Near Buxton are the sources of the river Wye, and by Wye in Kent, near Kennington, we find Olantigh Park, St. Alban’s Court, Mount Pleasant, Little London, and Trey Town: by the church at Wye are two inns, named respectively “The Old Flying Horse,” and “The New Flying Horse”; Wye races are still held upon an egg-shaped course, and close to Kennington Oval—which I am unable to trace beyond its earlier condition of a market-garden—stands a celebrated “White Horse Inn”. At Kennington by Wye a roadside inn sign is “The Golden Ball,” which once presumably implied the Sun or Sol, for in the immediate neighbourhood is Soles Court.
Fig. 138.—Iberian. From Akerman.
The horse was a constantly recurring emblem in the coins of Hispania, and the object on the Iberian coin here illustrated is defined by Akerman as “an apex”: the appearance of this symbol, seemingly a spike or peg posed upon a teathill, on an Iberian or Aubreyan coin is evidence of its sanctity in West Europe. Theologians of the Dark Ages have been ridiculed for debating the number of angels that could stand upon a pin-point, but it is more than probable that the question was a subject of discussion long before their time: the Chinese believe that “at the beginning of Creation the chaos floated as a fish skims along the surface of a river; from whence arose something like a thorn or pickle, which, being capable of motion and variation, became a soul or spirit”.[309] The fairy sanctity of the thorn bush would therefore seem to have arisen from its spikes, and the abundance of these emblems would naturally elevate it into the house or abode of spooks: the burning bush, in which form the Almighty is said to have appeared before Moses, was, according to Rabbinical tradition, a thorn bush: the Elluf and the Alvah trees—the aleph or the alpha trees?—are described as large thorned species of Acacia; and the spiky acacia, Greek Akakia, is related to akis, a point or thorn.
One of the attributes of the Man-in-the-Moon is a Thorn Bush, whence Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Moonshine, “This thorn bush is my thorn bush; and this dog my dog”. The Man-in-the-Moon being identified with Cain, it becomes interesting to note that the surname Kennett is accepted as a Norman diminutive of chien, a dog.[310] On p. 149—a mediæval papermark—the Wanderer is surmounted by a bush; a bush is a little tree, and the word bush (of unknown origin) is a variant of Bogie—also of bougie, the French for candle: bushes and briars were the acknowledged haunts of Bogie, alias Hobany or Hob-with-a-canstick or bougie.
Bouche used to be an English word meaning meat and drink, whence Stow, referring to the English archers, says they had bouch of court (to wit, meat and drink) and great wages of sixpence by the day.[311] In Rome and elsewhere a suspended bush was the sign of an inn, whence the expression “Good wine needs no bush”: the bouche or mouth is where meat and drink goes in, similarly mouth may be connoted with the British meath, meaning nourishment. Peck is also an old word for provender, and we still speak of feeling peckish.[312]
The word bucket—allied to Anglo-Saxon buc, meaning a pitcher—implies that this variety of large can or mug was used for peck purposes: the illustration herewith, representing the decoration on a bronze bucket found at Lake Maggiore, consists of speck-centred circles, and dotted, spectral, or maculate geese, bucks, and horses.
Fig. 139.—Bronze from bucket, Sesto Calendo, Lake Maggiore. From the British Museum’s Guide to the Antiquities of the Early Iron Age.
It is unnecessary to dilate on the great importance played in civic life by inns: numberless place-names are directly traceable to inn-signs; and the brewing of church ales, considered in conjunction with facts which will be noted in a subsequent chapter, make it almost certain that churches once dispensed food and drink and that inn was originally an earlier name for church. Among the inscriptions of the catacombs is one which the authorities believe marks the sepulchre of a brewer: but these pictographs are without exception emblems, and it is more likely that the design in question (Fig. 140) stands for “that Brewer,”[313] the Lord of the Vineyard, or the Vinedresser. The Green Man with his Still implies a brewer; the distilling of Benedictine is still an ecclesiastical occupation, and the word brew suggests that brewing was once the peculiar privilege of the pères or priests who brewed the sacred ales. The word keg is the same as the familiar Black Jack, and under jug Skeat writes: “Drinking vessels of all kinds were formerly called jocks, jills, and jugs, all of which represent Christian names. Jug and Judge were usual as pet female names, and equivalent to Jenny or Joan.”