nor
firing, nor clothing, nor do they ever inflict injuries: why, then,
should the artless savage trouble to gratify or conciliate such
innocuous and unprofitable objects? The same question may be raised in
other directions, notably that of the oak tree. Here the accepted
supposition is that the oak was revered because it was struck more
frequently by lightning than any other tree, but if this untoward
occurrence really proves the oak tree was the favourite of the Fire God
surely it was an instance of affection very brilliantly dissembled.
Sir James Frazer has used his _Golden Bough_ as he found it employed by
Virgil--as a talisman which led to the gloomy and depressing underworld.
In Celtic myth the Silver Bough played a less sinister part, and figures
as a fairy talisman to music and delight.
Whether the appeal of Sir Gilbert Murray meets with any sympathy and
response, and whether the written signs in our old poetry will ever be
enshrined back into living thought and feeling remains to be seen. I
think they will, and that the better sense of English intellectualism
will sooner or later recoil from the present mud-and-dust theories of
protoplasm for, as has been well said, "Materialism considered as a
system of philosophy never attempts to explain the _Why_? of things".
Certainly protoplasm has unravelled nothing, nor possibly can. One of
our standard archæologists lamented a few decades ago: "As the Germans
have decreed this it is in vain to dispute it, and not worth while to
attempt it". But the German, an indefatigable plodder, is but a
second-rate _thinker_, and the time must inevitably come when English
scholars will deem it well worth while to unhitch their waggons from
Germania. With characteristic assurance the Teutonic _litterati_ are
still prattling of The Fatherland as a "centre" of civilisation, and are
pluming themselves upon the "spiritual values" given to mankind by
Germany. Some of us are not conscious of these "spiritual values," but
that German scholarship has poison-gassed vast tracts of modern thought
is evident enough. The theories of Mannhardt, elaborated by Sir James
Frazer and transmuted by him into the pellucid English of _The Golden
Bough_, have admittedly blighted the fair humanities of old religion
into a dull catalogue of common things,[81] and no one more eloquently
deplores the situation than Sir James Frazer himself. As he says: "It is
indeed a melancholy and in some respects thankless task to strike at the
foundations of beliefs in which as in a strong tower the hopes and
aspirations of humanity through long ages have sought refuge from the
storm and stress of life. Yet sooner or later it is inevitable that the
battery of the Comparative Method should breach these venerable walls
mantled over with ivy and mosses, and wild flowers of a thousand tender
and sacred associations."
When the Comparative Method is applied in a wider and more catholic
spirit than hitherto it will then--but not till then--be seen whether
the fair humanities are exploded superstitions or are sufficiently alive
to blossom in the dust.
It is quite proper to designate _The Golden Bough_ a puppet-play of
corn-gods,[82] for the author himself, referring to Balder the
Beautiful, writes: "He, too, for all the quaint garb he wears, and the
gravity with which he stalks across the stage, is merely a puppet, and
it is time to unmask him before laying him up in the box".
But to me the divinities of antiquity are not mere dolls to be patted
superciliously on the head and then remitted to the dustbin. Our own
ideals of to-day are but the idols or dolls of to-morrow, and even a
golliwog if it has comforted a child is entitled to sympathetic
treatment. To the understanding of symbolism sympathy is a useful key.
The words _doll_, _idol_, _ideal_, and _idyll_, which are all one and
the same, are probably due to the island of Idea which was one of the
ancient names of Crete. Not only was Crete known as Idæa, but it was
also entitled Doliche, which may be spelled to-day Idyllic. Crete, the
Idyllic island, the island of Ideas, was also known as Aeria, and I
think it probably was the centre whence was spun the gossamer of aerial
and ethereal tales, which have made the Isles of Greece a land of
immortal romance. We shall also see as we proceed that the mystic
philosophy known to history as the Gnosis[83] was in all probability the
philosophy taught in prehistoric times at Gnossus, the far-famed capital
of Crete. From Gnossus, whence the Greeks drew all their laws and
science, came probably the Greek word _gnosis_, meaning _knowledge_. But
the mystic Gnosis connoted more than is covered by the word _knowledge_:
it claimed to be the wisdom of the ancients, and to disclose the ideal
value lying behind the letter of all mysteries, myths, and religious
ordinances.
I am convinced that the Christian Gnostics, with whom the Tertullian
type were in constant conflict, really did know much that they claimed,
and that had they not been trampled out of the light of day Europe would
never have sunk into the melancholy, well-designated Dark Ages. Gnostic
emblems have been found abundantly in Ireland: the Pythagorean or
Gnostic symbol known as the pentagon or Solomon's seal occurs on British
coins,[84] and the Bardic literature of Wales is deeply steeped with a
Gnostic mysticism for which historians find it difficult to account. The
facts which I shall adduce in the following pages are sufficiently
curious to permit the hope that they may lead a few of us to become less
self-complacent, and in the words of the author of _Ancient Britain_
relative to aboriginal Britons, "to think more of those primitive
ancestors. In some things we have sunk below their level."[85]
FOOTNOTES:
[39] _Words and Places._
[40] Schliemann, _Mykenæ_.
[41] _Cf._ Johnson, W., _Byways in British Archæology_.
[42] _The Cromlechs of Anglesey and Carnarvonshire._
[43] _Ancient Britain_, p. 70.
[44] Windle, Sir B. C. A., _Life in Early Britain_, p. 135.
[45] Johnston, Rev. James B., _The Place-names of England and
Wales_, 1915, p. 321. The Horse-lie-down theory is enunciated
by Sir Walter Besant.
[46] Preface to _The Place-names of Oxfordshire_.
[47] 1915.
[48] _Cf._ Bonwick, J., _Irish Druids_, p. 278.
[49] Virchow, intro. to Schliemann, _Ilios_ XII.
[50] _Cf._ _Brittany_, p. 28.
[51] Clodd, Ed., _The Story of Primitive Man_, 9, 18.
[52] Sweet, H., _The History of Language_, p. vi.
[53] _The Principles of Comparative Philology._
[54] Even after Troy had been discovered by Schliemann, Max Müller
maintained his belief that the Siege of Troy was a Sun and
Dawn myth.
[55] _Alphana_ vient d'_equus_, sans doute, Mais il faut avouer
aussi Qu'en venant de là jusqu'ici Il a bien changé sur la
route.
[56] Westropp, T. J., _Proc. R. Irish Acad._, xxxiv., C., 8, p.
159.
[57] Dallas, H. A.
[58] Norwood, J. W.
[59] Such obvious concoctions of the study as _exsufflicate_,
_deracinate_, _incarnadine_, etc., never strike root or
survive.
[60] Petrie, W. M. F., _The Formation of the Alphabet_, p. 3.
[61] _A Book of the Beginnings_, 1, p. 136.
[62] _Lectures on the English Language_, 1862, p. 16.
[63] Quoted from _ibid._, p. 30.
[64] The _Edin_ of the prehistoric British _Dun edin_, now
Edinburgh, has been calmly misappropriated to a supposed
_Edwin_.
[65] _Ancient Britain_, pp. 273, 283.
[66] _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft._
[67] Johnson, W., _Byways in British Archæology_, p. 304.
[68] Cloudesley Brereton, in _The Quest_.
[69] _Luniolatry_, p. 2.
[70] _Ancient Britain_, p. 298.
[71] This dictum would have cheered the heart of Tertullian, who
maintained that God could never forgive an actor because
Christ said: _No man by taking thought can add one cubit to
his stature_; a statement which the actor impiously falsified
by wearing high heeled boots. Commenting upon _The Lost
Language of Symbolism_, _The Expository Times_ very
courteously observed: "To the reader of the Bible its worth
is more than to all others, for the Bible is full of symbols
and we have lost their language. We are very prosaic. The
writers of the Old Testament and of the New were very
imaginative. Between us there is a gulf fixed of which we are
aware only in unquiet moments."
[72] "There must have been a time when a simple instinct for
poetry was possessed by all nations as it still is by
uncivilised races and children. Among European nations this
instinct appears to be dead for ever. We can name neither a
mountain nor a flower."--Prof. Weekley, _Romance of Words_.
"Who did first name the flowers? Who first gave them, not
their Latin titles, but the old, familiar, fanciful, poetic,
rustic ones, that run so curiously alike in all the vulgar
tongues? Who first called the lilies of the valley the
Madonna's tears? the wild blue hyacinth, St. Dorothy's
flower? the starry passiflora, the Passion of Christ; who
named them all first, in the old days that are forgotten? All
the poets that ever the world has known might have been
summoned together for the baptism of the flowers, and have
failed to name them half so well as popular tradition has
done long ago in the dim lost ages, with names that still
make all the world akin."--Anon.
[73] "This pretty name (which Fitzgerald, _History of Limerick_,
vol. i., p. 320, calls the River Dawn) arose from a change of
Samhair or Samer to Caimher, 'the daybreak,' or 'Morning
Star'".--Westropp, T. J., _Proc. of Royal Irish Acad._,
xxxiii., C. 2, p. 13.
[74] The peculiar temperament of "us moderns alone" is, I am
afraid, more acutely diagnosed by Prof. Weekley, in
_Surnames_, where he observes: "The 'practical man,' when his
attention is accidentally directed to the starry sky,
appraises that terrific spectacle with a non-committal grunt:
but he would receive with a positive snort any suggestion
that the history of European civilisation is contained in the
names of his friends and acquaintances. Still, even the
practical man, if he were miraculously gifted with the power
of interpreting surnames, could hardly negotiate the length
of Oxford Street on a motor-bus without occasionally
marvelling and frequently chuckling."
[75] Coneybeare, Dr. F. C., _The Historical Christ_, p. 19.
[Italics mine.] The views of Dr. Coneybeare may be connoted
with those of his fellow-cleric, the Rev. H. C. Christmas:
"The astrotheology into which Egyptian fables are ultimately
resolved having taken animals as symbols, soon elevated those
symbols in the minds of the people at large into real
divinities. The signs of the zodiac were worshipped, and the
constellations not in that important circle did not go
without adoration. Various stars became noted as rising or
setting at particular seasons, and serving as marks of time;
while the physical circumstances of the animal creation gave
an easy means of naming the stars and constellations, and
thus connected natural history with the symbolical theology
of the times.... In their [the Egyptians'] view the earth was
but a mirror of the heavens, and celestial intelligences were
represented by beasts, birds, fishes, gems, and even by
rocks, metals, and plants. The harmony of the spheres was
answered by the music of the temples, and the world beheld
nothing that was not a type of something divine."--_Universal
Mythology_, 1838, p. 19.
[76] Quoted from Wentz, W. D. Y., _The Fairy Faith in Celtic
Countries_.
[77] "The current ignorance of those pre-Christian evidences that
have been preserved by the petrifying past must be wellnigh
invincible when a man like Prof. Jowett could say, as if with
the voice of superstition in its dotage: '_To us the
preaching of the Gospel is a New Beginning, from which we
date all things; beyond which we neither desire, nor are
able, to inquire_.'"--Massey, G., _The Logic of the Lord_,
1897.
[78] Harrison, Miss Jane, _Ancient Art and Ritual_, pp. 192-3.
[79] A bogey of the present Bishop of London is not "no crops" but
"no foreign monarchs". _The Daily Chronicle_ of 13th May,
1914, reports his Lordship as saying: "If the British Empire
was not to be disgraced by the heart of London becoming
pagan, _his fund must be kept going_." [Italics mine.] "Once
religion went, everything else went; it would be good-bye to
the visits of foreign monarchs to London, because Londoners
would have disgraced the Empire and themselves before the
whole world."
[80] The "celebrated but infamous" Petronius, surnamed Arbiter,
philosophised in the first century to the following
up-to-date effect:--
Fear made the first divinities on earth
The sweeping flames of heaven; the ruined tower,
Scathed by its stroke. The softly setting sun,
The slow declining of the silver moon,
And its recovered beauty. Hence the signs
Known through the world, and the swift changing year,
Circling divided in its varied months.
Hence rose the error. Empty folly bade
The wearied husbandman to Ceres bring
The first fair honours of his harvest fields
To gird the brow of Bacchus with the palm,
And taught how Pales, 'mid the shepherd bands,
Stood and rejoiced, how Neptune in the flood
Plunged deep, and ruled the ever-roaring tide;
How Vallas reigned o'er earth's stupendous caves
Mightily. He who vowed and he who reaped
With eager contest, made their gods themselves.
[81] The intelligible forms of ancient poets
The fair humanities of old religion
The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty
That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain
Or forest or slow stream, or pebbly spring
Our chasms and watery depths; all these have vanished
They live no longer in the faith of reason.
--COLERIDGE.
[82] There is, of course, no novelty in these ideas, which are
merely a recrudescence and restatement of the notions to
which Plutarch thus alludes:--
"We shall also get our hands on the dull crowd, who take pleasure
in associating the ideas about these gods either with changes
of the atmosphere according to the seasons, or with the
generation of corn and sowings and ploughings, and in saying
that Osiris is buried when the sown corn is hidden by the
earth, and comes to life and shows himself again when it
begins to sprout.... They should take very good heed, and be
apprehensive lest unwittingly they write off the sacred
mysteries and dissolve them into winds and streams and
sowings and ploughings and passions of earth and changes of
seasons."
[83] "The Gnostic movement began long before the Christian era
(what its original historical impulse was we do not know),
and only one aspect of it, and that from a strictly limited
point of view, has been treated by ecclesiastical
historians."--Lamplugh, Rev. F., _The Gnosis of the Light_,
1918, p. 10.
[84] Holmes, Rice, _Ancient Britain_, p. 295.
[85] _Ibid._, p. 373.
CHAPTER III
A TALE OF TROY
Upon the Syrian sea the people live,
Who style themselves Phoenicians,
These were the first great founders of the world--
Founders of cities and of mighty states--
Who showed a path through seas before unknown.
In the first ages, when the sons of men
Knew not which way to turn them, they assigned
To each his first department; they bestowed
Of land a portion and of sea a lot,
And sent each wandering tribe far off to share
A different soil and climate. Hence arose
The great diversity, so plainly seen,
'Mid nations widely severed.
--DYONYSIUS of Susiana, A.D. 300.
It is a modern axiom that the ancient belief expressed in the above
extract has no foundation in fact, and that the Phoenicians, however
far-spread may have been their commercial enterprise, never extended
their voyages beyond the Pillars of Hercules. It is conceded that it
would be easy to demonstrate in Britain the elaborate machinery of
sun-worship, if only it could be shown that there were at any time
intimate and direct relations between Britain and Phoenicia. The
historical evidence, such as it is, of this once-supposed connection,
having been weighed and found wanting, the present teaching is thus
expressed: "But what of the Phoenicians, and where do they come in? It
is a cruel thing to say to a generation which can ill afford to part
with any fragment of its diminished archæological patrimony; but it must
be said without reserve or qualification: the Phoenicians do not come
in at all."[86]
But before bidding a final and irrevocable adieu to Tyre and Tarshish,
one is entitled to inquire whence and how Phoenician or Hebrew words
and place-names reached this country, particularly on the western
coasts. The cold-shouldering of Oriental words has not extinguished
their existence, and although these changelings may no longer find an
honoured home in our Dictionaries, the terms themselves have survived
the ignominy of their expulsion and are as virile to-day as hitherto.
The English language, based upon an older stratum of speech and
perpetually assimilating new shades of sense, has descended in direct
ancestry from the Welsh or Kymbric, and Kymbric, still spoken to-day,
has come down to us in verbal continuity from immemorial ages prior to
the Roman invasion. It was at one time supposed that of the Celtic
sister-tongues the Irish or Gaelic was the more ancient, but according
to the latest opinion, "In the vocabularies of the two languages where
strict phonetic tests of origin can be applied it is found that the
borrowing is mainly on the side of the Irish".[87] The identities
between Welsh and Hebrew are so close and pressing that from time to
time claims have been put forward that the old Welsh actually _was_
Hebrew. "It would be difficult," said Margoliouth, "to adduce a single
article or form of construction in the Hebrew Grammar, but the same is
to be found in Welsh, and there are many whole sentences in both
languages exactly the same in the very words".[88] Entire sentences of
archaic Hebraisms are similarly to be found in the now obsolete Cornish
language, and there are "several thousand words of Hebrew origin" in the
Erse or Gaelic. According to Vallencey, "the language of the early
inhabitants of Ireland was a compound of Hebrew and Phoenician,"[89]
and this statement would appear to be substantiated by the curious fact
that in 1827 the Bible Societies presented Hebrew Bibles to the native
Irish in preference to those printed in English, as it was found that
the Irish peasants understood Hebrew more readily than English.[90]
Is it conceivable that these identities of tongue are due to chance, or
that the terms in point permeated imperceptibly overland to the farthest
outposts of the Hebrides?
It is a traditional belief that the district now known as Cornwall had
at some period commercial relations with an overseas people, referred to
indifferently as "Jews," "Saracens," or "Finicians". That certain of the
western tin mines were farmed by Jews within the historic period is a
fact attested by Charters granted by English kings, notably by King
John; yet there is a tradition among Cornish tinners that the
"Saracens," a term still broadly applied to any foreigner, were not
allowed to advance farther than the coast lest they should discover the
districts whence the tin was brought. The entire absence of any finds of
Phoenician coins is an inference that this tradition is well founded,
for it is hardly credible that had the "Finicians" penetrated far inland
or settled to any extent in the country, some of their familiar coins
would not have come to light.
The casual or even systematic visits of mere merchants will not account
for integral deep-seated identities. The Greeks had a powerful
settlement at Marseilles centuries before Cæsar's time, yet the vicinity
of these Greek traders, although it may have exercised some social
influences upon arts and habits, did not effect any permanent impression
on the language, religion, or character of the Gaulish nation.
One is thus impelled to the conclusion that the resemblances between
British and Phoenician are deeper seated than hitherto has been
supposed, and that it may have been due to both peoples having descended
from, or borrowed from, some common source.
The Phoenicians, though so great and enterprising a people, have left
no literature; and it is thus impossible to compare their legends and
traditions with our own. With Crete the same difficulty exists, as at
present her script is indecipherable, and no one knows positively the
name of a single deity of her Pantheon.
There is no historic record of any intercourse between the British and
the Greeks, but both Irish and British traditions specify the Ægean as
the district whence their first settlers arrived. Tyndal, the earliest
translator of the Greek Testament into English, asserts that "The Greek
agreeth more with the English than the Latin, and the properties of the
Hebrew tongue agreeth a thousand times more with the English than with
the Latin". Happily Greece possesses a literature, and one may thus
compare the legends of Greece with those of our own country.
An Hellenic author of the first century is thus rendered by Sir John
Rhys:[91] "Demetrius further said that of the islands round Britain
many lie scattered about uninhabited, of which some are named after
deities and heroes. He told us also that being sent by the Emperor with
the object of reconnoitring and inspecting, he went to the island which
lay nearest to those uninhabited, and found it occupied by few
inhabitants who were, however, sacrosanct and inviolable in the eyes of
the Britons.... There is there, they said, an island in which Cronus is
imprisoned with Briareus, keeping guard over him as he sleeps, for as
they put it--sleep is the bond forged for Cronus. They add that around
him are many deities, his henchmen and attendants."[92]
It is remarkable that Greek mythology was thus familiar to the
supposedly blue-painted savages of Britain. Nor is the instance
solitary, for at Bradford a Septennial festival used to be held in
honour of Jason and the Golden Fleece,[93] and at Achill in Ireland
there is a custom which seemingly connects Achill and Achilles.
Pausanias tells the tale of young Achilles attired in female garb and
living among maidens, and to this day the peasantry of Achill Island on
the north-west coast of Ireland dresses its boys as girls for the
supposed purpose of deceiving a boy-seeking devil.[94] Are these and
other coincidences which will be adduced due to chance, to independent
working of the primitive mind, or to intercourse with a maritime people
who were not restricted by the Pillars of Hercules?
The exit of the Phoenicians has created a dilemma which impels Mr.
Donald A. Mackenzie to inquire: "By whom were Egyptian beads carried to
Britain between 1500 B.C. and 1400 B.C.? Certainly not the
Phoenicians. The sea-traders of the Mediterranean were at the time the
Cretans. Whether or not their merchants visited England we have no means
of knowing."[95] There are, however, sure and certain sources of
information if one looks into the indelible evidence of fairy-tales,
monuments, language, traditions, and place-names.
Ammianus Marcellinus records that it was a traditional belief among the
Gauls that "a few Trojans fleeing from the Greeks and dispersed occupied
these places then uninhabited".[96] The similar tradition pervading
early British literature we shall consider in due course and detail.
This legend runs broadly that Bru or Brutus, after sailing for thirty
days and thirty nights, landed at Totnes, whence after slaying the giant
Gogmagog and his followers he marched to Troynovant or New Troy now
named London.
It was generally believed that this supposed fiction was a fabrication
by Geoffrey of Monmouth, but it was subsequently discovered in the
historical poems of Tyssilia, a Welsh Bard. According to a poem
attributed to Taliesin, the semi-mythical "Chief of the Bards of the
West," whose reputation Sir J. Morris Jones has recently so brilliantly
resuscitated,[97] "A numerous race, fierce, they are said to have been,
were thy original colonists Britain first of Isles. Natives of a country
in Asia, and the city of Gafiz. Said to have been a skilful people, but
the district is unknown which was mother to these children, warlike
adventurers on the sea. Clad in their long dress who could equal them?
Their skill is celebrated, they were the dread of Europe."
According to the Welsh Triads the first-comer to these islands was not
Bru, but a mysterious and mighty Hu: "The first of the three chieftains
who established the colony was Hu the Mighty, who came with the original
settlers. They came over the hazy sea from the summer country, which is
called Deffrobani; that is where Constantinople now stands."[98]
Although, as will subsequently be seen, Hu and Bru were seemingly one
and the same, it is not to be supposed that Britain can have been
populated from one solitary shipload of adventurers; argosy after argosy
must have reached these shores. The name Albion suggests Albania, and in
due course I shall connect not only Giant Alban, but also the Lady
Albion and the fairy Prince Albion with Albania, Albany, and "Saint"
Alban.
The Albanian Greek is still characterised by hardihood, activity, bodily
strength, and simplicity of living; and there is unquestionably some
connection between the highlanders of Albania and the highlanders of
Albany who, up to a few hundred years ago, used to rush into battle with
the war-cry of "Albani! Albani!" By the present-day Turk the Albanians
are termed Arnaouts.[99] Whether this name has any connection with
_argonauts_ is immaterial, as the historic existence of argonauts and
argosies is a matter of fact, not fancy. A typical example of the
primitive argosies is recorded in the British Chronicles where the
arrival of Hengist and Horsa is described. Layamon's _Brut_ attributes
to Hengist the following statement:--
"Our race is of a fertile stock, more quick and abounding than any other
you may know, or whereof you have heard speak. Our folk are marvellously
fruitful, and the tale of the children is beyond measure. Women and men
are more in number than the sand, for the greater sorrow of those
amongst us who are here. When our people are so many that the land may
not sustain nor suffice them, then the princes who rule the realm
assemble before them all the young men of the age of fifteen and
upwards, for such is our use and custom. From out of these they choose
the most valiant and the most strong, and, casting lots, send them forth
from the country, so that they may travel into divers lands, seeking
fiefs and houses of their own. Go out they must, since the earth cannot
contain them; for the children come more thickly than the beasts which
pasture in the fields. Because of the lot that fell upon us we have
bidden farewell to our homes, and putting our trust in Mercury, the god
has led us to your realm."
In all probability this is a typical and true picture of the perennial
argosies which periodically and persistently fared forth from Northern
Europe and the Mediterranean into the Unknown.
The Saxons came here peaceably; they were amicably received, and it
would be quite wrong to imagine the early immigrations as invasions
involving any abrupt breach in place-names, customs, and traditions. Of
the Greeks, Prof. Bury says: "They did not sweep down in a great
invading host, but crept in, tribe by tribe, seeking not political
conquest but new lands and homesteads".
At the time of Cæsar the tribe occupying the neighbourhood of modern
London were known as the Trinovantes,[100] and as these people can
hardly be supposed to have adopted their title for the purpose of
flattering a poetic fiction in far Wales, the name Trinovant lends some
support to the Bardic tradition that London was once termed Troy Novant
or New Troy. Argonauts of a later day christened their new-found land
New York, and this unchangingly characteristic tendency of the emigrant
no doubt accounts for the perplexing existence of several cities each
named "Troy". That many shiploads of young argonauts from one or another
Troy reached the coasts of Cornwall is implied by the fact that in
Cornwall _tre's_ were seemingly so numerous that _tre_ became the
generic term for home or homestead. It is proverbial that by _tre_,
_pol_, and _pen_, one may know the Cornish men.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.--Welsh Shepherd's "Troy Town."
From _Prehistoric London_ (Gordon, E. O.).]
[Illustration: FIG. 9.--Cretan maze-coins and British mazes at
Winchester, Alkborough, and Saffron Walden.
From _Prehistoric London_ (Gordon, E. O.).
[_To face p. 87._]
Borlase, in his glossary of Cornish words, gives both _tre_ and _dre_ as
meaning dwelling; the Welsh for Troy is Droia, the Greek was Troie, and
this invariable interchange of _t_ and _d_ is again apparent in _derry_,
the Irish equivalent for the Cornish _tre_. The standard definition of
_true_ is _firm_ or _certain_; whence it may appear that the primeval
"Troys" were, so to speak, the permanent addresses of the wandering
families and tribes. These _Troys_ or _trues_ were maybe caves--whence
_trou_, the French for hole or cave; maybe the foot of a big tree,
preferably the sacred oak-tree, which was alike sacred in Albion and
Albania. _Tree_ is the same word as _true_, and _dru_, the Sanscrit for
tree, is the same word as _dero_ or _derry_, the Irish for oak tree,
as in London_derry_, Kil_dare_, etc. The Druids have been generally
supposed to have derived their title of _Druid_ from the _drus_ or oak
tree under which they worshipped, but it is far more probable that the
tree was named after the Druids, and that _druid_ (the accusative and
dative of _drui_, a magician or sorcerer), is radically the Persian
_duru_, meaning _a good holy man_, the Arabic _deri_, meaning _a wise
man_.[101]
But apart from the generic term _tre_ or _dre_ there are numerous "Troy
Towns" and "Draytons" in Britain. Part of Rochester is called Troy Town,
which may be equated with the _Duro-_ of _Duro_brevis the ancient name
of Rochester. There is a river Dray in Thanet and the ancient name for
Canterbury was _Duro_vern. Seemingly all over Britain the term Troy Town
was applied to the turf-cut mazes of the downs and village greens, and
the hopscotch of the London urchin is said to be the Troy game of the
Welsh child.
In London, _tempus_ Edward II., a military ride and tournament used to
be performed by the young men of the royal household on every Sunday
during Lent.[102] This also so-called Troy game had obviously some
relation to the ancient Trojan custom thus described by Virgil:--
In equal bands the triple troops divide,
Then turn, and rallying, with spears bent low,
Charge at the call. Now back again they ride,
Wheel round, and weave new courses to and fro,
In armed similitude of martial show,
Circling and intercircling. Now in flight
They bare their backs, now turning, foe to foe,
Level their lances to the charge, now plight
The truce, and side by side in friendly league unite.
E'en as in Crete the Labyrinth of old
Between blind walls its secret hid from view,
With wildering ways and many a winding fold,
Wherein the wanderer, if the tale be true,
Roamed unreturning, cheated of the clue;
Such tangles weave the Teucrians, as they feign
Fighting, or flying, and the game renew;
So dolphins, sporting on the watery plane,
Cleave the Carpathian waves and distant Libya's main.
These feats Ascanius to his people showed,
When girdling Alba Longa; there with joy
The ancient Latins in the pastime rode,
Wherein the princely Dardan, as a boy,
Was wont his Trojan comrades to employ.
To Alban children from their sires it came,
And mighty Rome took up the "game of Troy,"
And called the players "Trojans," and the name
Lives on, as sons renew the hereditary game.[103]
In Welsh _tru_ means a twisting or turning, and this root is at the base
of _tourney_ and _tournament_. One might account for the courtly jousts
of the English Court by the erudition and enterprise of scholars and
courtiers, but when we find turf Troy Towns being dug by the illiterate
Welsh shepherd and a Troy game being played by the uneducated peasant,
the question naturally arises, "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?"
In the Scilly Islands there is a Troy Town picked out in stones which
the natives scrupulously restore and maintain: in the words of Miss
Courtney, "All intricate places in Cornwall are so denominated, and I
have even heard nurses say to children, when they were surrounded by a
litter of toys, that they looked as if they were in Troy Town".[104]
In the _Æneid_ Virgil observes that "Tyrians and Trojans shall I treat
as one". Apart from Tyrians and Trojans the term Tyrrheni or Tyrseni was
applied to the Etrurians--a people the mystery of whose origin is one of
the unsolved riddles of archæology. It was Etruria that produced not
only Dante, but also a galaxy of great men such as no other part of
Europe has presented. In Etruria woman was honoured as nowhere else in
Europe except, perhaps, in Crete and among the Kelts; and in Etruria--as
in Crete--religion was veiled under an "impenetrable cloud of mysticism
and symbolism".
It is supposed that Etruria derived much from the prehistoric Greeks who
dwelt in Albania and worshipped Father Zeus in the sacred derrys or
oak-groves of Dodona. The Etrurians and Greeks were unquestionably of
close kindred, and it would seem from their town of Albano and their
river Albanus that the Etrurians similarly venerated St. Alban or Prince
Albion. The capital of Etruria was Tarchon, so named after the Etruscan
Zeus, there known as Tarchon. In the Introduction to _The Cities and
Cemeteries of Etruria_, Dennis points out that for ages the Etruscans
were lords of the sea, rivalling the Phoenicians in enterprise;
founding colonies in the islands of the Tyrrhene Sea "even on the coast
of Spain where Tarragona (in whose name we recognise that of Tarchon)
appears to have been one of their settlements--a tradition confirmed by
its ancient fortifications. Nay, the Etruscans would fain have colonised
the far 'islands of the blest' in the Atlantic Ocean, probably Madeira
or one of the Canaries, had not the Carthaginians opposed them."
The title _Madeira_, which is radically _deira_, might imply an origin
from either Tyre or Troy, and if place-names have any significance it
seems probable the Etrurians reached even our remote Albion. One may
recognise Targon as at Tarragona in Pentargon, the sonorous, resounding
title of a mighty pen or headland near Tintagel, and it is not unlikely
Tarchon or Tarquin survives in giant Tarquin who is popularly associated
with Cumberland and the North of England. In Arthurian legend it is
seemingly this same Tarquin that figures as Sir Tarquin, a false knight
who was the enemy of the Round Table and a sworn foe to Lancelot: "They
hurtled together like two wild bulls, rashing and lashing with their
shields and swords, that sometimes they fell both over their noses. Thus
they fought still two hours and more and never would have rest."[105]
It will become increasingly evident as we proceed that _tur_ or _true_
served frequently as an adjective, meaning firm, constant, _dur_able,
and _eter_nal, and that it is thus used in the name _Tar_chon, _Tra_jan,
or _Tro_jan. One may thus modernise Tarchon into the Eternal John, Jean,
or Giant, and it is seemingly this same giant that figured as the John,
Joan, or Old Joan of Cornish festivals. In the civic functions at
Salisbury and elsewhere, the elementary giant figures simply as "Giant".
Although the Cornish for _giant_ was _geon_, the authorities--I think
wrongly--translate Inisidgeon, an islet in the Scillies, as having meant
_inis_ or island of _St. John_.
Near Pentargon is the Castle of King Arthur, which, before being known
as Tintagel, was named Dunechein or the _dun_ of _chein_. At Durovern
(now Canterbury) is a large tumulus known as the _Dane John_, and on the
heights behind St. Just in Cornwall is _Chun_ Castle.[106] This is a
noble specimen of Cyclopean architecture, and appears to be parallel in
style of building with the Cyclopean architecture of Etruria. Similarly,
in the Dune Chein neighbourhood may be seen Cyclopean and "herring-bone"
walls, which seemingly do not differ from those of Crete and Etruria.
At Winchelsea in Sussex are the foundations and the doorway of an
ancient building known as "Trojans or Jews' Hall," but of the history of
these ruins nothing whatever is known. There is, however, little if any
doubt that Trojan or Tarchon was an alternative title of the Etrurian
Jonn, Jupiter, or Jou, and that to the Cretan Jou the Greeks added their
_piter_ or father, making thereby Jupiter or Father Jou. Jou was the
title of a kingly dynasty in Crete, but the custom of royal dynasties
taking their title from the All Father likened to the Sun is so constant
as almost to constitute a rule.
The word _Jew_, when pronounced _yew_, will be considered subsequently;
it may here be pointed out that _Jay_, _Gee_, and _Joy_ are common
surnames, query, once tribal names in Britain. Near Penzance is Marazion
or Market Jew, and it may be suggested that the traditional Cornish
"Jews" were pre-Phoenician followers of the Cretan Jou. With
Market-Jew one may connote Margate, which, as will be shown later, was
probably in its origin--like Marazion or Mara San--a port of _mer_, or
_mère_, the generic terms for _sea_ and _mother_. It is a
well-recognised fact that Brittany, Cornwall, and Wales spoke more or
less the same tongue, and according to Cæsar in his time there was
little or no difference between the languages of Gaul and Britain.
As will also be seen later it is probable that the words _mer_ and
_mère_, and the names Maria and Marie, are radically _rhi_, the Celtic
for _lady_ or _princess_; that _Rhea_, the Mother-Goddess of Crete, is
simply _rhia_, the Gælic and the Welsh for _queen_, and that Maria meant
primarily Mother Queen, or Mother Lady. The early forms of Marazion
figure as _Marhasyon_, _Marhasion_, etc.
Among the Basques of Spain _jaun_ meant lord or master; in British
_chun_ or _cun_ meant _mighty chief_,[107] whence it is probable that
the name Tarchon meant _Eternal Chief_ or _Eternal Lord_, and this
anonymity would accord with the custom which most anciently prevailed at
Dodona. "In early times," says Herodotus, "the Pelasgi, as I know by
information which I got at Dodona, offered sacrifices of all kinds and
prayed to the gods, but had no distinct names and appellations for them,
since they had never heard of any. They called them gods (_theoi_)
because they had disposed and arranged all things in such a beautiful
order."[108]
The eternal Chon or Jonn of Etruria may be recognised Latinised in
Janus, the most ancient deity of Rome or _Jan_icula, and we may perhaps
find him not only in John of Cornwall but among the innumerable Jones of
Wales. The Ionians or Greeks of Ionia worshipped _Ione_, the Holy Dove,
whence they are said to have derived their title. In Greek, _ione_, in
Hebrew, _juneh_, means a _dove_, and the Scotch island of Iona is
indelibly permeated with stories and traditions of St. Columba or
Columbkille, the Little Dove of the Church. The dove was the immemorial
symbol of Rhea, and it is highly probable that it was originally
connected with the place-name Reculver, of which the root is unknown,
but "has been influenced by Old English _culfre_, _culver_, a culver
dove or wood pigeon".[109] In Cornwall there is a St. Columb Major and
St. Columb Minor, where the dedication is to a virgin of this name, and
on the coast of Thanet the shoal now called Columbine, considered in
conjunction with the neighbouring place-names Roas Bank and Rayham, may
be assumed to be connected with Rhea's sacred Columbine or Little Dove.
A neighbouring spit is marked Cheney Spit, and close at hand are Cheyney
Rocks. There is thus some probability that Great Cheyne Court, Little
Cheyne Court, Old Cheyne Court, New Cheyne Court, and the Kentish
surname Joynson have all relation to the mysterious ruin "Trojans or
Jews Hall".
[Illustration: FIG. 10.--From _Nineveh_ (Layard).]
[Illustration: FIG. 11.--From _The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria_
(Dennis, G.).]
Fig. 11 shows the Goddess of Etruria holding her symbolic _columba_, in
Fig. 10, the same emblem worshipped in Assyria is being carried with
pomp and circumstance, and Fig. 12 shows the columba, _tur_tle, or
_tor_tora, being similarly honoured in Western Europe.
"Throughout the Ægean," says Prof. Burrows, "we see traces of the Minoan
Empire, in one of the most permanent of all traditions the survival of a
place-name; the word Minoa, wherever it occurs, must mark a fortress or
trading station of the Great King as surely as the Alexandrias, or
Antiochs, or Cæsareas of later days."[110]
[Illustration: FIG. 12.--From _The Everyday Book_ (Hone, W.).]
If a modern place-name be valid evidence in the Mediterranean, the
place-name Minnis Bay between Margate and Reculver has presumably a
similar weight, particularly as a few miles further round the coast is a
so-called Minnis Rock. Here is an ancient hermitage consisting of a
three-mouthed cave measuring precisely 9 feet deep. King Minos of Crete
held his kingship on a tenure of nine years, and the number nine is
peculiarly identified with the idea of _Troy_, _true_, or permanent. In
Hebrew, truth and nine are represented by one and the same term, because
nine is so extraordinarily true or constant to itself, that 9 × 9 = 81 =
9, 9 × 2 = 18 = 9, and so from nine times one to nine times nine.
In Crete there were no temples, but worship was conducted around small
caves situated in the side of hills. This is precisely the position of
Minnis Rock which is situated in a valley running up from Hastings to
St. Helens. "It is," says the local guide-book, "one of the few rock
cells in the country, and though almost choked with earth and rubbish is
still worth inspection. The three square-headed openings were the
entrances to the separate chambers of the cave, which went back 9 feet
into the rock. It is surmised that the Hermitage was used as a chapel or
oratory, dedicated probably to St. Mary, or some other saint beloved of
those who go down to the sea in ships. Many such chapels existed in
olden times within sight and sound of the waves, and passing vessels
lowered their topsails to them in reverence. Torquay, Broadstairs,
Dover, Reculver, Whitby, and other places in England had similar
oratories."[111]
The Etruscans or Tyrrhenians believed in a Hierarchy of Nine Great Gods.
Minos of Crete was not merely one of a line of mighty sea-kings, but
Greek mythology asserts that Minos was the son of Zeus, _i.e._, Jonn or
Tarchon. In a subsequent chapter we shall consider him at length, but
meanwhile it may be noted that it is not unlikely that the whole of
Eastern Kent was known as Minster, Minosterre, or Minos Terra. There
are several Minsters in Sheppey, and another Minster together with a
Mansion near Margate. The generic terms _minster_ and _monastery_ may be
assigned to the ministers of Minos originally congregating in cells or
_trous_ or in groves under and around the oaks or other similarly sacred
trees.
Troy, or as Homer terms it, "sacred Troy," was pre-eminently a city of
_towers_, _tourelles_, _turrets_, or _tors_, and in the West of England
_tor_, as in Torquay, Torbay, etc., is ubiquitous. Tory Island, off the
coast of Ireland, is said to have derived its title from the numerous
torrs upon it. The same word is prevalent throughout Britain, but there
are no torrs at Sindry Island in Essex nor at _Tre_port in the English
Channel. In the Semitic languages _tzur_, meaning rock, is generally
supposed to be the root of Tyre, and in the Near East tor is a generic
term for mountain chain.
Speaking of princely Tyre, Ezekiel says, "Tarshish was thy merchant by
reason of the multitude of all kinds of riches; with silver, iron, tin,
and lead, they traded in thy fairs".[112] Tarshish is usually considered
to have been the western coast of the Mediterranean afterwards called
Gaul, in later times Spain and France, and undoubtedly the men of
Tarshish, Tyre, Troy, or Etruria, toured, trekked, travelled, tramped,
traded, and trafficked far and wide. Etrurian vases have been
disinterred in Tartary and also, it is said, from tumuli in Norway, yet
as Mrs. Hamilton Gray observes: "We believe that they were never made in
those countries, and that the Tartars and Norwegians never worshipped,
and possibly never even knew the names of the gods and heroes thereon
represented".[113] These vases more often than not depicted incidents
of Trojan legend, and of that famous Troy whose exploits in the words of
Virgil "fired the world".
The Tyrians conceived their chief god Hercules or Harokel as a bagman or
merchant, and in Phoenician the word _harokel_ meant merchant. Our own
term _merchant_[114] is etymologically akin to Mercury, the god of
merchants, and as _mere_ among other meanings meant pure or true, it is
not unlikely that _merchant_ was once the intellectual equivalent to
Tarchon or True John. In the West of England the adjective "jonnock"
still means true, straightforward, generous, unselfish, and
companionable.[115] The adjective _chein_ still used by Jews means very
much the same as _jonnock_, with, however, the additional sense of the
French _chic_. Jack is the diminutive endearing form of John, and the
Etruscan Joun is said to have been the Hebrew _Jack_ or _Iou_.[116] Joun
or his consort Jana was in all probability the divinity of the Etruscan
river Chiana, and Giant or Giantess Albion the divinity of the
neighbouring river Albinia.
Close to Market Jew or Marazion is a village called Chyandour, where is
a well named Gulfwell, meaning, we are told, the "Hebrew brook". It is
still a matter of dispute whether the Jews shipped their tin from
_Market_ Jew or overland from Thanet (_? Margate_[117]). From the word
_tariff_, a Spanish and Arabian term connected with Tarifa, the
southernmost town in Spain, it would seem that the dour and daring
traders who carried on their traffic with Market Jew and Margate toured
with a _tarifa_ or price-list. Doubtless the tariff charges were
commensurate with the risks involved, for only too frequently, as is
stated in the Psalms, "the ships of Tarshish were broken with an east
wind". To _try_ a boat means to-day to bring her head to the gale, and
in Somersetshire small ships are still entitled _trows_, a word
evidently akin to _trough_.
[Illustration: FIG. 13]
The Etruscans or Tyrrhenians represented Hercules the Great Merchant in
a kilt, and this seemingly was a _tar_tan or French _tiretaine_.
Speaking of certain figures unearthed at Tarchon, Dennis remarks: "The
drapery of the couches is particularly worthy of notice, being marked
with stripes of different colours crossing each other as in the Highland
plaid; and those who are learned in tartanology might possibly pronounce
which of the Macs has the strongest claim to an Etruscan origin".[118]
Fig. 13 reproduced from Mrs. Murray Aynsley's _Symbolism of the East and
West_, is taken from a fragment of pottery found in what is believed to
be a pre-Etruscan cemetery at Bologna in Italy. It might be a portrait
of Hendry or Sander bonneted in his glengarry, armed with a target, and
trekking off with two terriers. _Terre_, or _terra firma_, the earth, is
the same as _true_, meaning firm or constant. According to Skeat the
present form of the verb _tarry_ is due to _tarien_, _terien_, "to
irritate, provoke, worry, vex; hence to hinder, delay". Having "tarried"
an order there was, it may be, still further "tarrying" on presentation
of the tariff, and it may be assumed that the author of _The Odyssey_
had been personally "tarried" for he refers feelingly to--
A shrewd Phoenician, in all fraud adept,
Hungry, and who had num'rous harm'd before,
By whom I also was cajoled, and lured
T' attend him to Phoenicia, where his house
And his possessions lay; there I abode
A year complete his inmate; but (the days
And months accomplish'd of the rolling year
And the new seasons ent'ring on their course)
To Lybia then, on board his bark, by wiles
He won me with him, partner of the freight
Profess'd, but destin'd secretly to sale,
That he might profit largely by my price.
Not unsuspicious, yet constrain'd to go,
With this man I embark'd.
The hero of _The Odyssey_ was, self-confessedly, no tyro, but was
himself "in artifice well framed and in imposture various". Admittedly
he "utter'd prompt not truth, but figments to truth opposite, for guile
in him stood never at a pause".[119] Obviously he was a sailor to the
bone, and when he says, "I boast me sprung from ancestry renowned in
spacious Crete," with the additional statement that at one time he was
an Admiral of Crete, it is possible we are in face of a fragment of
genuine autobiography.
Doubtless, as our traditions state, the first adventurers on the sea
who reached these shores were oft-times _terrors_ and "the dread of
Europe". To the Tyrrhenes may probably be assigned the generic term
_tyrranos_ which, however, meant primarily not a tyrant as now
understood, but an autocrat or lord. "Clad in their long dress who could
equal them?" wondered a British Bard, and it may be that the long robes
figured herewith are the very moulds of form which created such a
powerful impression among our predecessors. The word _attire_ points to
the possibility that at one time Tyre set the fashions for the latest
_tire_, and like modern Paris fired the contemporary world of dress. In
connection with the word _dress_, which is radically _dre_, it is
noticeable that the Britons were conspicuously dressy men; indeed, Sir
John Rhys, discussing the term Briton, Breton, or Brython, seriously
maintains that "the only Celtic words which can be of the same origin
are the Welsh vocables _brethyn_, 'cloth and its congeners,' in which
case the Britons may have styled themselves 'cloth-clad,' in
contradistinction to the skin-wearing neolithic nation that preceded
them".
[Illustration: FIG. 14.--From _The Cities and Cemeteries of
Etruria_ (Dennis, G.).]
We know from Homer that the Trojans had a pretty taste in tweeds, and
that their waistcoats in particular were subjects of favourable
remark:--
The enter'd each a bath, and by the hands
Of maidens laved, and oil'd, and cloath'd again
With shaggy mantles, and _resplendent vests_,
Sat both enthroned at Menelaus' side.
Time does not alter the radical characteristics of any race, and
the outstanding qualities of the Britons--the traditional "remnant
of Droia," are still very much to-day what they were in the time of
Diodorus the Sicilian. "They are," said he, "of much sincerity and
integrity far from the craft and knavery of men among us."[120] So great
was the Trojan reputation for law and order that the Greeks who owed
their code of laws to Crete paid Minos the supreme compliment of making
him the Lord Chief Justice of the World of Shades. It will probably
prove that the _droits_, laws, rights, or dues of "Dieu et mon Droit"
are traceable to those of Troy, as also perhaps the _Triads_ or triple
axioms of the Drui or Druids. To put a man on trial was originally
perhaps to _try_ or test him at the sacred _tree_: the triadic form of
ancient maxims had doubtless some relation to the Persian Trinity of
Good Thought, Good Deed, Good Word, and these three virtues were
symbolised by the trefoil or shamrock. The Hebrew for law is _tora_ or
_thorah_, the Hill of _Tara_ in Ireland (middle-Irish, Temair), is
popularly associated with the trefoil symbol of the _Tri_nity (Welsh,
_Dri_ndod); that _three_, _trois_, or _drei_ was associated by the game
of Troy is obvious from Virgil's reference to the "_triple_ groups
dividing," and that the trefoil was venerated in Crete would appear from
Mr. Mackenzie's statement: "Of special interest, too, is a clover-leaf
ornament--an anticipation of the Irish devotion to the shamrock".[121]
The primitive _trysts_ were probably at the old Trysting Trees; _trust_
means reliability and credit and _truce_ means peace. Among rude nations
the men who carried with them Peace, Law, and Order must naturally have
been deemed supermen or gods, hence perhaps why in Scandinavia _Tyr_
meant _god_. Our Thursday is from Thor--a divinity who was sometimes
assigned _three_ eyes--and our Tuesday from Tyr, who was supposed to be
the Scandinavian Joupiter. The plural form of Tyr meant "glorious ones,"
and according to _The Edda_, not only were the Danes and Scandinavians
wanderers from Troy or Tyrkland, but Asgard itself--the Scandinavian
Paradise--preserved the old usages and customs brought from Troy.[122]
Homer by sidelights indicates that the Trojans were nice in their
domestic arrangements, took fastidious care of their attire, and were
confirmed lovers of fresh air. Thus Telemachus--
Open'd his broad chamber-valves, and sat
On his couch-side: then putting off his vest
Of softest texture, placed it in the hands
Of the attendant dame discrete, who first
Folding it with exactest care, beside
His bed suspended it, and, going forth,
Drew by its silver ring the portal close,
And fasten'd it with bolt and brace secure.
There lay Telemachus, on finest wool
Reposed, contemplating all night his course
Prescribed by Pallas to the Pylian shore.[123]
The word "Trojan" was used in Shakespeare's time to mean a boon
companion, a jonnock _tyro_, or a plucky fellow, and it is worthy of
note that the trusty lads of Homer's time passed, as does the Briton of
to-day, their liquor scrupulously from left to right:--
So spake Jove's daughter; they obedient heard.
The heralds, then, pour'd water on their hands,
And the attendant youths, filling the cups,
Served them from left to right.[124]
One of the most remarkable marvels of Cretan archæology is the
up-to-date drainage system, and that the Tyrrhenians were equally
particular is recorded apparently for all time by the Titanic evidence
of the still-standing Cloaca Maxima or great main drain of Rome.
The word Troy carries inevitable memories of Helen whose beauty was such
utter perfection that "the Helen of one's Troy" has become a phrase. The
name Helen is philologically allied to Helios the Sun, and is generally
interpreted to mean _torch_, _shiner_, or _giver of light_. The Greeks
called themselves Hellenes, after Hellen their eponymous divine leader.
Oriental nations termed the Hellenes, Iones, and there is little doubt
that Helen and Ione were originally synonymous. In Etruria was the city
of Hellana, and we shall meet St. Helen in Great Britain, from Helenium,
the old name for Land's End, to Great St. Helen's and Little St. Helen's
in London. St. Helen, the lone daughter of Old King Cole, the merry old
soul, figures in Wales and Cumberland as Elen the Leader of Hosts, whose
memory is preserved not only in Elaine the Lily Maid, but also in
connection with ancient roadways such as Elen's Road, and Elen's
Causeway. These, suggests Squire, "seem to show that the paths on which
armies marched were ascribed or dedicated to her".[125] Helen's name was
seemingly bestowed not only on our rivers, such as the Elen, Alone, or
Alne and Allan Water, but it likewise seems to have become the generic
term _lan_ meaning _holy enclosure_, entering into innumerable
place-names--London[126] among others--which will be discussed in
course. The character in which Helen was esteemed may be judged from
the Welsh adjective _alain_, which means "exceeding fair, lovely,
bright". Not only in Wales but also in Ireland _Allen_ seems to have
been synonymous with beauty, whence the authorities translate the
place-name Derryallen to mean _oakwood beautiful_. In Arthurian romance
Elaine or Elen figures as the sister of Sir Tirre,[127] as the builder
of the highest fortress in Arvon, and as sitting _lone_ or _alone_ in a
sea-girt castle on a throne of ruddy gold. It is said that so
transcendent was her beauty that it would be no more easy to look into
her face than to gaze at the sun when his rays were most irresistible.
It would thus seem that Howel, said to be Elen's brother, may be equated
with _hoel_, the Celtic for _Sun_, and that Elen herself, like Diana,
was the glorious twin-sister of Helios or Apollo.
The principal relics of St. Helena are possessed by the city of
_Treves_, and at _Therapne_ in Greece there was a special sanctuary of
Helena the divinely fair daughter of Zeus and a swan. "Troy weight," so
called, originated, it is supposed, from the droits or standards of a
famous fair held at Troyes in France.
From time immemorial Crete seems to have been associated with the symbol
of the cross. This pre-Christian Cross of Crete was the equi-limbed
Cross of St. John (Irish Shane) which form is also the Red Cross of St.
George. In earlier times this cross was termed the Jack--a familiar form
of "the John"--and it was also entitled "the Christopher". In India the
cave temple of Madura, where Kristna[128]-worship is predominant, is
cruciform, and the svastika or solar cross, a variant of John's Cross,
is in one of its Indian forms known as the _Jaina_ cross and the
talisman of the _Jaina_ kings.
"It must never be forgotten," said a prince of the Anglican Church
preaching recently at St. Paul's, "that the cross was primarily an
instrument of torture." Among a certain school, who in Apostolic phrase
deem themselves of all men most miserable, this conception is firmly
fixed and seemingly it ever has been. It was Calvinistic doctrine that
all pain and suffering came from the All Father, and that all pleasure
and joy originated from the Evil One. Thus to Christianity the Latin
Cross has been the symbol of misery and the concrete conception of
Christian Ideal is the agonised Face of the Old Masters. This dismal
verity was exemplified afresh by the melancholy poster which was
recently scattered broadcast over England by the National Mission
engineered by the Bishop of London. Even the Mexican cross, consisting
of four hearts _vis a vis_ (Fig. D)--a form which occurs sometimes in
Europe--has been daubed with imaginary gore, and with reference to this
inoffensive emblem the author of _The Cross: Heathen and Christian_
complacently writes: "The lady to whom I have just alluded considers
(and I think with great propriety) that the circle of crosses formed by
groups of four hearts represents hearts sacrificed to the gods; the dot
on each signifying blood".[2]
[Illustration: A. EARLY CELTIC ISLE OF MAN AND IRELAND EARLY CELTIC
BRITTANY CALLERNISH, HEBRIDES, restored (380 feet in
length.)
B. ETRURIA B.
C. CRETE
D. MEXICO
E. MEXICO
FIG. 15.--From _The Cross: Heathen and Christian_
(Brock, M.).]
But we shall meet with these same dots on prehistoric British
cross-coins as also on the "spindle whorls" of the most ancient Troy,
and it will be seen that, apart from the word _svastika_ which
intrinsically means _it is well_, the svastika or pre-Christian cross
was an emblem not of Melancholia but Joy. The English word _joy_ and the
French word _jeu_ have, I think, been derived from _Jou_, just as jovial
is traceable from Jove, and _joc_und to Jock or Jack. Pagans were the
children of Joy and worshipped with a joyful noise before the Lord, and
with sacred _jeux_ or games. The word _cross_ is in all probability the
same as _charis_ which means _charity_, and akin to _chrestos_ which
means good. Cres, the son of Jou, after whom the Cretans were termed
Eteocretes, is an elementary form of Christopher, and the burning cross
with which the legends state Christopher was tortured by being branded
on the brow was more probably the Christofer or Jack--the Fiery Cross,
with which irresistible talisman the clansmen of Albany were summoned
together. Similarly the solar wheel of Katherine or The Pure One was
supposed by the mediæval monks--whose minds were permanently bent on
melancholia and torture--to have been some frightful implement of knives
and spikes by which Kate or Kitt, the Pure Maiden, was torn into pieces.
It will be seen in due course that almost every single "torture" sign of
the supposed martyrs was in reality the pre-Christian emblem of some
pagan divinity whence the saintly legends were ignorantly and mistakenly
evolved.
When the Saxon monks came into power, in the manner characteristic of
their race, they "tarried" the old British monasteries and sacred
mounds, bringing to light many curious and extraordinary things. At St.
Albans they overthrew and filled up all the subterranean crypts of the
ancient city as well as certain labyrinthine passages which extended
even under the bed of the river. The most world-famous labyrinth was
that at Gnossus which has not yet been uncovered, but every Etrurian
place of any import had its accompanying catacombs, and in the chapter
on "Dene holes" we shall direct attention to corresponding labyrinths
which remain intact in England even to-day.
When pillaging at St. Albans the Saxons found not only anchors, oars,
and parts of ships, imputing that St. Albans was once a port, but they
also uncovered the foundations of "a vast palace". "Here," says
Wright,[129] "they found a hollow in the wall like a cupboard in which
were a number of books and rolls, which were written in ancient
characters and language that could only be read by one learned monk
named Unwona. He declared that they were written in the ancient British
language, that they contained 'the invocations and rites of the
idolatrous citizens of Waertamceaster,' with the exception of one which
contained the authentic life of St. Albans." And as the Abbot before
mentioned "diligently turned up the earth" where the ruins of Verulamium
appeared, he found many other interesting things--pots and amphoras
elegantly formed of pottery turned on the lathe, glass vessels, ruins of
temples, altars overturned, idols, and various kinds of coins.
Many of the jewels and idols then uncovered remained long in the
possession of the Abbey, and are scheduled in the Ecclesiastical
inventories together with a memorandum of the human weaknesses against
which each object was supposed to possess a talismanic value. Thus
Pegasus or Bellerophon is noted as food for warriors, giving them
boldness and swiftness in flight; Andromeda as affording power of
conciliating love between man and woman; Hercules slaying a lion, as a
singular defence to combatants. The figure of Mercury on a gem rendered
the possessor wise and persuasive; a dog and a lion on the same stone
was a sovereign remedy against dropsy and the pestilence; and so on and
so forth.
"I am convinced," says Wright, "that a large portion of the reliques of
saints shown in the Middle Ages, were taken from the barrows or graves
of the early population of the countries in which they were shown. It
was well understood that those mounds were of a sepulchral character,
and there were probably few of them which had not a legend attached.
When the earlier Christian missionaries and the later monks of Western
Europe wished to consecrate a site their imagination easily converted
the tenant of the lonely mound into a primitive saint--the tumulus was
ransacked and the bones were found--and the monastery or even a
cathedral was erected over the site which had been consecrated by the
mystics rites of an earlier age."[130] After purification by a special
form of exorcism the pagan pictures were accepted into Christian
service, the designs being construed into Christian doctrines far from
the purpose of the things themselves.
[Illustration: FIG. 16.--"Kaadman." From _Essays on Archæological
Subjects_ (Wright, T.).]
Among the monkish loot at St. Albans was an ancient cameo herewith
reproduced. This particular jewel was supposed to be of great efficacy
and was entitled _Kaadman_; "perhaps," suggests Wright, "another mode of
spelling _cadmeus_ or _cameus_". But in view of the fact that Alban
means _all good_, it was more probably the picture of a sacred figure
which the natives recognised as the original Kaadman, _i.e., Guidman_ or
the Good Man.[131] The jewels found at St. Albans being unquestionably
Gnostic it is quite within the bounds of probability that the Kaadman
seal was an "idol" of what the Gnostics entitled Adam Caedmon or Adam
Kadman. According to C. W. King the Adam Kadman or Primitive Man of
Gnosticism, was the generative and conceptive principle of life and
heat, Who manifested Himself in ten emanations or types of all
creation.[132] In Irish _cad_ means _holy_; _good_ and _cad_ are the
same word, whence Kaadman and the surnames Cadman and Goodman were
probably once one. The word Albon or Albion means as it stands _all
good_, or _all well_, and the river Beane, like the river Boyne--over
whom presided the beneficent goddess Boanna--means _bien_, good, or
_bene_ well. The Herefordshire Beane was alternatively known as the
river _Beneficia_, a name which to the modern etymologer working on
standard lines confessedly "yields a curious conundrum".[133]
The Anglo-Saxon Abbot of St. Albans after having assured himself that
the idolatrous books before-mentioned proved that the pagan British
worshipped Phoebus, and Mercury consigned them to the flames with the
same self-complacency as the Monk Patrick burnt 180--some say 300--MSS.
relative to the Irish Druids. These being deemed "unfit to be
transmitted to posterity," posterity is proportionately the poorer.
Phoebus was the British Heol, Howel, or the Sun, and Mercury, was, as
Cæsar said, the Hercules of Britain. The snake-encircled club of Kaadman
is the equivalent to the caduceus or snake-twined rod of Mercury; the
human image in the hand of Kaadman implies with some probability that
"Kaadman" was the All Father or the Maker of Mankind. We shall see
subsequently that the Maker of All was personified as Michael or Mickle,
and that St. Mickle and All Angels or All Saints stood for the Great
Muckle leading the Mickle--"many a mickel makes a muckle". St. Michael
is the patron saint of Gorhambury, a suburb of St. Albans, and in
Christian Art St. Michæl is almost invariably represented with the
scales and other attributes of Anubis, the Mercury of Egypt. Both Anubis
of Egypt and Mercury of Rome were connected with the dog, and Anubis was
generally represented with the head of a dog or jackal. In _The Gnostics
and their Remains_, King illustrates on plate F a dog or jackal-headed
man which is subscribed with the name MICHAH, and it is probable the
word _make_ is closely associated with Micah or Mike.
[Illustration: ANUBIS. FIG. 17.]
[Illustration: FIG. 18.--From _An Essay on Ancient Coins, Medals,
and Gems_ (Walsh, R.).]
Eastern tradition states that St. Christopher, or St. Kit, was a
Canaanitish giant, 12 feet in stature, having the head of a dog. The
kilted figure represented in the Gnostic cameo here illustrated, is
seemingly that same Kitman, or Kaadman, Bandog, or Good Dog, and
_chien_, the French for dog, Irish _chuyn_, may be equated with _geon_,
_geant_, or _giant_. The worship of the _chien_ was carried in the Near
East to such a pitch that a great city named Cynopolis or Dog-Town
existed in its honour. The priests of Cynopolis, who maintained a golden
image of their divine _kuon_ or _chien_, termed themselves Kuons, and
these _kuons_ or dog-ministers were, according to some authorities, the
original Cohen family. A beautiful relievo of Adonis and his dog has
been unearthed at Albano in Etruria; Fig. 13 is accompanied by
bandogs(?); Albania in Asia Minor is mentioned by Maundeville as
abounding in fierce dogs, and in Albion, where we still retain memories
of the Dog Days, it will be shown to be probable that sacred dogs were
maintained near London at the mysteriously named Isle of Dogs. Until the
past fifty years the traditions of this island at Barking were so
uncanny that the site remained inviolate and unbuilt over. Whence, I
think, it may originally have been a _kennel_ or _Cynopolis_, where the
_kuons_ of the Cantians or Candians were religiously maintained.[134]
We shall deal more fully with the cult and symbolism of the dog in a
future chapter entitled "The Hound of Heaven". Not only in England, but
also in Ireland, place-names having reference to the dog are so
persistent that Sir J. Rhys surmised the dog was originally a totem in
that country.
In connection with _chuyn_, the Irish for dog, it may be noted that one
of the titles of St. Patrick--whence all Irishmen are known as
Paddies--was Taljean or Talchon, and moreover that Crete was
alternatively known to the ancients as Telchinea. In Cornish and in
Welsh _tal_ meant high; in old English it meant valiant, whence
Shakespeare says, "Thou'rt a _tall_ fellow"; in the Mediterranean the
Maltese _twil_; Arabic _twil_ meant _tall_ and hence we may conclude
that the present predominant meaning of our _tall_ was once far spread,
Talchon meaning either _tall geon_ or _tall chein_, _i.e._, dog-headed
giant Christopher.
The outer inscription around Fig. 18 is described as "altogether
barbarous and obscure," but as far as can be deciphered the remaining
words--"a corruption of Hebrew and Greek--signify 'the sun or star has
shone'".[135] I have already suggested a connection between _John_,
_geon_, _chien_, _shine_, _shone_, _sheen_, and _sun_.
It is probable that not only the literature of the saints but also many
of the national traditions of our own and other lands arose from the
misinterpretation of the symbolic signs and figures which preceded
writing. The "diabolical idols" of Britain, as Gildas admitted, far
exceeded those in Egypt; similarly in Crete, the fantastic hieroglyphics
not yet read or understood far out-Egypted Egypt. The Christian Fathers
fell foul with Gnostic philosophers for the supposed insult of
representing Christ on the Cross with the head of an ass; but it is
quite likely that the Gnostic intention--the ass being the symbol of
meekness--was to portray Christ's meekness, and that no insult was
intended. A notable instance of the way in which ignorant and facetious
aliens misconstrued the meaning of national or tribal emblems has been
preserved in the dialogue of a globe-trotting Greek who lived in the
second century of the present era. The incident, as self-recorded by the
chatty but unintelligent Greek, is Englished by Sir John Rhys as
follows: "The Celts call Heracles in the language of their country
Ogmios, and they make very strange representations of the god. With them
he is an extremely old man, with a bald forehead and his few remaining
hairs quite grey; his skin is wrinkled and embrowned by the sun to that
degree of swarthiness which is characteristic of men who have grown old
in a seafaring life: in fact, you would fancy him rather to be a Charon
or Japetus, one of the dwellers in Tartarus, or anybody rather than
Heracles. But although he is of this description he is, nevertheless,
attired like Heracles, for he has on him the lion's skin, and he has a
club in his right hand; he is duly equipped with a quiver, and his left
hand displays a bow stretched out: in these respects he is quite
Heracles. It struck me, then, that the Celts took such liberties with
the appearance of Heracles in order to insult the gods of the Greeks and
avenge themselves on him in their painting, because he once made a raid
on their territory, when in search of the herds of Geryon he harrassed
most of the western peoples. I have not, however, mentioned the most
whimsical part of the picture, for this old man Heracles draws after him
a great number of men bound by their ears, and the bonds are slender
cords wrought of gold and amber, like necklaces of the most beautiful
make; and although they are dragged on by such weak ties, they never try
to run away, though they could easily do it: nor do they at all resist
or struggle against them, planting their feet in the ground and throwing
their weight back in the direction contrary to that in which they are
being led. Quite the reverse: they follow with joyful countenance in a
merry mood, and praising him who leads them pressing on one and all, and
slackening their chains in their eagerness to proceed: in fact, they
look like men who would be grieved should they be set free. But that
which seemed to me the most absurd thing of all I will not hesitate also
to tell you: the painter, you see, had nowhere to fix the ends of the
cords, since the right hand of the god held the club and his left the
bow; so he pierced the tip of his tongue, and represented the people as
drawn on from it, and the god turns a smiling countenance towards those
whom he is leading. Now I stood a long time looking at these things, and
wondered, perplexed and indignant. But a certain Celt standing by, who
knew something about our ways, as he showed by speaking good Greek--a
man who was quite a philosopher, I take it, in local matters--said to
me, 'Stranger, I will tell you the secret of the painting, for you seem
very much troubled about it. We Celts do not consider the power of
speech to be Hermes, as you Greeks do, but we represent it by means of
Heracles, because he is much stronger than Hermes. Nor should you wonder
at his being represented as an old man, for the power of words is wont
to show its perfection in the aged; for your poets are no doubt right
when they say that the thoughts of young men turn with every wind, and
that age has something wiser to tell us than youth. And so it is that
honey pours from the tongue of that Nestor of yours, and the Trojan
orators speak with one voice of the delicacy of the lily, a voice well
covered, so to say, with bloom; for the bloom of flowers, if my memory
does not fail me, has the term lilies applied to it. So if this old man
Heracles, by the power of speech, draws men after him, tied to his
tongue by their ears, you have no reason to wonder, as you must be aware
of the close connection between the ears and the tongue. Nor is there
any injury done him by this latter being pierced; for I remember, said
he, learning while among you some comic iambics, to the effect that all
chattering fellows have the tongue bored at the tip. In a word, we Celts
are of opinion that Heracles himself performed everything by the power
of words, as he was a wise fellow, and that most of his compulsion was
effected by persuasion. His weapons, I take it, are his utterances,
which are sharp and well-aimed, swift to pierce the mind; and you too
say that words have wings.' Thus far the Celt."[136]
The moral of this incident may be applied to the svastika cross, an
ubiquitous symbol or trade-mark which Andrew Lang surmised might after
all have merely been "a bit of natural ornament". The sign of the cross
will be more fully considered subsequently, but meanwhile one may regard
the svastika as the trade-mark of Troy. The Cornish for _cross_ was
_treus_, and among the ancients the cross was the symbol of truce.[137]
The Sanscrit name _svastika_ is composed of _su_, meaning soft, gentle,
pleasing, or propitious, and _asti_ (Greek _esto_), meaning _being_. It
was universally the symbol of the Good Being or St. Albion, or St. All
Well; it retains its meaning in its name, and was the counterpart to the
Dove which symbolisms Innocence, Peace, Simplicity, and Goodwill. There
is no doubt that the two emblems were the insignia of the prehistoric
Giants, Titans, or followers of the Good Sun or Shine, or Sunshine, men
who trekked from one or several centres, to India, Tartary, China, and
Japan. Moreover, these trekkers whom we shall trace in America and
Polynesia, were seafaring and not overland folk, otherwise we should not
find the Cyclopean buildings with their concomitant symbols in Africa,
Mexico, Peru, and the islands of the Pacific.
The svastika
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