ANTHROPOLOGY
ARCHAIC ENGLAND. By Harold Bayley. London: Chapman & Hall. 1919. Medium 8vo. pp. 894. 25s. net.
The publishers' announcement informs us that "Mr. Harold Bayley by his graduated studies in Elizabethan Literature, Symbolism, and the Renaissance has established his position as an original and interesting thinker." Again, on its paper wrapper the present work is styled, "this profound and far-reaching contribution to English Archæology." If a pill were to be puffed in this way the inference might be drawn that the interested party did not belong to the medical profession. By parity of reasoning one conjectured before opening the book that Mr. Bayley was not versed in the gentle tradition of the archæological fraternity. But to read the introduction almost disarms the critic. Mr. Bayley cannot, he confesses, afford to emulate the Oxford tutor, described in a novel of Mr. Stephen McKenna, who set himself to write a history of the Third French Republic, and thirty years later had satisfactorily concluded his introductory chapter on the origin of Kingship. He complains that his literary hobbies have necessarily to be indulged more or less furtively in restaurants and railway-trains. Nevertheless he tries "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." Thus circumstances have forced him to become a literary "hustler"; and, since self-advertisement is germane to the hustling temper, and moreover in this case is quite undisguised and naïve, it may almost be forgiven.
Not that Mr. Bayley wants to be forgiven. It would seem that the hustling and the hard-hitting tendencies are naturally akin. For the philologists have attacked him on account of another book. Consequently, in this book he pulverises the philologists one and all; there is nothing left of them. Nor do the anthropologists come off any better. Even sex does not protect them. Miss Jane Harrison, for instance, was rash enough to say that gods evolve from choral dances and similar ceremonies, herein but following the common opinion that in the development of religion ritual is prior to dogma. Mr. Bayley will have none of it. "The theory here assumed," he exclaims, "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." How can a reviewer proceed to deal with Mr. Bayley's views without trepidation? Fænum habet in cornu.
"To me," says Mr. Bayley, "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." It would have certainly been more sympathetic if Miss Harrison had called Apollo or Dionysus a gollywog, and let it go at that. Mr. Bayley goes on to moralise—and the passage illustrates at once his discursive manner and the methods of the symbolistic philology—as follows: "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 was also entitled Doliche, which may be spelled to-day Idyllic.... We shall also see as we proceed that the mystic philosophy known to history as the Gnosis 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 sciences, came probably the Greek word gnossis, meaning knowledge." Why "probably"?
But to proceed to Mr. Bayley's main contention. He would have us take less pride in any connection we may have had with the Anglo-Saxons—were they not Huns?—and, contrariwise, think more of our far more worthy ancestors the ancient Britons. Theirs was a wisdom ultimately derived from the culture-lands of the East. Are not the identities between Welsh and Hebrew "close and pressing." Is it not the fact that "entire sentences of archaic Hebraisms are similarly to be found in the now obsolete Cornish language." Unfortunately the Phœnicians have left no literature. The Greeks have, however, and we are thus able to connect Achill in Ireland with Achilles, and so on. Similarly philology proves the truth of the tale that Brutus with his Trojans landed at Totnes and thence marched to Troynovant or New Troy, now known as London. Not that the Trojans on their arrival found it any easier than it is now to obtain decent lodgings in London. For tre (which is obviously Troy) means in Cornish dwelling, and in French trou means hole. So the earliest Troys "were maybe caves," though they ultimately became towers or tors; witness the number of the same in the West of England. It is likewise obvious that Troy, Tyre, and Etruria are from the same root. So it follows that "the men of Tarshish, Tyre, Troy, or Etruria, towed, trekked, travelled, tramped, traded, and trafficked far and wide." Indeed, it might almost seem that the language in which these culture-heroes were wont to express themselves consisted entirely in the word Troy and its derivatives. But no. Britain was called Albion, and "Albion suggests Albania." Moreover, "by the present-day Turk the Albanians are termed Arnaouts. Whether this name has any connection with argonauts is immaterial." So it evidently is, seeing that "many shiploads of young argonauts from one or another Troy reached the coast of Cornwall." But the proof of this is the fact that so many of the Cornish names begin with tre. So even the Albanians called themselves Troy for short.
There are nearly nine hundred pages composed in this vein, and if the reader wants more he can find it there. Mr. Bayley will not bore him; he wields a facile pen. Again, he has read all manner of books, good bad and indifferent, and may provide useful material for anyone whose critical faculty is sufficiently alert. But Troy and the rest of it—can this punning philology be seriously meant? Mr. Bayley would connect our word pun "with the Hebrew pun, meaning dubious." No doubt pundit comes from the same root; and, if so, Mr. Bayley is welcome to the title.