Fig. 106.—Green Man and Still
(Harleian Collection, 1630). Ibid.
Maid Marion, who was not infrequently associated with St. George, is radically Maid Big Ion, or Fairy Ion, and that St. George was also a marine saint is obvious from the various Channels which still bear his name. The ensign of the Navy is the red cross on a white ground, known originally as the Christofer or Jack, and in Fig. 106 the Green Man is represented with the scales of a Merman, or Blue John. The Italian for blue is vera; vera means true; “true blue” is proverbial; and that Old George was Trajan, Tarchon, Tarragone, or Dragon is obvious from the dragon-slaying incident. Little George has already been identified by Baring-Gould with Tammuz, the Adonis, or Beauty, who is identified with the Sun:[287] “Thou shining and vanishing in the beauteous circle of the Horæ, dwelling at one time in gloomy Tartarus, at another elevating thyself to Olympus, giving ripeness to the fruits”.[288]
Fig. 107.—From The Everyday Book (Hone, W.).
The St. George of Diospolis, the City of Light, who by the early Christians was hailed as “the Mighty Man,” the “Star of the Morning,” and the “Sun of Truth,” figures in Cornwall, particularly at Helston, where there is still danced the so-called Furry dance: Helston, moreover, claims to show the great granite stone which was intended to cover the mouth of the Nether Regions, but St. Michael met Satan carrying it and made him drop it.
It is unnecessary to labour the obvious identity between Saints George and Michael: “George,” meaning husbandman, i.e., the Almighty in a bucolic aspect, is merely another title for the archangel, but more radically it may be traced to geo (as in geology, geography, geometry) and urge, i.e., earth urge. It is physically true that farmers urge the earth to yield her increase, and until quite recently, relics of the festival of the sacred plough survived in Britain. Within living memory farmers in Cornwall turned the first sod to the formula “In the name of God let us begin”:[289] in China, where the Emperor himself turns the first sod, much of the ancient ceremonies still survive.
The legend of St. George and the dragon has had its local habitation fixed in many districts notably in Berkshire at the vale of the White Horse. The famous George of Cappadocia is first heard of as “a purveyor of provisions for the Army of Constantinople,” and he was subsequently associated with a certain Dracontius (i.e., dragon), “Master of the Mint”. The same legend is assigned at Lambton in England not to George but to “John that slew ye worm”: in Turkey St. George is known as Oros, which is obviously Horus or Eros, the Lord of the Horæ or hours, and the English dragon-slayer Conyers of Sockburn is presumably King Yers, whose burn or brook was presumably named after Shock or Jock. In some parts of England a bogey dog is known under the title of “Old Shock,” and in connection with Conyers and John that slew ye worm may be noted near Conway the famous Llandudno headlands, Great and Little Orme or Worm.
The St. George of Scandinavia is named Gest: that Gest was the great Gust or Mighty Wind is probable, and it is more likely that Windsor, a world-famous seat of St. George, meant, not as is assumed winding shore, but wind sire. That St. George was the Ruler of the gusts or winds is implied by the fact that among the Finns, anyone brawling on St. George’s Day was in danger of suffering from storms and tempests. The murmuring of the wind in the oak groves of Dodona was held to be the voice of Zeus, and the will of the All Father was there further deduced by means of a three-chained whip hanging over a metal basin from the hand of the statue of a boy. From the movements of these chains, agitated by the wind and blown by the gusts till they tinkled against the bowl, the will of the Ghost was guessed, and the word guess seemingly implies that guessing was regarded as the operation of the good or bad geis within. In Windsor Great Forest stood the famous Oak or Picktree, where Puck, alias Herne the Hunter, appeared occasionally in the form of an antlered Buck. The supposition that St. George was the great Gush or geyser is strengthened by the fact that near the Cornish Padstow, Petrock-Stowe, or the stowe of the Great Pater, there is a well called St. George’s Well. This well is described as a “mere spring which gushes from a rock,” and the legend states that the water gushed forth immediately St. George had trodden on the spot and has ne’er since ceased to flow.