FOOTNOTES:
[905] Walford, E., Greater London, ii., 95.
[906] Mottingham, anciently Modingham, is supposed to be from Saxon modig, proud or lofty, and ham, a dwelling. Johnstone derives it as, “Enclosure of Moding,” or “of the Sons of Mod or Mot”. We may assume these people were followers of the Maid, and that Mottingham was equivalent to Maiden’s Home.
[907] Mackenzie, D. A., Myths of Crete, p. xlvi.
[908] Borlase, Wm., Antiquities of Cornwall, p. 296.
[909] Cliff Castles, p. 33.
[910] Cf. Baring-Gould, Cliff Castles.
[911] Chislehurst is supposed to mean the pebble hurst or wood, but Chislehurst is on chalk and is less pebbly than many places adjacent: at Chislehurst is White Horse Hill: Nantjizzel or jizzle valley, in Cornwall, is close to Carn Voel, alias the Diamond House, and thus, I am inclined to think that Chislehurst was a selhurst or selli’s wood sacred to Chi the great Jehu.
[912] Adams, W. H. A., Famous Caves and Catacombs, p. 90.
[913] Spence L., Myths of Mexico and Peru, p. 293.
[914] In 1867 Mr. Roach Smith published the following description: “The ground plan of the caves was like a six-leaved flower diverging from the central cup which is represented by the shaft. The central cave of each three is about 14 yards long and about 6 yards high. The side caves are smaller, about 7 yards long and 2 yards wide. The section is rather singular: taken from end to end the roof line is horizontal: but the floor rises at the end of the cave so that a sketch of the section from end to end of the two principal caves is like the outline of a boat, the shaft being in the position of the mainmast. The section across the cave is like the outline of an egg made to stand on its broader end. They are all hewn out of the chalk, the tool marks, like those which would be made by a pick, being still visible.”—Archæologia, i., 32.
Dr. Munro states: “They are usually found on the higher ground of the lower reaches of the Thames ... in fact, North Kent and South Essex appear to be studded with them.”—Prehistoric Britain, p. 222.
[915] Nat. Hist., lib. xvii., cap. viii.
[916] Part I.
[917] One of the most characteristic symbols of the Ægean is St. Andrew’s Cross: I have suggested that the Scotch Hendrie meant ancient drie or drew, and it is not without significance that tradition closely connects St. Andrews in Scotland with the Ægean. The legend runs that St. Rule arrived at St. Andrews bringing with him a precious relic—no less than Sanct Androwis Arme. “This Reule,” continues the annalist, “was ane monk of Grece born in Achaia and abbot in the town of Patras”—Simpkins, J. E., Fife, Country Folklore, vol. vli., p. 243.
[918] The Gnostics and their Remains, p. 72.
[919] “It is certain that ancient caves do exist in Palestine which in form and circumstance, and to some extent also in decoration, approximate so nearly to the Royston Cave that if any historical connection could be established between them, it would scarcely seem doubtful that the one is a copy of the other.”—Beldam, J., The Royston Cave, p. 24. According to the same authority there are indications at the Royston Cave “of an extreme and primeval antiquity,” and he adds, “it bears, indeed, a strong resemblance in form and dimension to the ancient British habitation; and certain marks and decorations in its oldest parts such as indentations and punctures, giving a diapered appearance to the surface, are very similar to what is seen in confessedly Druidical and Phœnician structures,” p. 22.
[920] Beldam, J., The Royston Cave, p. 24.
[921] In Caledonia dovecots or doocats are still superstitiously maintained: there may be a connection between doocat and the “Dowgate” Hill which neighbours the present Cathedral of St. Paul.
[922] Nichols, W. J., The Chislehurst Caves and Dene Holes, p. 5.
[923] Walford, E., Greater London, ii., 127.
[924] Ibid., p. 131.
[925] Goddard, A. R., Essex Archæological Society’s Transactions, vol. vii., 1899.
[926] Courtois, Dictionaire Geographique de l’Arrondissement de Saint Omer, p. 156.
[927] Wilson, J. G., Gazetteer, i., 1044.
[928] Eckenstein, L., Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes, p. 154.
[929] Dan or Don is one of the main European root river names; it occurs notably in the story of the Danaides who carried water in broken urns to fill a bottomless vessel, and again in Danaus who is said to have relieved Argos from drought.
[930] P. 242.
[931] Herbert, A., Cyclops, p. 154.
[932] Wright, T., Patrick’s Purgatory, p. 162.
[933] Ibid., p. 231.
[934] Travels in the East, p. 2.
[935] “This was the round church of St. Mary, divided into two stories by slabs of stone; in the upper part are four altars; on the eastern side below there is another, and to the right of it an empty tomb of stone, in which the Virgin Mary is said to have been buried; but who moved her body, or when this took place, no one can say. On entering this chamber, you see on the right-hand side a stone inserted in the wall, on which Christ knelt when He prayed on the night in which He was betrayed; and the marks of His knees are still seen on the stone, as if it had been as soft as wax.”
[936] Wright comments upon this: “Dr. Clarke is the only modern traveller who has given any notice of these subterranean chambers or pits, which he supposes to have been ancient places of idolatrous worship”.
[937] Cf. Baring-Gould, Curious Legends, p. 238.
[938] Mysteries of the Cabiri, ii., 393.
[939] Cf. Herbert, A., Cyclops, p. 155.
[940] Ibid., p. 154.
[941] It is not improbable that the Pied Piper incident was actually enacted annually at the Koppenburg, and that the children of Hamelyn were given the treat of being taken through some brilliantly lit cavern “joining the town and close at hand”. Whether the Koppenburg contains any grottos I am unable to say.
[942] Cyclops, p. 156.
[943] The authorities connect the surnames Kettle and Chettle with the Kettle or Cauldron of Norse mythology, whence Prof. Weekley writes: “The renowned Captain Kettle, described by his creator as a Welshman, must have descended from some hardy Norse pirate”. Why Norse? The word kettle, Gaelic cadhal, is supposedly borrowed from the Latin catillus, a small bowl: the Greek for cup is kotulos, and it is probable that kettle and cotyledon are alike radically Ket, Cot, or Cad. In Scotland adhan meant cauldron, whence Rust thinks that Edinbro or Dunedin was once a cauldron hill.
[944] Sandringham, near King’s Lynn, appeared in Domesday as Sandersincham: upon this Johnston comments, “Curious corruption. This is ‘Holy Dersingham, as compared with the next parish Dersingham. French saint, Latin sanctus, Holy.”
[945] Ogilvie, J. S., A Pilgrimage in Surrey, ii., 183.
[946] Ibid., p. 166.
[947] Ibid., p. 167. The italics are mine.
[948] “The old Bourne stream, generally known as the ‘Surrey Woe Water,’ has already commenced to flow through Caterham Valley, and at the moment there is quite a strong current of water rushing through an outlet at Purley.
“There are also pools along its course through Kenley, Whyteleafe, and Warlingham, which suggest that the stream is rising at its principal source, in the hills around Woldingham and Oxted, where it is thought there exists a huge natural underground reservoir, which, when full, syphons itself out at certain periods about every seven years.
“Tradition says that when the Bourne flows ‘out of season’ or at irregular times it foretells some great calamity. It certainly made its appearance in a fairly heavy flow in three of the years of the war, but last year, which will always be historical for the declaration of the armistice and the prelude of peace, there was no flow at all.”—The Star, 15th March, 1919.
[949] “Archæologia” (from The Gentleman’s Magazine), i., 283.
[950] Cf. Johnson, W., Byeways, pp. 411, 417.
[951] Ogilvy, J. S., A Pilgrimage in Surrey, ii., 164.
[952] That the solar horse was sacred among the Ganganoi of Hibernia is probable, for: “On that great festival of the peasantry, St. John’s Eve, it is the custom, at sunset on that evening, to kindle immense fires throughout the country, built like our bonfires, to a great height, the pile being composed of turf, bogwood, and such other combustibles as they can gather. The turf yields a steady, substantial body of fire, the bogwood a most brilliant flame: and the effect of these great beacons blazing on every hill, sending up volumes of smoke from every part of the horizon, is very remarkable. Early in the evening the peasants began to assemble, all habited in their best array, glowing with health, every countenance full of that sparkling animation and excess of enjoyment that characterise the enthusiastic people of the land. I had never seen anything resembling it: and was exceedingly delighted with their handsome, intelligent, merry faces; the bold bearing of the men, and the playful, but really modest deportment of the maidens; the vivacity of the aged people, and the wild glee of the children. The fire being kindled, a splendid blaze shot up; and for a while they stood contemplating it, with faces strangely disfigured by the peculiar light first emitted when the bogwood is thrown on. After a short pause, the ground was cleared in front of an old blind piper, the very beau-ideal of energy, drollery, and shrewdness, who, seated on a low chair, with a well-plenished jug within his reach, screwed his pipes to the liveliest tunes and the endless jig began.
“But something was to follow that puzzled me not a little. When the fire burned for some hours, and got low, an indispensable part of the ceremony commenced. Every one present of the peasantry passed through it, and several children were thrown across the sparkling embers; while a wooden frame of some 8 feet long, with a horse’s head fixed to one end, and a large white sheet thrown over it, concealing the wood and the man on whose head it was carried, made its appearance. This was greeted with loud shouts as the ‘white horse’; and having been safely carried by the skill of its bearer several times through the fire with a bold leap, it pursued the people, who ran screaming and laughing in every direction. I asked what the horse was meant for, and was told it represented all cattle.
“Here was the old pagan worship of Baal, if not of Moloch too, carried on openly and universally in the heart of a nominally Christian country, and by millions professing the Christian name! I was confounded; for I did not then know that Popery is only a crafty adaptation of pagan idolatries to its own scheme; and while I looked upon the now wildly excited people, with their children and, in a figure, all their cattle passing again and again through the fire, I almost questioned in my own mind the lawfulness of the spectacle, considered in the light that the Bible must, even to the natural heart, exhibit it in to those who confess the true God.”—Elizabeth, Charlotte, Personal Recollections, quoted from “S. M.” Sketches of Irish History, 1845.
[953] The Religion of Ancient Britain, p. 28.
[954] Prehistoric London, p. 137.
[955] Man the Primeval Savage, p. 328.
[956] Ibid., p. 66.
[957] Archæologia, i., 29.
[958] Le donseil probably here means donsol, or lord sun. Adonis and all the other Sun lords were supposed to have beep born in a cave on 25th December. We have seen that Michael’s Mount (family name St. Levan), was known alternatively as dinsol.
[959] Adams, W. H. D., Famous Caves and Catacombs, p. 183.
[960] Ægean Archæologia, p. 156.
[961] Mr. and Mrs. Hawes, Crete the Forerunner of Greece, p. 65.
[962] Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe, p. 183.
[963] “Herodotus in Book VIII. says that the ancients worshipped the Gods and Genii of any place under the form of serpents. ‘Set up,’ says some one in Persius’ Satires (No. 1), ‘some marks of reverence such as the painting of two serpents to let boys know that the place is sacred.’”—Seymour, F., Up Hill and Down Dale in Ancient Etruria, p. 237.
[964] Johnson, W., Byways, p. 304.
[965] Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, 1869.
[966] MacKenzie, D. A., Myths of Crete, p. 138.
[967] Light of Britannia, p. 200.
[968]Cf. Percy Reliques (Everyman’s Library), p. 21.
[969] The Baron’s Cave at Reigate is “about 150 feet long” (ante, [p. 799]).
[970] Percy Reliques, p. 20.
[971] Hawes, Crete the Forerunner of Greece, p. 125.
[972] The Cornish Riviera, p. 265.
[973] H. O. F., St. George for England, p. 15.
[974] A Pilgrimage in Surrey, ii., 177.
[975] At Bristol is White Lady’s Road.
[976] The curious name Newlove occurs as one of the erstwhile owners of the Margate grotto: the Lovelace family, for whose name the authorities offer no suggestions except that it is a corruption of the depressing Loveless, probably either once worshipped or acted the Lovelass. This conjecture has in its favour the fact that “many of our surnames are undoubtedly derived from characters assumed in dramatic performances and popular festivities”.—Weekley, A. B., The Romance of Names, p. 197. “To this class belong many surnames which have the form of abstract nouns, e.g., charity, verity, virtue, vice. Of similar origin are perhaps, bliss, chance, luck, and goodluck.”—Ibid., p. 197.
[977] With the old English custom of burying the dead in roses, and with the tradition that at times a white lady with a red rose in her mouth used to appear at Pendeen cave (Courtney, Miss M. L., Cornish Feasts and Folklore, p. 9), in Cornwall may be connoted the statement of Bunsen: “The Phœnicians had a grand flower show in which they hung chaplets and bunches of roses in their temples, and on the statue of the goddess Athena which is only a feminine form of Then or Thorn” (cf. Theta, The Thorn Tree, p. 40). The probability is that not only was the rose sacred to Athene but that Danes Elder (Sambucus ebulus), and Danes flower (Anemone pulsutilla) had no original reference to the Danes, but to the far older Dane, or donna, the white Lady. Both don and dan are used in English, as the equivalent of dominus, whence Shakespeare’s reference to Dan Cupid.
[978] Adams, W. H. D., Famous Caves and Catacombs, p. 177.
[979] Davidson, P., The Mistletoe and its Philosophy, p. 51.
[980] The term Christ is interpreted as “the anointed”.
[981] Akerman, J. Y., Ancient Coins, p. 25.
[982] We shall consider Robin Hood whom the authorities already equate with Odin in a subsequent chapter. In Robin Hood’s Cave have been discovered remains of paleolithic Art representing a horse’s head. In Kent the ceremony of the Hooden Horse used until recently to survive, and the same Hood or Odin may possibly be responsible for “Woodstock”.
[983] Crutched Friars in London marks the site of a priory of the freres of the Crutch or Crouch.
[984] The Sancreed chalice may be connoted ideally and philologically with the Sangraal, Provençal gradal: the apparition of a child in connection with the graal or gradal also permits the equation gradal = cradle. At Llandudno is the stone entitled cryd Tudno, i.e., the cradle of Tudno.
[985] Cyclops, p. 137
[986] The Mistletoe and its Philosophy, p. 31.
[987] “The young people being all assembled in a large meadow, the village band strikes up a simple but lively air, and marches forward, followed by the whole assemblage, leading hand-in-hand (or more closely linked in case of engaged couples) the whole keeping time to the tune with a lively step. The band or head of the serpent keeps marching in an ever-narrowing circle, whilst its train of dancing followers becomes coiled around it in circle after circle. It is now that the most interesting part of the dance commences, for the band, taking a sharp turn about, begins to retrace the circle, still followed as before, and a number of young men with long, leafy branches in their hands as standards, direct this counter-movement with almost military precision.”—Cf. Courtney, Miss M. L., Cornish Feasts and Folklore, p. 39.
[988] The name Kent here appears to be of immemorial antiquity, and was apparently first printed in a 1769 map which shows “Kent’s Hole Field”.
[989] Num. xxiv. 21.
[990] In modern Egyptian kunjey means kinship.
[991] 1 Sam. xv. 6.
[992] Adam, W. H. D., Famous Caves and Catacombs, p. 167.
[993] Adams, W. H. D., Famous Caves and Catacombs, p. 163.
[994] Usher, Dr. J., A Discourse on the Religion Anciently Professed by the Irish and British, p. 77.
[995] At the foot of this emblem the designer has introduced an intreccia or Solomon’s knot between his initials R. S.
[CONCLUSIONS]
“I can affirm that I have brought it from an utter darknesse to a thin mist, and have gonne further than any man before me.”—John Aubrey.
“But for my part I freely declare myself at a loss what to say to things so much obscured by their distant antiquity; and you, when you read these conjectures, will plainly perceive that I have only groped in the dark.”—Camden.
Fig. 484.—From Mythology of the Celtic Races (Rolleston, T. W.).
Fig. 485.—Ibid.
One may perhaps get a further sidelight on the marvellous labyrinthic cave temples of the ancients by a reference to the so-called worm-knots or cup-and-ring markings on cromlechs and menhirs. With regard to these sculptures Mr. T. W. Rolleston writes: “Another singular emblem, upon the meaning of which no light has yet been thrown, occurs frequently in connection with megalithic monuments. The accompanying illustrations show examples of it. Cup-shaped hollows are made in the surface of the stone, these are often surrounded with concentric rings, and from the cup one or more radial lines are drawn to a point outside the circumference of the rings. Occasionally a system of cups are joined by these lines, but more frequently they end a little way outside the widest of the rings. These strange markings are found in Great Britain and Ireland, in Brittany, and at various places in India, where they are called mahadeos. I have also found a curious example—for such it appears to be—in Dupaix’ Monuments of New Spain. It is reproduced in Lord Kingsborough’s Antiquities of Mexico, vol. lv. On the circular top of a cylindrical stone, known as the Triumphal Stone, is carved a central cup, with nine concentric circles round it, and a duct or channel cut straight from the cup through all the circles to the rim. Except that the design here is richly decorated and accurately drawn, it closely resembles a typical European cup-and-ring marking. That these markings mean something, and that wherever they are found they mean the same thing, can hardly be doubted, but what that meaning is remains yet a puzzle to antiquarians. The guess may perhaps be hazarded that they are diagrams or plans of a megalithic sepulchre. The central hollow represents the actual burial-place. The circles are the standing stones, fosses, and ramparts which often surrounded it: and the line or duct drawn from the centre outwards represents the subterranean approach to the sepulchre. The apparent avenue intention of the duct is clearly brought out in the varieties given herewith, which I take from Simpson. As the sepulchre was also a holy place or shrine, the occurrence of a representation of it among other carvings of a sacred character is natural enough; it would seem symbolically to indicate that the place was holy ground. How far this suggestion might apply to the Mexican example I am unable to say.”[996]
Mr. Rolleston is partially right in his idea that the designs are as it were ground plans of monuments, but that theory merely carries the point a step backward and the question remains—Why were monuments constructed in so involved and seemingly absurd a form? I hazard the conjecture that the Triumphal Stone with its central cup and nine concentric circles was a symbol of Life, and of the nine months requisite for the production of Human Life; that the duct or channel straight from the cup through all the circles to the rim implied the mystery of creation; and that the seemingly senseless meander of long passages was intended as a representation of the maw or stomach. That the Druids were practised physiologists is deducible from the complaint made against one of them, that he had dissected 600 bodies: the ancient anatomists might quite reasonably have traced Life to a germ or cell lying within a mazy and seemingly unending coil of viscera: we know that auguries were drawn from the condition of the entrails of sacrificial victims, whence originally the entrails were in all probability regarded as the seat of Life. Mahadeo, the Indian term for a worm-knot or cup-marking, resolves as it stands into maha, great; and deo, Goddess: our English word maw, meaning stomach, is evidently allied to the Hebrew moi, meaning bowels; with moeder, the Dutch for womb, may be connoted Mitra or Mithra, and perhaps Madura. It is well known that the chief Festival celebrated in the Indian cave temples at Madura and elsewhere is associated with the lingam, or emblem of sex, and it may be assumed that the invariable sixfold form of the Kentish dene holes was connected in some way with sex worship. The word six is for some reason, which I am unable to surmise, identical with the word sex: the Chaldees—who were probably not unconnected with the “pure Culdees” of Caledonia—taught that Man, male and female, was formed upon the sixth day: Orpheus calls the number six, “Father of the celestial and mortal powers,” and, says Davidson, “these considerations are derived from the doctrine of Numbers which was highly venerated by the Druids”.[997] Six columbas centring in the womb of the Virgin Mary were illustrated on page 790, and it will probably prove that columba meant holy womb, just as culver seemingly meant holy ovary.
Figs. 486 to 491.—Paper-marked Mediæval Emblems, Showing the Combination of Serpent, Circle, and Six Lobes. From Les Filigranes (Briquet, C. M.).
Figs. 492 to 502.—Paper-marked Mediæval Emblems, Showing Circle and Serpent “like the intestines”. From Les Filigranes (Briquet, C.M.).
The sixfold marigold or wheel was used not infrequently as an emblem during the Middle Ages: in Fig. 504—a mediæval paper-mark—this design is sanctified by a cross, and the centre of Fig. 486 consists of the circle and Serpent. Figs. 492 to 502 exhibit further varieties of this circle and Serpent design—the symbol of fructifying Life—and some of these examples bear a curious resemblance to the twists and convolutions of the entrails. In Egypt, Apep, the Giant Serpent, was said to have—“resembled the intestines”:[998] the word Apep is apparently related to pepsis, the Greek for digestion, as likewise to our pipe, meaning a long tube.
Fig. 503
Prof. Elliot Smith, who has recently published some lectures entitled The Evolution of the Dragon, sums up his conclusions as follows: “The dragon was originally a concrete expression of the divine powers of life-giving; but with the development of a higher conception of religious ideals it became relegated to a baser rôle, and eventually became the symbol of the powers of evil”.[999] I have elsewhere illustrated a mediæval dragon-mark which was sanctified by a cross, and it is a highly remarkable fact that the papermakers of the Middle Ages were evidently au fait with the ancient meaning of this sign. Several of their multifarious serpent designs are associated with the small circle or pearl, in which connection it is noteworthy that not only had pearls the reputation of being givers of Life, but that margan, the ancient Persian word for pearl, is officially interpreted as meaning mar, “giver,” and gan, “life”. This word, says Prof. Elliot Smith, has been borrowed in all the Turanian languages ranging from Hungary to Kamchatka, also in the non-Turanian speech of Western Asia, thence through Greek and Latin (margarita) to European languages.[1000] The Persian gan, in Zend yan, seeming corresponds to the European John, or Ian; and it is evident that Figs. 486 to 491 might justly be termed marguerites.
One of the most favourite decorations amongst Cretan artists is the eight-limbed octopus, and it is believed that the Mykenian volute or spiral is a variant of this emblem. According to Prof. Elliot Smith the evidence provided by Minoan paintings, and Mykenian decorative art, demonstrates that the spiral as a symbol of life-giving was definitely derived from the octopus.[1001] Other authorities believe that the octopus symbolised “the fertilising watery principle,” and that the svastika is a conventionalised form of this creature. In the light of these considerations it would thus seem highly probable that the knot, maze, Troy Town, or trou town, primarily was emblematic of the Maze or Womb of Life, conceived either physically or etherially in accord with the spirit of the time and people.
There is a certain amount of testimony to the fact that the Druids taught and worshipped within caves, and there is some reason to suppose that the Druids had a knowledge, not only of the lense, telescope, or Speculum of the Pervading Glance, but also of gunpowder, for Lucan, writing of a grove near Marseilles, remarks: “There is a report that the grove is often shaken and strangely moved, and that dreadful sounds are heard from its caverns; and that it is sometimes in a blaze without being consumed”. That abominations were committed in these eerie places I do not doubt: that animals were maintained in them there is good reason to suppose; and in all probability the story of the Cretan Minotaur, to whom Athenian youths were annually sacrificed, was based on a certain amount of fact. The Bull being the symbol of life and fecundity, there would have been peculiar propriety in maintaining a bull or toro, Celtic tarw, within the trou, labyrinth, or maze of life: upon two of the British coins here illustrated the Mithraic Bull appears in combination with an intreccia. The colossal labyrinths built in Egypt to the honour of the sacred toro are well known: in Europe remains of the horse are constantly discovered within caves,[1002] and it is a cognate fact that in Mexico a tapir—the nearest approach Mexico could seemingly show to a horse—was maintained in the subterranean temple of the god Votan.
Figs. 504 to 506.—British. From Akerman.
This Votan of South America is an interesting personality: according to the native traditions of the Chiapenese Indians—there was once a man named Votan, who was the grandson of the man who built the ark to save himself and family from the Deluge. Votan was ordered by the Lord to people America and “He came from the East” bringing with him seven families: Votan, we are further told, was of the race of Chan, and built a city in America named Nachan, after Chan his family name. The name Votan is seemingly a variant of Wotan, the Scandinavian All Father, and also of Wootton, which is a common Kentish family name: Wotan of Wednesday was, it is believed, once widely worshipped in Kent, notably at Woodnesborough, which is particularly associated with the tradition: on Christmas Eve Thanet used to celebrate a festival called Hoodening which consisted of decorating either the skull of a horse, or the wooden figure of a horse’s head, which then was perambulated on a pole by a man hidden beneath a sheet.[1003]
In Central America chan meant serpent, in which connection it is noteworthy that in Scandinavian mythology Wotan presides over the great world snake coiled at the roots of the mighty Ash Tree, named Iggdrasil. This word may, I think, be resolved into igg dra sil, or High Tree Holy, and the Ash of our innumerable Ashdowns, Ashtons, Ashleys, Ashursts, etc., may in all probability be equated not only with aes, the Welsh for tree, but also with oes, the Welsh for life. That Janus, whose coin was entitled the as, was King As has already been suggested, and that As or Ash[1004] was Odin is hardly open to doubt. According to Borlase (W. C.): “There is reason to believe that the Sun was a principal divinity worshipped under the name of Fal, Phol, Bel, Beli, Balor, and Balder, all synonymous terms in the comparative mythology of the Germanic peoples whether Celtic or Teutonic in speech. A curious passage in Johannes Cornubiensis permits us to equate this deity with Asch or As, one name of Odin. The more deeply we study this portion of the subject the more certain becomes the identity of the members of the pantheon of the two western branches of the Aryan-speaking peoples.”[1005]
The word Kent or Cantium is, I think, connected with Candia, but whether Votan of the race of Chan came from Candia, Cantium, or Scandinavia is a discussion which must be reserved for a subsequent volume: it is sufficient here to note in passing that one-third of the language of the Mayas is said to be pure Greek, whence the question has very pertinently been raised, “Who brought the dialect of Homer to America? or who took to Greece that of the Mayas?”
It is now well known that there was communication between the East and West long before America was rediscovered by Columbus, and there is nothing therefore improbable in the Chiapenese tradition that their Votan, after settling affairs in the West, visited Spain and Rome. The legend relates that Votan “went by the road which his brethren, the Culebres, had bored,” these Culebres being presumably either the inhabitants of Calabar in Africa now embraced in the Niger Protectorate, or of Calabria, the southernmost province of Italy. The allusion to a road which the Culebres had bored might be dismissed as a fiction were it not for the curious fact mentioned by Livingstone that tribes lived underground in Rua: “Some excavations are said to be thirty miles long and have running rills in them; a whole district can stand a siege in them. The ‘writings’ therein I have been told by some of the people are drawings of animals and not letters, otherwise I should have gone to see them.” The primitive but, in many respects, advanced culture of Mykenae and of Troy does not seem to have possessed the art of writing, and contemporary ideas must thus necessarily have been expressed by symbols akin to the multifarious animal-hieroglyphics of ancient Candia: it would even seem possible that the writings of underground Rua were parallel to the records of Egypt alleged in the following passage: “It is affirmed that the Egyptian priests, versed in all the branches of religious knowledge, and apprised of the approach of the Deluge, were fearful lest the divine worship should be effaced from the memory of man. To preserve the memory of it, therefore, they dug in various parts of the kingdom subterranean winding passages, on the walls of which they engraved their knowledge, under different forms of animals and birds, which they call hieroglyphics, and which are unintelligible to the Romans.”[1006]
The existence of underground ways seems to be not infrequent in Africa, for Captain Grant, who accompanied Captain Speke in his exploration for the source of the Nile, tells of a colossal tunnel or subway bored under the river Kaoma. Grant asked his native guide whether he had ever seen anything like it elsewhere and the guide replied, “This country reminds me of what I saw in the country to the south of Lake Tanganyika”: he then described a tunnel or subway under another river named also Kaoma, a tunnel so lengthy that it took the caravan from sunrise to noon to pass through. This was said to be so lofty that if mounted upon camels the top could not be touched: “Tall reeds the thickness of a walking-stick grew inside; the road was strewed with white pebbles, and so wide—400 yards—that they could see their way tolerably well while passing through it. The rocks looked as if they had been planed by artificial means.” The guide added that the people of Wambeh Lake shelter in this tunnel,[1007] and live there with their families and cattle.[1008]
In view of these Rider-Haggard-like facts it is unnecessary to discredit the tradition that the South American Votan of the tribe of Chan visited his kinsmen the Culebres, by the road which the Culebres had bored. The journey is said to have taken place in the year 3000 of the world or 1000 B.C., and among the spots alleged to have been visited was the city of Rome where Votan “saw the house of God building”. It is well known that great cities almost invariably exhibit traces of previous cities on the same site: Schliemann’s excavations at Troy proved the pre-existence of a succession of cities on the site of Troy, and the same fact has recently been established at Seville and elsewhere. The city of Rome is famous for a labyrinth of catacombs, the building of which has always been a mystery: the catacombs abound in pagan emblems, and it is, I believe, now generally supposed that they are of pre-Christian origin.
A correspondent of Notes and Queries suggested in 1876 that the Roman Catacombs were the work of the prehistoric Cimmerii who notoriously dwelt in subterraneis domiciliis. The rocks of the Crimea, notably at Inkerman, are honeycombed with caverns; in fact the burrowing proclivities of the Kymbri are proverbialised in the expression “Cimmerian darkness”. The same correspondent of Notes and Queries[1009] further drew attention to the remarkable fact that in the year 1770 coal mining operations in Ireland, at Fair Head, near The Giant’s Causeway, disclosed prehistoric quarryings together with stone hammers “of the rudest and most ancient form”. It is difficult to believe that prehistoric man, surrounded by inexhaustible supplies of fuel in the form of forest and peat, found it necessary to mine, with his poor implements, for coal fuel, and the description of the supposedly prehistoric mine—“wrought in the most expert manner, the chambers regularly dressed and pillars left at proper intervals to support the roof”—arouses not only a strong suspicion that the souterrain in question was actually a shrine, but also that the place-name Antrim—where these quarryings occur—may be connected with antre, a cave. When the Fair Head labyrinth was accidentally disclosed we are told that two lads were sent forward who soon found themselves in “numerous apartments in the mazes and windings of which they were completely bewildered and were finally extricated, not without some difficulty”.
With Joun of Etruria, and Janus of Janicula may be connoted the Ogane of Africa, whose toe, like that of Peter, was reverently kissed: that Northern Africa, Etruria, and Dodona were once peopled by a kindred race is one of the commonplaces of anthropology, and these Iberian people are, I think, traceable not only in Britain and Hibernia, but in the actual names Berat, Britain, Aparica (now Africa), Barbary, Berber or Barabbra, Epirus, Hebrew, Culebre, Calabria, and Celtiberia. Tacitus, who describes the ancient Britons as being dark complexioned and curly haired, adds: “that portion of Spain in front of Britain encourages the belief that the ancient Iberians had come over and colonised this district—the Gauls took possession of the adjacent coast”. According to Huxley and Laing the aboriginal inhabitants of Caledonia were from—“the great Iberian family, the same stock as the Berbers of North Africa”:[1010] the prehistoric inhabitants of Wales similarly belonged to the Iberian stock and—“no other race of men existed in Wales until the neolithic period”.[1011]
In Cornwall the persisting Iberian type is popularly supposed to be the offspring of Spanish sailors wrecked at the time of the Armada, but this theory is not countenanced by anthropologists. Speaking of the short natives of the Hebridean island of Barra—a significant name—Campbell, in his West Highland Tales, observes: “Behind the fire sat a girl with one of these strange foreign faces which are occasionally to be seen in the Western Isles, a face which reminded me of the Nineveh sculptures, and of faces seen in St. Sebastian. Her hair was as black as night, her clear eyes glittered through the peat smoke. Her complexion was dark and her features so unlike those who sat about her, that I asked if she were a native of the island, and learned that she was a Highland girl.”
Whether this Barra maiden was a persistent type of Hebrew may be questioned: she was certainly not Mongolian, the other great family whose traces still persist here. The Hebrews traditionally came from Candia, and the Candians or Cretans are universally described as diminutive and dark-haired: according to Prof. Keith the typical Bronze Age man was narrow-faced, round-headed, handsome, and about 5 feet 8 inches in height. “It is curious,” he says, “that men of this type are playing leading parts in large proportion to the number living.”
The antithesis to the round-headed Gael, and the oval-headed Cynbro is the square-headed Teuton, Finn, or Mongol. While the Cretan was essentially creative and artistic, we are told on the other hand that “it must always be remembered that the Phœnicians were only intermediaries and created no art of their own”.[1012] The same verity is still curiously true of the modern Jew who almost invariably is an intermediary, rarely if ever a producer: neither in Caledonia, Cambria, or Hibernia does one often find a Jewish nose, and the craftsmen-artists of the primeval world were, I think, not the Jews of Tyre, but the older Jous of Candia or Crete. In the name Drew, translated to have meant skilful, we have apparently a true tradition of the Jous of Cornwall and the Jous of Droia, or Troy.
It is presumably the Mongolian influence in Prussia, the home of the square-headed, that justified Matthew Arnold in writing: “The universal dead-level of plainness and homeliness, the lack of all beauty and distinction in form and feature, the slowness and clumsiness of the language, the eternal beer, sausages, and bad tobacco, the blank commonness everywhere pressing at last like a weight on the spirits of the traveller in Northern Germany, and making him impatient to be gone—this is the weak side, the industry, the well-doing, the patient, steady elaboration of things, the idea of science governing all departments of human activity—this is the strong side; and through this side of her genius, Germany has already obtained excellent results.”
The unimaginative and plodding German is the antithesis to the impressionable, poetic, and romantic Celt, as probably were the loathed Magogei to the chic Cretans whose national characteristics are commemorated in their frescoes and vases. I have already suggested that the same antipathies existed between the ugsome Mongolians and the swarthy slim Iberians of Epirus or Albania. Descendants of both Mongolians and Jous undoubtedly exist to-day in Britain, particularly in Cornwall, where Dr. Beddoe notes and comments upon the slanting Ugrian or Mongolian eye. The same authority observes that anthropologists had long been calling out for the remains of an Iberian, or pre-Celtic, language in the British Isles before their philological brethren awoke to the consciousness of their existence. “Mongolian or Ugrian types have been recognised though less distinctly; and now Ugrian grammatical forms are being dimly discerned in the Welsh and Irish languages.”[1013] In Ireland only two Iberian words are known to have survived, one of which, as we have seen, was fern, meaning anything good. In view of the fact that the Celtiberians were also known as Virones,[1014] and as the Berones (these last named neighbouring the Pyrenees), it would seem possible that the Iberians were the Hibernians, and had originally a first-class reputation. As already noted our records state of Prydain, the son of Aedd, that before his advent there was little gentleness in Britain, and only a superiority in oppression.
It is probable that the Iberians were the original builders of barrows, and the excavators of the stupendous burrows, found from Burmah to Peru, and from Aparica to Barra: in which direction the Iberian culture flowed it would be premature at present to discuss, but the question will ultimately be settled by an exercise of the perfectly sound canon of etymology, that in comparing two words a and b belonging to the same language, of which a contains a lesser number of syllables, a must be taken to be a more original word unless there be evidence of contractions or other corruption. The theory of a generation ago that our innumerable British monosyllables are testimonies of phonetic decay is probably as false as many similar notions that have recently been relegated to limbo. In a paroxysm of enthusiasm for the German-made Science of Language, and for the theory that sound etymology has nothing to do with sound, one of the disciples of Max Müller has observed that unless every letter in a modern word can be scientifically accounted for according to rule the derivation and definition cannot be accepted. The Dictionaries now prove that spelling was a whimsical, temporary, shallow thing, and it will, I am confident, be an accepted axiom in the future that “Language begins with voice, language ends with voice”. If the present book fails to add any weight to this dictum of Latham the evidence is none the less everywhere, and is merely awaiting the shaping hand of a stronger, more competent, and more influential workman than the present writer.
Whether or not the radicals I have used will prove to be chips of Iberian speech remains to be further tested, but in any case, the official contention that the language we speak to-day is, “of course, in no sense native to England but was brought thither by the German tribes who conquered the island in the fifth and sixth centuries”[1015] may be confidently impugned: Prof. Smith is, however, doubtless correct in his statement that when our Anglo-Saxon ancestors came first to ravage Britain, and finally to settle there, they found the island inhabited by a people “weaker, indeed, but infinitely more civilised than themselves”.
The present essay will not have been published in vain if to any extent it discredits the dull contempt in which our traditions and ancient coinage are now held; still less if it negatives the offensive supposition that England was “the one purely German nation which arose out of the wreck of Rome,” and that practically all our English place-names are of German origin.
On re-reading my MSS. in as far as possible a detached and impartial spirit, there would appear to be much prima facie evidence in favour of the traditional belief that these islands once possessed a very ancient culture, and that the Kimbri, or followers of Brute, were originally pirates or adventurers who reached these shores “over the hazy sea from the summer country which is called Deffrobani, that is where Constantinoblys now stands”.[1016] Constantinople—originally the Greek colony of Byzantium—is the city nearest the site of Troy; Ægean influences have long been recognised in Britain, and the accepted theory is that these influences penetrated overland via Gaul. This supposition seems, however, to be strikingly negatived in a fact noted recently by Prof. Macalister, who, speaking of the spiral decoration found alike at Mykenae and New Grange, observes: “But spirals cannot travel through the air; they must be depicted on some portable object in order to find their way from Orchomenos to the neighbourhood of Drogheda. The lines of the trade routes connecting these distant places ought to be peppered with objects of late Minoan Art-bearing spirals. Even a few painted potsherds would be sufficient. But there is no such thing. The media through which the spiral patterns were ex hypothesi carried to the north have totally disappeared.”[1017] We have seen a similar lack of connective evidence in the case of the British spearhead, which seemingly either evolved independently in this country, or was brought hither by sea from the Ægean.
With regard to Celtic and Ægean spiral decoration, Prof. Macalister writes: “People in the cultural stage of the builders of New Grange do not cultivate Art for Art’s sake. Some simple religious or magical significance must lie hidden in these patterns.... Therefore, if we are to suppose that the barbarians acquired the spiral patterns from the Ægean merchants we must once more postulate the enthusiastic trading missionary who taught them how to draw spirals in the intervals of business. I, for one, cannot believe in that engaging altruist. I prefer to believe that the spirals at New Grange are not derived from the Ægean at all, but that they are an independent growth.”[1018]
The Trojans were proverbially a pious race, and personally I should prefer the theory of enthusiastic (sea) trading missionaries to the painfully overworked hypothesis of independent growth.
According to Mr. Donald A. Mackenzie the process of developing symbols from natural objects can be traced even in the Paleolithic Age:[1019] the earliest town at Troy which was built in the Neolithic Age existed on a hillock and has been likened to the ubiquitous hill fort of Caledonia; seemingly Troy was originally a Dunhill and it was not until about 2500 B.C. that the original hillock, dunhill, or Athene Hill,[1020] was levelled. It is a most remarkable fact that, according to Prof. Virchow, “the few skulls which were saved out of the lower cities have this in common, that without exception they present the character of a more civilised people: all savage peculiarities in the stricter sense are entirely wanting in them”.[1021] So far, then, as the testimony of anthropology carries weight, the Trojan fell from a high state of grace, and neolithic Man was quite as capable of the fair humanities as any modern Doctor of Divinity.
If, as I now suggest, the Iberians, the Hebrews, and the British or Kimbry were originally one and the same race, and if, as I further suggest, fragments of the “British” language are recoverable, it follows that the same words will unlock doors in every direction where Iberian or Kimbrian influence permeated: this in a subsequent volume I shall endeavour to show is actually the case, from Burmah to Peru.[1022]
Schliemann mentions in connection with Mykenae a small stream known nowadays as the Perseia, and as Mykenae was said to have been founded by Perseus, the stream Perseia was presumably connected with the ancient pherepolis. The survival of this fairy name is the more remarkable as Mykenae itself was utterly destroyed, buried, and lost sight of, yet the title of this rivulet survived: is there any valid reason to deny a similar vitality and antiquity to the brook- and river-names of Britain? Most of these have been complacently ascribed to German settlers, others to Keltic words, but some are admittedly pre-Keltic. Amongst the group of “rare insolubles” occurs the river Kennet which flows past Abury, and may be connoted with the river Kent in the Kendal district. Apart from the Kentish Cantii Herodotus speaks of a race called Kynetes or Kynesii, both of which terms, as Sir John Rhys says, “have a look of Greek words meaning dogmen”: according to Herodotus, “the Celts are outside the Pillars of Hercules and they border on the Kynetii, who dwell the farthest away towards the west of the inhabitants of Europe”. Ancient writers locate the Kynetes in the west of Spain which, according to Rhys, “suggests a still more important inference—namely, that there existed in Herodotus’ time a continental people of the same origin and habits as the non-Celtic aborigines of these islands”.[1023] Kennet, as we have seen, was a British word meaning Greyhound; I think the Kynetes were probably worshippers of every variety of chien, and that dog-headed St. Christopher, the kindly giant of Canaan, was the jackal-headed “Mercury” of the track-making merchants of Candia.[1024] In Ireland there figures in the Pantheon a Caindea, whose name is understood to mean the gentle goddess: the fact of the dove being held in such high estimation in Candia,[1025] as elsewhere, is presumptive evidence of the Candian goddess being fundamentally regarded as gentle, and that Candian adventurers were gentlemen. That Crete or Candia was an Idaeal, Idyllic, and an Aerial island is implied not only by its titles Idaea, Doliche, and Aeria, but also by the characteristics of its Art.
Etymology—by which I mean a Science that does not quibble at everything beyond the view of Mrs. Markham as being out of bounds—permits us to assume that the faith of the Iberii was belief in the Iberian peyrou, the Parthian peri, the British perry, phairy, or fairy. Anthropologists patronisingly describe the creed of primitive man as being animism by which they mean that an anima or soul was attributed to everything on earth: this may be a credulous and degraded faith, or it may be sublimated into the conception of the Egyptian philosophers of whom it has been said: “In their view the earth was a mirror of the heavens, and celestial intelligences were represented by beasts, birds, fishes, gems, and even by rocks, metals, and plants. The harmony of the spheres was answered by the music of the temples, and the world beheld nothing that was not a type of something divine.”
Speaking of the fairy tales of Ireland W. B. Yeats characterises them as full of simplicity and musical occurrences: “They are,” he adds, “the literature of a class for whom every incident in the old rut of birth, love, pain, and death, has cropped up unchanged for centuries; who have steeped everything in the heart to whom everything is a symbol”. It is generally supposed that fairy tales are of a higher antiquity than cromlechs and stone avenues, and anthropologists have not hesitated to extract from them incidents of crude character as evidence of the barbarous and objectionable period in which they originated. With a curious perversity Anthropology has, however, ignored the fair humanities of phairie, while eagerly seizing upon its crudities: in view of the prophet Micah’s environment there seems to me to be no justification for such prejudice, and if fairy-tale is really archaic its beauties may quite well be coeval with its horrors.
In his booklet on Folklore Mr. Sydney Hartland observes: “Turning from savage nations to the peasantry of civilised Europe, you will be still more astonished to learn that up to the present time the very same conditions of thought are discernible wherever they are untouched by modern education and the industrial and commercial revolution of the last hundred years. There can only be one interpretation of this. The human mind, alike in Europe and in America, in Africa and in the South Seas, works in the same way, according to the same laws.” This one and only permissible theory of independent evolution is daily losing ground, and in any case it can hardly be pushed to such extremes as identity of words and place-names.
But while I am convinced that Crete was a culture-centre of immense importance, this bright and particular star, was, one must think, too small a place to account for the vast influence apparently traceable to it. Schliemann, whom nobody now ridicules, claimed to have discovered at Troy a bronze vase inscribed in Phœnicean characters with the words: “From King Chronos of Atlantis,” and in a paper opened after his death he expressed his belief: “I have come to the conclusion that Atlantis was not only a great territory between America and the West Coast of Africa, but the cradle of all our civilisation as well”. The anonymous suggestion which appeared a few years ago in the columns of The Times, that Crete was the reality of the wonderful island “fabled” by Plato, seems to me to have nothing to support it, and I would commend to the attention of those interested the facts collected by Ignatius Donnelly in Atlantis, and by others elsewhere. Personally I incline to the opinion that Plato’s story was well founded, and that the identities found in Peru and Mexico, Britain, the Iberian Peninsula, and Northern Africa are due to these countries, like the Isles of the Mediterranean, being situated in the full sweep of Atlantean influence.
According to Plato, the inhabitants of Atlantis (“an island situated in front of the straits which you call the columns of Hercules: the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together and was the way to other islands”) were not only highly civilised, but they “despised everything but virtue not caring for their present state of life and thinking lightly on the possession of gold and other property”. It is thus quite possible that the Atlanteans and not the pious Trojans were the enthusiastic and altruistic missionaries who carried the spiral ornament to Mykenae as to New Grange. Prof. Macalister finds it difficult to believe in the existence of such a frame of mind, but it seems to accord very closely to that of the hypothetical peace-loving Aryans or “noble nations” which etymologists have already been compelled to postulate, and which my own findings both herein and elsewhere endorse: the semi-supernaturalness of the Idaens has already been noted, as likewise has that of the ancient Britons and of the modern Bretons.
In the year 1508 a French vessel met with a boat full of American Indians not far from the English coast,[1026] and there is thus one historic warrant for the possibility of very ancient maritime contact between Europe and America. The Maoris of New Zealand emigrated from Polynesia in frail canoes during the historic period, and I have little doubt that the Maoris of to-day, who tattoo themselves with spirals similar to those found upon the prehistoric monuments of Britain, were cognate with the woad-tattoed Britons, who opposed their naked bodies to the invincible legends of Cæsar. One can best account for the many and close connections between the South Sea islands and elsewhere by the supposition that some of these islands were colonised by Atlantis, Lyonesse, or whatever the traditional lost island was entitled: and as many of the maritime Atlanteans must have been at sea when the alleged catastrophe occurred, these survivors would have carried the dire news to many distant lands: whence perhaps the almost universal tradition of a Flood, and the salvation of only one boat load of people.
It has been said that the chief thing which makes Japan so fascinating a land to dwell in is the consciousness that you are there living in an atmosphere of universal kindliness and courtesy. There are still to-day races in Polynesia who display the same kindly and almost angelic dispositions,[1027] whence there is nothing ridiculous in the supposition that Peru, whose natives claimed to be children of the Sun, was associated with peyrou, the Iberian for phairy, or that the original Angles were deemed to be angels, and England or Inghilterra their country.
One of the most noted beliefs of all races, whether civilised or savage, is the erstwhile existence of a Golden Age when all men were well happified, and if existence to primitive man was merely the hideous and protracted nightmare which anthropologists assume, it is difficult to see at what period of his upward climb this curiously idyllic story came into existence: it would be simpler to assume that the tradition had some foundation in fact, and was not merely the frenzied invention of a dreamer. No race possesses more beautiful traditions of the Adamic Age than the British, and I have little doubt that the four quarters of the Holy Rood or Wheel are connected with the four fabulous Cities of Enchantment which figure in Keltic imagination. According to Irish MSS. the Tuatha de Danaan, or Tribe of the Children of Don, after suffering a terrible defeat at the hands of the Fomorians, quitted Ireland, returned to Thebes, and gave themselves up to the study of Magic: leaving Greece they next went to Denmark (named after them) where they founded four great schools of diabolical learning—the Four Cities of Keltic imagination. It would thus seem possible that the Children of Don were the fabricators of the Eden, or Adam, tradition, and that they may be connoted with the Danoi under which name Homer habitually refers to the Greeks: with these Danoi or Danaia, Dr. Latham connotes the Hebrew tribe of Dan, supposing that both these peoples traced their origin to the same culture-hero.[1028] That Gardens of Eden were frequent in these islands has been evidenced in a preceding chapter, and in Asia the custom of constructing Edens or Terrestrial Paradises was equally prevalent: Maundeville and other travellers have left detailed accounts of these abris, all of which seem to have been constructed more or less to the standard design of the Garden of Eden, watered by four rivers, with a Tree or Fountain in the midst.
It is supposed that the celebrated Epistle of Prester John was a malicious antepapal concoction of the Gnostic Troubadours, or Servants of Love: these were certainly the shuttles that disseminated it over Europe. I have elsewhere endeavoured to show the role played in mediæval Europe by the Troubadours and Minnesingers (Love Singers), and the subject might be infinitely extended. The derivation of trouvere, or troubadour, from trouver to find, is probably too superficial, and if the matter were more fully investigated it is probable that, like the Merry Andrew, these mystic singers and philanderers originated from some Troy or Ancient Troy. Whether the drui or druids are similarly traceable to the same root is debatable, but that the bards of Britain were depositaries and disseminators of the Gnosis I do not doubt: the evidence on that point is not only the testimony of outsiders, but it is inherent in the literature itself, and whether this literature was committed to writing in the sixth, twelfth, or eighteenth century is immaterial. There are in existence many unquestionably prehistoric tales and ideas which have been handed down verbally, and committed to writing for the first time only within the past few years: many more are living viva voce, and are not yet registered. The Welsh bards, like the bards of other races, were a recognised class, graduates in a particular Art, and were strictly and definitely trained in the traditional lore of their profession. This hereditary order which was known to the Romans certainly as early as 200 B.C., like the bards of other countries, almost unquestionably transmitted an enormous literature solely by word of mouth.[1029] If the feats of even the modern human memory were not well vouched for they would not be credited: in the past, the Zend Avesta, the Kalevala, the Popul Vuh, Homer, much of the Old Testament, and in fact all very ancient literature has come down to us simply by memory alone.
To an inquirer such as myself, incompetent to criticise Welsh literature, yet hesitating to accept the once current theories of fabrication, forgery, and deception, it is peculiarly gratifying to find so distinguished a scholar as Sir John Morris-Jones vindicating at any rate some portion of the suspect literature. In his study Taliesin, Sir John grinds detractors past and present into as fine and small a powder as that to which Spedding imperturbably reduced the flashy superficialities of Macaulay,[1030] and I confess it has caused me most agreeable emotions to find Sir John alluding to a certain truculent D.Litt. as “that naïve type of mind which naturally assumes that what it does not understand is mere silliness”:[1031] it is even more stimulating to witness the iconoclastic and dogmatic Nash rolled in the dust for his “unparalleled impudence” in laying down the law of antiquity in language.
Among the fragments of Welsh poetry occurs the claim “Bardism or Druidism originated in Britain—pure Bardism was never well understood in other countries—of whatever country they might be, they are entitled Bards according to the rights and institutes of the Bards of the Island of Britain.”[1032] Before superciliously dismissing the high claims of British Bardism it would be well to consider not only the recent findings of Prof. Sir John Morris-Jones, but to bear steadily in mind the following points: (1) The cultured shape of the extraordinarily ancient British skull: (2) Avebury, the strangest megalithic monument in the world: (3) Stonehenge, a unique and most developed form of stone circle: (4) that England was the principal home of stone circles: (5) that England not only possessed the greatest earth-pyramid in the world, but that Britain was peculiarly the home of the barrow, and that there is no word barrow in either Greek or Latin, thus seeming to have been essentially British: (6) that in Cæsar’s time the youth of the Continent were sent to Britain to study the Druidic philosophy which was believed to have originated there: (7) the remarkable character of the English coinage which dates back admittedly to 200 B.C., and for aught one knows much earlier: (8) that the art of enamelling on bronze probably originated in Britain, and the craft of spear-making evolved there.
In Earthwork of England Mr. Allcroft observes: “Of all the many thousands of earth-works of various kinds to be found in England, those about which anything is known are very few, those of which there remains nothing more to be known scarcely exist. Each individual example is in itself a new problem in history, chronology, ethnology, and anthropology; within every one lie the hidden possibilities of a revolution in knowledge. We are proud of a history of nearly twenty centuries: we have the materials for a history which goes back beyond that time to centuries as yet undated. The testimony of records carries the tale back to a certain point: beyond that point is only the testimony of archæology, and of all the manifold branches of archæology none is so practicable, so promising, yet so little explored, as that which is concerned with earthworks. Within them lie hidden all the secrets of time before history begins, and by their means only can that history be put into writing: they are the back numbers of the island’s story, as yet unread, much less indexed.”
The prehistoric building here illustrated might be any age: it is standing to-day in a remote corner of Britain, and, so far as I am able to trace, has been hitherto uncharted and unrecognised. Whether it were a temple or the compound of a chieftain, the authorities to whom it has been referred are unable to say: my brother, to whom its discovery was due, is of the opinion that it was a temple, and on a subsequent occasion we hope—after digging—to publish a more detailed account of it, merely now noting it as an example of the innumerable objects of interest which exist in this country at present unrecognised, unconsidered, and unvalued.
Fig. 507.—Ground plan of a hitherto Uncharted English Edifice.
Evidence has been forthcoming that a cave in Oban was occupied by human beings, at an epoch when the sea was 30 feet higher than its present level, and it is now generally admitted that humanity existed in these islands prior to the Glacial Period. Archæology of the future will provide strong wine of astonishment to her followers: she will prove beyond question that mythology is not merely fossil philosophy, but is likewise to a large extent fossil history, and that the records may be pieced together from the traditionary blissful Tertiary Period to that time and onwards when a perilous torrent-fire struck the earth, resulting in sequent horrors, and the slow replenishment of the world.[1033] She will prove, I think, further that the land now called England possesses a documentary record, and an intellectual ancestry which is practically beyond computation, and if History shies at her findings she will instance Brandon as a typical example of continuous occupation and unbroken sequence from the Stone Age to to-day. Further, she will in all probability prove that in either Crete or England the main doctrines of Christianity were practically indigenous. The version of Christianity which returned to us about 1500 years ago is now generally attributed to the mystic Therapeuts of Egypt: from the time it was officially adopted by the temporal powers the materialising process seems almost steadily to have progressed, notwithstanding the allegorising teaching of the Troubadours and kindred Gnostics who claimed really to know.[1034] Happily petrifaction is a preservative, and it may be doubted whether when Comparative Archæology has finished her researches any of the prehistoric Christianity preached by the Celtic Christies will prove actually lost, and whether the supposedly impassable gulf of ages which separates the earliest literature from the testimony of the Stones may not practically be bridged. That our popular customs were the detrita of dramatised mythology, and that many of these customs evidence an astonishing beauty of imagination and depth of thought, will not be questioned except by those unfamiliar with English folklore. In many cases the quaint customs which still linger in the countryside, and the cults which underlie them are, as Dr. Rendel Harris has recently observed, those of misunderstood rituals and lost divinities, and thus embalmed like flies in the amber of unchanging habit turn out to be the very earliest beliefs and the most primitive religious acts of the human race: “Every surviving fragment of such a ritual is as valuable to us as a page of an early Gospel which time has blurred or whose first hand has been overwritten”.[1035]
Few nowadays have any sympathy with the theories which a generation ago autocratically ascribed Myth to a Disease of Language; still less is it possible to accept the more modern supposition that Mythology is merely the gross growth of disgusting savagery! There is more truth in Bacon’s dictum that in the first ages when such inventions and conclusions of the human reason as are now trite and common were new, and little known, all things abounded with fables, parables, similes, comparisons, and illusions which were not intended to conceal, but to inform and teach. Research tends more and more to justify Bacon in his penetrating judgment: “And this principally raises my esteem of these fables, which I receive not as the product of the age or invention of the poets, but as sacred relics, gentle whispers, and the breath of better times, that from the traditions of more ancient nations came at length into the flutes and trumpets of the Greeks”. Whence these sacred relics came, whether from Atlantis, Crete, or Britain,[1036] we are not yet in a position to assert, but eventually the Comparative Method will decide this point. Dr. Rendel Harris who has, to quote his own words, “audaciously affirmed that Apollo was only our apple in disguise,”[1037] further concludes: “It is tolerably certain that Apollo in the Greek religion is a migration from the more northerly regions and his mythical home is somewhere at the back of the north wind”.[1038] While I am in sympathy with many of Dr. Harris’ findings, it is, however, difficult to accept his conclusions that the Olympian divinities were merely “personifications of, or projections from the vegetable word”: the greater probability seems to me that the Apple was named after Apollo rather than Apollo from the Apple: similarly the mandrake was in greater likelihood an emblem of Venus rather than Aphrodite a projection from the Mandrake. The Venus of the Gael was Bride or Brigit, “The Presiding Care,” who was represented with a brat in her arms: there is an old Spanish proverb to the effect that “An ounce of Mother is worth a ton of Priest”; nowhere was Woman more devoutly idealised than among the Celts, and it is more probable that the conception of an immaculate Great Mother originated somewhere in Europe rather than in the sensuous and woman-degrading East. Of the legends of Ireland Mr. Westropp has recently observed: “When we have removed the strata of euhemerist fiction and rubbish from the ruin, the foundations and beautiful fragments of the once noble fane of Irish mythology will stand clear to the sun”:[1039] “Whether,” said Squire, “the great edifice of Celtic mythology will ever be wholly restored one can at present only speculate. Its colossal fragments are perhaps too deeply buried and too widely scattered. But even as it stands ruined it is a mighty quarry from which poets yet unborn will hew spiritual marble for houses not made with hands.”
Finis
British. From Akerman.