Fig. 51.—From The Sepulchres of Etruria (Gray, Mrs. Hamilton).
In Gaelic cenn or ken meant head, the highest peak in the Himalayas is Mount Kun; one of the supreme summits of Africa is Mount Kenia, and in Genesis (14-19) the Hebrew word Konah is translated into English as “the Most High God”. Of this Supreme Sprite the cone or pyramid was a symbol, and the reverence in which this form was held at Albano in Etruria may be estimated from the monument here depicted.[262] In times gone by khans, cuns, or kings were not only deemed to be moral and intellectual gods, but in some localities bigness of person was cultivated. The Maoris of New Zealand, whose tattooings are identical in certain respects with the complicated spirals found on megaliths in Brittany and Ireland, and who in all their wide wanderings have carried with them a totemic dove, used to believe bigness to be a royal essence. “Every means were used to acquire this dignity; a large person was thought to be of the highest importance; to acquire this extra size, the child of a chief was generally provided with many nurses, each contributing to his support by robbing their own offspring of their natural sustenance; thus, whilst they were half-starved, miserable-looking little creatures, the chief’s child was the contrary, and early became remarkable by its good appearance.”[263]
The British adjective big is of unknown origin and has no Anglo-Saxon equivalent. In Norway bugge means a strong man, but in Germany bigge denoted a little child—as also a pig. The site of Troy—the famous Troy—is marked on modern maps Bigha, the Basque for eye is beguia; bega is Celtic for life. A fabulous St. Bega is the patron-saint of Cumberland; there is a Baggy Point near Barnstaple, and a Bigbury near Totnes—the alleged landing place of the Trojans. Close to Canterbury are some highlands also known as Bigbury, and it is probable that all these sites were named after beguia, the Big Eye, or Buggaboo, the Big Father.
At Canterbury paleolithic implements have been found which supply proof of human occupation at a time when the British Islands formed part of the Continent, and, according to a scholarly but anonymous chronology exhibited in a Canterbury Hotel, “Neolithic, bronze, and iron ages show continuous occupation during the whole prehistoric period. The configuration of the city boundaries and the still existing traces of the ancient road in connection with the stronghold at Bigbury indicate that a populous community was settled on the site of the present Canterbury at least as early as the Iron Age.”
The branching antlers of the buck were regarded as the rays of the uprising sun or Big Eye, and a sacred procession, headed by the antlers of a buck raised upon a pole, was continued by the clergy of St. Paul’s Cathedral as late as the seventeenth century.[264] A scandalised observer of this ceremony in 1726 describes “the whole company blowing hunters’ horns in a sort of hideous manner, and with this rude pomp they go up to the High Altar and offer it there. You would think them all the mad votaries of Diana!” On this occasion, evidently in accordance with immemorial wont, the Dean and Chapter wore special vestments, the one embroidered with bucks, the other with does. The buck was seemingly associated with Puck, for it was popularly supposed that a spectre appeared periodically in Herne’s Oak at Windsor headed with the horns of a buck. So too was Father Christmas or St. Nicholas represented as riding Diana-like in a chariot drawn by bucks.
The Greek for buck or stag is elaphos, which is radically elaf, and it is a singular coincidence that among the Cretan paleolithic folk in the Fourth Glacial Period “Certain signs carved on a fragment of reindeer horn are specially interesting from the primitive anticipation that they present of the Phœnician letter alef”.[265]
Peg or Peggy is the same word as pig, and it is generally supposed that the pig was regarded as an incarnation of the “Man in the Oak,” i.e., Puck or Buck, because the bacco or bacon lived on acorns. There is little doubt that the Saint Baccho of the Church Calendar is connected with the worship of the earlier Bacchus, for the date of St. Baccho’s festival coincides with the vintage festival of Bacchus. The symbolism of the pig or bacco will be discussed in a subsequent chapter, meanwhile one may here note that hog is the same as oak, and swine is identical with swan. So also Meg is connected with muc or moch which were the Celtic terms for hog. Among the appellations of ancient Ireland was Muc Inis,[266] or Hog Island and Moccus, or the pig, was one of the Celtic sobriquets for Mercury. The Druids termed themselves “Swine of Mon,”[267] the Phœnician priests were also self-styled Swine, and there is a Welsh poem in which the bard’s opening advice to his disciples is—“Give ear little pigs”.
The pig figures so frequently upon Gaulish coins that M. de la Saussaye supposed it with great reason to have been a national symbol. That the hog was also a venerated British emblem is evident from the coins here illustrated, and that CUNO was the Spook King is obvious from Figs. 52 and 57, where the features face fore and aft like those of Janus. The word Cunobeline, Cunbelin, or Cymbeline, described by the dictionaries as a Cornish name meaning “lord of the Sun,” is composed seemingly of King Belin. Belin, a title of the Sun God, is found also in Gaul, notably on the coinage of the Belindi: Belin is featured as in Fig. 58, and that the sacred Horse of Belin was associated with the ded pillar is evident from Fig. 59.
Figs. 52 to 57.—British. From Ancient Coins (Akerman, J. Y.).