On Some Ancient Battle-Fields in Lancashire / And Their Historical, Legendary, and Aesthetic Associations.

by Charles Hardwick

There is nothing, therefore, improbable in the proposition that the standard, totem, or helmet-crest of some devastating Teutonic chieftain like Penda, the ferocious pagan conqueror of Oswald, may have been of this porcine character. The Christian adherents of the Northumbrian king and saint would very easily confound him and the devastation attendant upon his victorious march through their country, with the dethroned and abhorred pagan deity whose emblem formed his crest or "totem," as well as with the older wild boar storm-fiend, or "the monster who prowled over the neighbourhood, inflicting injury on man and beast," and for the subdual of which the sanctity of the edifice of the saintly monarch was alone effectual. In the prophecy attributed to Merlin, King Arthur is described as the wild boar of Cornwall, that would "devour" his enemies. The mingling of ancient superstitious fears with the more modern Christianity, especially with reference to such matters as charms, prophylactics, etc., is of very common occurrence even at the present day. Sir John Lubbock, in his "Origin of Civilisation and the Primitive Condition of Man," says—"When man, either by natural progress or the influence of a more advanced race, rises to a conception of a higher religion, he still retains his old beliefs, which linger on side by side with, and yet in utter opposition to, the higher creed. The new and more powerful spirit is an addition to the old pantheon, and diminishes the importance of the older deities; gradually the worship of the latter sinks in the social scale, and becomes confined to the ignorant and young. Thus a belief in witchcraft still flourishes amongst our agricultural labourers and the lowest class in our great cities, and the deities of our ancestors survive in the nursery tales of our children. We must, therefore, expect to find in each race traces—nay, more than traces—of lower religions."

Some parties regard the Winwick sculpture as "St. Anthony's pig," but they acknowledge they know of no connection of that saint with the parish. But, as I have shown in the previous chapter, "the deeds of one mythical hero are sure, when he is forgotten, to be attributed to some other man of mark, who for the time being fills the popular fancy." Keightley, in his "Fairy Mythology," says—"Every extraordinary appearance is found to have its extraordinary cause assigned, a cause always connected with the history or religion, ancient or modern, of the country, and not unfrequently varying with the change of faith. The mark on Adam's Peak, in Ceylon, is by the Buddhists ascribed to Buddha; by the Mohammedans to Adam."

Mr. Mackenzie Wallace, in his "Russia," speaking of the Finns and their Russian neighbours, says—"The friendly contact of two such races naturally led to a curious blending of the two religions. The Russians adopted many customs from the Finns, and the Finns adopted still more from the Russians. When Yumala and the other Finnish deities did not do as they were desired, their worshippers naturally applied for protection or assistance to the Madonna and the 'Russian god.' If their own traditional magic rites did not suffice to ward off evil influences, they naturally tried the effect of crossing themselves as the Russians do in moments of danger." In another place he says—"At the harvest festivals, Tchuvash peasants have been known to pray first to their own deities and then to St. Nicholas, the miracle-worker, who is the favourite saint of the Russian peasantry. This dual worship is sometimes recommended by the Yornzi—a class of men who correspond to the medicine men among the Red Indians." He truly observes—"popular imagination always uses heroic names as pegs on which to hang traditions."

Bishop Percy, in the preface to his translation of "Mallet's Northern Antiquities," says—"Nothing is more contagious than superstition, and therefore we must not wonder if, in ages of ignorance, one wild people catch up from another, though of very different race, the most arbitrary and groundless opinions, or endeavour to imitate them in such rites and practices as they are told will recommend them to the gods, or avert their anger."

Jacob Grimm says (Deutsche Mythologie)—"A people whose faith is falling to pieces will save here and there a fragment of it, by fixing it on a new and unpersecuted object of veneration."

It appears, therefore, that the Winwick monster, in this respect, is but an apt illustration of ordinary mythological transference of attributes or emblems, which in no way invalidates the more remote origin to which I have ascribed it, or its connection with the totem or beast symbol of the heathen warrior. The boar, indeed, has been a sacred symbol for ages amongst the Aryan nations. Herodotus (b. 3, c. 59) says that the Eginetæ, after defeating the Samians in a sea-fight, "cut off the prows of their boats, which represented the figure of a boar, and dedicated them in the temple of Minerva, in Egina."

The Rev. Sir G. W. Cox, in his "Introduction to Mythology and Folk-Lore," referring to the Greek war god Arês, says—"In the Odyssey his name is connected with Aphrodite, whose love he is said to have obtained; but other traditions tell us that when she seemed to favour Adonis, Arês changed himself into a boar, which slew the youth of whom he was jealous."

The Mussulman's abhorrence of roast pork is well known. Amongst the Turkomans of Central Asia (the ancient home of our Aryan ancestors) the prowess of the living animal is likewise regarded with a strange superstitious dread, evidently akin to some more ancient belief in the supernatural attributes of the animal. Arminius Vámbéry, in his "Travels in Central Asia" (having narrowly escaped serious injury from a wild porcine assailant), informs us he was seriously assured by a Turkoman friend that he might regard himself as very lucky, inasmuch as "death by the wound of a wild boar would send even the most pious Mussulman nedgis (unclean) into the next world, where a hundred years' burning in purgatorial fire would not purge away his uncleanness."

Since the above was written I have perceived a passage in Mr. Fiske's essay on "Werewolves," in his "Myths and Myth-makers," that seems not only to strengthen the conjecture that the boar was the crest or "totem" of the pagan Penda, but likewise the probability of the influence of the older mythical story with which I have associated it. The boar, it must be remembered, in all the Indo-European mythologies, is associated with stormy wind and lightning. Mr. Fiske, referring to what he terms one of the "more striking characteristics of primitive thinking," namely, "the close community of nature which it assumes between man and brute," says—"The doctrine of metempsychosis, which is found in some shape or other all over the world, implies a fundamental identity between the two: the Hindu is taught to respect the flocks browsing in the meadow, and will on no account lift his hand against a cow, for who knows but that it may be his own grandmother? The recent researches of Mr. Lennan and Mr. Herbert Spencer have served to connect this feeling with the primeval worship of ancestors and with the savage customs of totemism.... This kind of worship still maintains a languid existence as the state religion of China, and it still exists as a portion of Brahmanism; but in the Vedic religion it is to be seen in all its native simplicity. According to the ancient Aryan, the Pitris, or 'Fathers' (Lat. Patres) live in the sky along with Yama, the great original Pitri of mankind.... Now if the storm-wind is a host of Pitris, or one great Pitri, who appeared as a fearful giant, and is also a pack of wolves or wish-hounds, or a single savage dog or wolf, the inference is obvious to the mythopœic mind that men may become wolves, at least after death. And to the uncivilised thinker this inference is strengthened, as Mr. Spencer has shown by evidence registered on his own tribal 'totem' or heraldic emblem. The bears and lions and leopards of heraldry are the degenerate descendants of the 'totem' of savagery which designated a tribe by a beast symbol. To the untutored mind there is everything in a name; and the descendant of Brown Bear, or Yellow Tiger, or Silver Hyæna, cannot be pronounced unfaithful to his own style of philosophising if he regards his ancestors, who career about his hut in the darkness of the night, as belonging to whatever order of beasts his 'totem' associations may suggest."

In the Volsung tale of the Northern mythology the "gods of the bright heaven" had to make atonement to the sons of Reidmar, whose brother they had slain. This brother was named "the otter."