This appears to be a satisfactory and conclusive answer to a very pertinent question put by George Borrow in the last chapter of his work on "Wild Wales." He says:—"How is it that the Sanscrit devila stands for what is wise and virtuous, and the English devil for all that is desperate and wicked?" A similar answer is given to this question by the fate which the Teutonic gods of Western Europe underwent on the final triumph of Christianity. Dasent says:—"They were cast down from honour, but not from power. They lost their genial kindly influence as the protectors of men and the origin of all things good; but their existence was tolerated; they became powerful for ill, and degenerated into malignant demons."
In the Hindoo mythology, it appears revolutions took place at a very early date. In the early Vedic hymns Dêva is "addressed as Dyanish pitâ, i.e., Heaven Father, and his wife is Mata Prithivi, Mother Earth. He is the Zeus Pater of the Greeks, the Jupiter of the Romans, the German Tius, and the Norse Tyr. Dyanish pitâ was the god of the blue firmament, but even in the Vedic times his grandeur was considerably on the wane. Indra, the new lord of the firmament, had left him little more than a titular sovereignty in his own domain, while Varuna, another heavenly monarch, who was still in the plenitude of his power, commanded more respect than the roi fainéant, his neighbour. The all-covering Varuna,[6] the Uranos of the Greeks, was lord of the celestial sea and of the realm of light above it, that highest heaven in which the Fathers dwelt with their King Yama. After the southern branch of the Aryans had entered India, Varuna was brought down from the upper regions, to be thenceforth the god of the earthly sea, which had then for the first time become known to his votaries."
May not this Varun be possibly the true root of the name Severn? Etymologists are not at all agreed as to its derivation. Some say it was anciently called Hafren, and that this term is identical with Severn, the latter being merely a corruption of the former. This is the prevalent opinion. The Severn, indeed, yet retains the name Hafren, from its source to Llanidloes. Its principal upper tributary which enters it a little below Welshpool is called the Vyrnwy. May not this be the true Welsh root of the word? If such be the case, there is nothing improbable in the conjecture that Hafren is a Keltic corruption of the Sanscrit Varun, especially as the f and v are readily "convertible." The Se may be a prefix, of which more anon.[7]
Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his "British History," states that King Locrin divorced his queen Guendolœna, and married a beautiful captive named Estrildis. On the death of the king, the divorced queen commanded "Estrildis and her daughter Sabre to be thrown into the river now called the Severn, and published an edict through all Britain that the river should bear the damsel's name, hoping by this to perpetuate her memory, and by that the infamy of her husband. So that to this day the river is called in the British tongue Sabren, which by the corruption of the name is, in another language, Sabrina."
Milton, speaking of Sabrina as the goddess of the river, styles her "the daughter of Locrine, that had the sceptre from his father Brute." As the mythical or rather non-historical character of Brute and his progeny is now almost universally conceded, it is not improbable that the river named the maiden (if she ever existed in the flesh) rather than that her immersion changed its designation. Sabrina, or Savrina (for the b and v are convertible), may therefore but be the Latinised form of the old Welsh Hafren and the Sanscrit Varuna, with the prefix se added thereto.
The Dee is described as the Seteia Estuarium by Ptolemy. The Roman city Deva (Chester) was situated on its banks. The se is generally regarded as a prefix in this case, and it may likewise be so in the word Severn. D and t being convertible, the names of the river and city evidently spring from one root. The Rev. John Whitaker, the historian of Manchester, in interpreting the term Se-tan-tiu, says it may mean "the inferior or southerly country of water, and express the particular position of Lancashire with respect to the Volantii and the sea."[8]
The Se, in these cases, may have a somewhat similar import, or it may have reference to the Vedic great serpent Sesha, concerning which there is a curious story in the Hindoo poems. The Dêvas had been at war with their enemies, the Asuras, and, being thirsty with the work (or the country needing rain), a truce was agreed upon, and both sides joined their efforts "in churning the ocean to procure amrita" (or soma) "the drink of immortality. They took Mount Mandara for a churning stick, and wrapping the great serpent Sesha round it for a rope, they made the mountain spin round to and fro, the Dêvas pulling at the serpent's tail, and the Asuras at its head. Mount Mandara was more anciently written Manthara, and Manthara is the Sanscrit name of the churning stick which is used by every dairy in India."[9] The purely figurative character of this is easily seen. It is but another form of expressing the fertilisation of the earth by means of the rain which is engendered by the "strife of the elements." The churning stick and cord are but another form of the Hindoo pramantha, or fire churn, "or chark," by which the sacred or "need-fire" was produced amongst the Greeks and Romans, as well as the Keltæ and other Aryan tribes, before the discovery of the use of flint and steel. The "chark" represented the power of the sun, and it is not impossible our remote Eastern ancestors were aware that the sun really does, in a sense, "churn" or "brew" the ocean water, and distribute its vapours over mountain and plain, and by this means convert even an otherwise barren wilderness into a fertile garden, making it literally "blossom like the rose."
That this superstition has not yet become extinct in India is attested by the following paragraph, which appeared in the newspapers in the year 1869:—"The inhabitants of Burmah have an idea that pulling at a rope will produce rain. Two parties tug against each other. One is a raining party, the other is a fair weather party. By previous arrangement the rain party are allowed to be victorious. On the occasion of the late continued drought this proceeding was attended with the happiest results."
Geoffrey of Monmouth says that an "invading king of the Huns, named Humber, was defeated by Locrin on the banks of that river, and drowned in its flood, on account of which it has since borne his name." This, of course, is merely idle romance. Some writers contend that the name was originally Chumber, that Northumberland means North Cumri-land, of which the present Cumberland is a relic. It is not improbable that the Mersey derived its name from Mercia, or the territory from the boundary river. It, in conjunction with the Humber, divided Northumbria from Mercia during the heptarchy. The Mersey is still called the Cheshire Waters by some of the inhabitants on the south-west of Manchester.
It is somewhat singular that no Roman writer or Itinerary mentions the Humber. Ptolemy speaks of a river Abus, which is generally identified with that stream, but this helps us not to the etymology of the modern name. It is not altogether improbable, however, that the Aryan mythology may throw some light upon the ancient appellations. We are informed by Max Müller that, previous to the dispersion of the Aryan tribes, the Ribhus were called Arbhus, and that this latter term is identical with the Greek Orpheus. From this root likewise is derived the German Alb or Alp; plural Elbe or Elfen; English Elf, with its plural Elves. In the modern Welsh the word elod means intelligence, spirit, elaeth spiritual being, and elford both demon and intellectual existence. The Rev. G. W. Cox says that Alpheios, the mythic huntsman, "is the child of the waters.... He is, in short, the Elf, or water sprite, whose birth-place is the Elbe, or flowing stream." If the name of the German river Elbe (Albis) be derived from this source, the probability is heightened that the Abus of Ptolemy may have intimate relationship to the Aryan Arbhus, or Ribhus. These mystic beings were followers, like the Bhrigus and the Maruts, of Agni and Indra, "personifications of fire and firmament." Kelly says:—"The element of the Ribhus is rather that of the sunbeams or the lightning, though they too rule the winds, and sing, like the Maruts, the loud song of the storm.[10] Their name means the 'artificers,' and not even the divine workman of Olympus was more skilled than they in all kinds of handicraft. The armour and weapons of the gods, the chariots of the Asvins (deities of the dawn), the thunderbolt and the lightning steed of Indra, were of their workmanship. They made their old decrepid parents young and supple-jointed again. But the feat for which they were most renowned is the revival of the slaughtered cow on which the gods had feasted. Out of the hide alone these wonder-working Ribhus reproduced the perfect living animal; and this they did not once, but again and again. In other words, out of a small portion of the imperishable cloud that had melted away in rain and seemed destroyed, they reproduced its whole form and substance."