Fig. 132.—British. From Akerman.
Fig. 133.—Channel Islands. From Barthelemy.
The Welsh form of Alphin is Elphin, and the Cornish height known as Godolphin—whence the family name Godolphin—implies, like Robin Goodfellow, Good Elphin. With Elphin, Alban, and Hobany may be connected the Celtic Goddess Epona, “the tutelar deity of horses and probably originally a horse totem”. To Epona may safely be assigned the word pony; Irish poni; Scotch powney, all of which the authorities connect with pullus, the Latin for foal: it is quite true there is a p in both. We have already traced a connection between neighing, knowing, kenning, and cunning, and there is seemingly a further connection between Epona, the Goddess of Horses, and opine, for according to Plato the horse signified “reason and opinion coursing about through natural things”.[300]
British horses used to be known familiarly as Joan, and the term jennet presumably meant Little Joan: the Italian for a hackney is chinea. At Hackney, which now forms part of London, there is an Abney Park which was once, it may be, associated with Hobany or Epona: the main street of Hackney or Haconey (which originally contained the Manor of Hoxton) is Mare Street; and this mare was seemingly the Kenmure whose traces are perpetuated in Kenmure Road, Hackney. At the corner of Seven Sisters Road is the church of St. Olave, and the neighbouring Alvington Street suggests that this Kingsland Road district was once a town or down of Alvin the Elphin King. Godolphin Hill in Cornwall was alternatively known as Godolcan, and there is every reason to suppose that Elphin was the good old king, the good all-king, and the good holy king.
Hackney was seemingly once one of the many congregating “Londons,” and we may recognise Elen or Ollan in London Fields, London Lane, Lyne Grove, Olinda (or Good Olin) Road, Londesborough Road, Ellingfort (or Strong Ellin) Road, Lenthall (or Tall Elen) Road. In Linscott Street there stood probably at one time a Cot, Cromlech, or “Kit’s Coty,” and at the neighbouring Dalston[301] was very possibly a Tallstone, equivalent to the Cornish tal carn or high rock.
The adjective long or lanky is probably of Hellenic origin, and the giants or long men sometimes carved in hill-sides (as at Cerne Abbas) were like all Longstones once perhaps representations of Helen.
