Having “cambred” Heber with Bri, or Bru, and finding them both assigned traditionally to the Ægean, it is permissible to read the preliminary vowels of Heber or Huber, as the Greek eu, and to assume that Aubrey was the soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious Brey. Britain is the Welsh Prydain, Hu was pronounced He, and it is thus not improbable that Pry was originally Pere He, or Father Hu, and that the traditions of Hu and Bru referred originally to the same race.
Hyper, the Greek for upper, is radically the same word as Iupiter or Iu pere, and if it be true that the French pere is a phonetically decayed form of pater, then again, ‘Pry or ‘Bru may be regarded as a corrosion of Iupiter.
Hu the Mighty, the National Pillar or ded, who has survived as the “I’ll be He” of children’s games, was indubitably the Jupiter of Great Britain, and he was probably the “Hooper” of Hooper’s Blind, or Blind Man’s Buff. According to the Triads, Hu obtained his dominion over Britain not by war or bloodshed, but by justice and peace: he instructed his people in the art of agriculture; divided them into federated tribes as a first step towards civil government, and laid the foundations of literature and history by the institution of Bardism.[325] In Celtic, barra meant a Court of Justice, in which sense it has survived in London, at Lothbury and Aldermanbury. The pious Trojans claimed “the stubborn tribes with justice to refrain,” and it is possible that barri the Cornish for divide or separate also owes its origin to Bri or pere He, who was the first to divide them into federated tribes. Among the Iberians berri meant a city, and this word is no doubt akin to our borough.
In Hibernia, the Land of Heber, Aubrey or Oberon, it is said that every parish has its green and thorn, where the little people are believed to hold their merry meetings, and to dance in frolic rounds.[326] A parish, Greek paroika, is an orderly division, and as often as not the civic centre was a fairy stone: according to Sir Laurence Gomme, who made a special study of the primitive communities, when and where a village was established a stone was ceremoniously set up, and to this pierre the headman of the village made an offering once a year.[327]
Situated in Fore Street, Totnes, there stands to-day the so-called Brutus Stone, from which the Mayor of Totnes still reads official proclamations. At Brightlingsea we have noted the existence of a Broadmoot: there is a Bradstone in Devon, a Bradeston in Norfolk, and elsewhere these Brude or Brutus stones were evidently known as pre stones. The innumerable “Prestons” of this country were originally, I am convinced, not as is supposed “Priests Towns,” but Pre Stones i.e., Perry or Fairy Stones. King James in his book on Demonology spells fairy—Phairy; in Kent the cirrhus cloudlets of a summer day are termed the “Perry Dancers,” and the phairies of Britain probably differed but slightly, if at all, from the perii or peris of Persia.[328]
Among the Greeks every town and village had its so-called “Luck,” or protecting Goddess who specially controlled its fortunes, and by Pindar this Presiding Care is entitled pherepolis, i.e., the peri or phairy of the city.
The various Purleys and Purtons of England are assigned by the authorities to peru a pear, and supposed to have been pear-tree meadows or pear-tree hills, but I question whether pear-growing was ever the national industry that the persistent prevalence of peru in place-names would thus imply.
Around the pre-stones of each village our forerunners indubitably used to pray, and in the memoirs of a certain St. Sampson we have an interesting account of an interrupted Pray-meeting—“Now it came to pass, on a certain day as he journeyed through a certain district which they call Tricurius (the hundred of Trigg), he heard, on his left hand to be exact, men worshipping (at) a certain shrine, after the custom of the Bacchantes, by means of a play in honour of an image. Thereupon he beckoned to his brothers that they should stand still and be silent while he himself, quietly descending from his chariot to the ground, and standing upon his feet and observing those who worshipped the idol, saw in front of them, resting on the summit of a certain hill an abominable image. On this hill I myself have been, and have adored, and with my hand have traced the sign of the cross which St. Sampson, with his own hand, carved by means of an iron instrument on a standing stone. When St. Sampson saw it (the image), selecting two only of the brothers to be with him, he hastened quickly towards them, their chief, Guedianus, standing at their head, and gently admonished them that they ought not to forsake the one God who created all things and worship an idol. And when they pleaded as an excuse that it was not wrong to keep the festival of their progenitors in a play, some being furious, some mocking, but some being of saner mind strongly urging him to go away, straightway the power of God was made clearly manifest. For a certain boy driving horses at full speed fell from a swift horse to the ground, and twisting his head under him as he fell headlong, remained, just as he was flung, little else than a lifeless corpse.” The “corpse” was seemingly but a severe stun, for an hour or so later, St. Sampson by the power of prayer successfully restored the patient to life, in view of which miracle Guedianus and all his tribe prostrated themselves at St. Sampson’s feet, and “utterly destroyed the idol”.[329]
The idol here mentioned if not itself a standing stone, was admittedly associated with one, and happily many of these Aubrey or Bryanstones are still standing. One of the most celebrated antiquities of Cornwall is the so-named men scryfa or “inscribed rock,” and the inscription running from top to bottom reads—RIALOBRAN CUNOVAL FIL.
