When the head of the beneficent and blessed Bran was deposited at London it is said to have rested there for a long time with the eyes looking towards France. One of the most remarkable and mysterious of the Pictish symbols, found alike in Picardy and Pictland generally, is the so-called butterfly design of which three typical examples are here illustrated. What it seems to represent is Browen or the Brows, but it is also an excellent bird, butterfly, or papillon: or as we speak familiarly of using our brains, and as the grey matter of the brain actually consists of two divisions, which scientists entitle the cerebrum and the cerebellum, the two-browed butterfly might not illogically be designated the brains. Both Canon Greenwell and Sir Arthur Evans have drawn attention to similar representations of the human face on early objects from Troy and the Ægean; the same symbol is found on sculptured menhirs of the Marne and Gard valleys in France, while clay vessels with this ornament, belonging to the early age of metal, have been found in Spain. The “butterfly” is seen on gold roundels from the earliest (shaft) graves at Mycenæ, and as Sir Hercules Read has rightly said, “everything points to the transmission of that influence to the British Isles by way of Spain”.[393]
Fig. 222.—The Trinity in One God, Supporting the World. Fresco of the Campo Santo of Pisa, XIV. Cent. From Christian Iconography (Didron).
The Scandinavians assigned three eyes to Thor, and Thor, as has been seen, was attributed by them to Troy. On the stone illustrated on p. 381, now built into the church at Dingwall—a name which means court hill—three circles are on one side and two upon the other: some of the Trojan idols are three-eyed and some are “butterflies”. Is it possible that this Elphin little face, or papillon, was the precursor of the modern cherub or Amoretto, and that it was the Puck of the Iberian Picts, who conceived their Babchild or Bacchild as peeping, prying, touting, and peering perpetually upon mankind? The ancients imagined that every worthy soul became a star, whence it is possible that the small blue flower we call a periwinkle was, like the daisy, a symbol of the fairy, phairy, or peri periscope. In Devonshire the speedwell (Veronica +chamædrys) is known as Angels’ Eyes; in Wales it is entitled the Eye of Christ:[394] the word periwinkle may be connoted with the phairies Periwinkle, and Perriwiggen, who figure in the court of Oberon.
In the magnificent emblem here illustrated the Pillar of the Universe, “to Whom all thoughts and desires are known, from Whom no secrets are hid,” is supporting a great universe zoned round and round by Eyes, Cherubs, or Amoretti, and the earth within is represented by a cone or berg. In Fig. 221 the Creator is depicted as animating nine choirs of Amoretti by means of three rays or breaths, and as will be shown subsequently the creation of the world by means of three rays or beams of light from heaven was an elemental feature of British philosophy.
The periwinkle, known in some districts as the cockle, may, I think, be regarded as a prehistoric symbol of the world-without-end query:—
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
The term cockle was applied not only to the periwinkle and the poppy, but likewise to the burdock, whose prickly burrs are obviously a very perfect emblem of the Central Pyre, Fire, Burn, or Brand. In Italy the barberry, or berberis, is known as the Holy Thorn, as it is supposed that from this bush of pricks and prickles was woven Christ’s crown of thorns. As a home of the spooks the brakes or bracken rivalled the hawthorn,[395] and it was generally believed that by eating fern or bracken seed one became invisible. Witches were supposed to detest bracken, because it bears on its root the character C, the initial of the holy name Christ, “which may be plainly seen on cutting the root horizontally”. Commenting on this belief the author of Flowers and Folklore remarks: “A friend suggests, however, that the letter intended is not the English C, but the Greek X (Chi), the initial letter of the word Christos which really resembles the marks on the root of the bracken.”[396]
In Cornish broch denoted the yew tree, the sanctity of which is implied by the frequency with which a brace or pair of yews are found in churchyards. The yew is probably the longest living of all trees, accredited instances occurring of its antiquity to the extent of 1400 years, and at Fortingal in Perthshire there is a famous yew tree which has been estimated to be 3000 years of age. This is deemed to be the most venerable specimen of living European vegetation, but at Brabourne, in Kent, used to be a superannuated yew which claimed precedence in point of age even over that of Perthshire. A third claimant (2000 years) is that at Hensor (the ancient sire?) in Buckinghamshire, and a fourth exists at Buckland near Dover.[397]