The Hackney of our early coinage thus not only appears pre-eminently upon it, but the very terms coin, token, chink, and jingle,[418] are permeated with the same root, i.e., Ecna, Ægina, or Jeanne.
That the worship of the Hackney stretches backward into the remotest depths of antiquity is implied by the carvings of prehistoric horse-heads found notably in the trous or cave shelters of Derbyshire and Dordogne. The discoveries at Torquay in Kent’s Cavern, in Kent’s Copse, (or Kent’s Hole as it is named in ancient maps), included bone, or horn pins, awls, barbed harpoons, and a neatly formed needle precisely similar to analogous objects found in the rock shelters of Dordogne.[419] Many representations of horses and horse-heads have been found among the coloured inscriptions at Font de Gaune—the Fount of Gaune, and likewise at Combarelles: the Combar is here seemingly King Bar, and Bruniquel, another famous site of horse remains, is in all probability connected with the broncho. Perigord, the site of ancient Petrocorii, is radically peri, and Petrocorii, the Father or Rock Heart, may be connoted with Iuchar, the brother of Bryan and the father of Ecna, or philosophy.
In England horse-teeth in association with a flint celt have been found at Wiggonholt in Sussex: the term holt is applied in Cornwall to Pictish souterrains, and it is probable that Wiggonholt was once a holt or hole of eu Igon: Ægeon was an alternative title of Briareus of the Hundred Hands, and as already shown Briareus was localised by Greek writers upon a British islet (ante, [p. 82]).
The white horse constituted the arms of Brunswick or Burn’s Wick; horses were carved upon the ancient font at Burnsall in Yorkshire, and that the broncho was esteemed in Britain by the flint knappers is implied by the etching of a horse’s head found upon a polished horse rib in a cave at Cresswell Crags in Derbyshire. Ceres or Demeter was represented as a mare, cres is the root of cresco—I grow, and among the white horses carved upon the chalk downs of England, one at Bratton was marked by an exaggerated “crescentic tail”. Bratton, or Bra-ton? Hill, whereon this curious brute was carved, may be connoted with Bradon, and Bratton may also be compared with prad, a word which in horsey circles means a horse, whence prad cove, a dealer in horses: with the white horse at Bratton may be connoted the horse carved upon the downs at Preston near Weymouth. For a mass of miscellaneous and interesting horse-lore the curious reader may refer to Mr. Walter Johnson’s Byways in British Archæology: the opinion of this painstaking and reliable writer is that the famed white horse of Bratton, like its fellow at Uffington, although usually believed to commemorate victories over the Danes are more probably to be referred to the Late Bronze, or Early Iron Age.
It has already been noted that artificially white horses were inscribed at times on Scotch hills, but these earth-monuments are unrecorded either in Ireland or on the Continent. On the higher part of Dartmoor there is a bare patch on the granite plateau in form resembling a horse, but whether the clearing is artificial is uncertain: the probabilities are, however, in favour of design for the site is known as White Horse Hill.[420]
The White Horse of Berkshire—the shire of the horse, Al Borak, or the brok?—is situated at Uffington, a name which the authorities decode into town or village of Uffa: I do not think this imaginary “Uffa” was primarily a Saxon settler, and it is more probable that Uffa was hipha, the Tyrian title of the Great Mother whose name also meant mare, whence the Hellenic hippa. The authorities would like to read Avebury, a form of Abury or Avereberie, as burg of Aeffa, but near Avebury there is a white horse cut upon the slope of a down, and the adjacent place-name Uffcot suggests that here also was an hipha-cot, or cromlech. The ride of Lady Godiva nude upon a white horse was, as we shall see later, probably the survival of an ancient festival representative of Good Hipha, the St. Ive, or St. Eve, who figures here and there in Britain, otherwise Eve, the Mother of All Living.
There used to be traces at Stonehenge of a currus or horse-course, and all the evidence is strongly in favour of the supposition that the horse has been with us in these islands for an exceedingly long time.
When defending their shores against the Roman invaders the British cavalry drove their horses into the sea attacking their enemies while in the water, and one of the facts most impressive to Cæsar was the skill with which our ancestors handled their steeds. Speaking of the British charioteers he says: “First they advance through all parts of their Army, and throw their javelins, and having wound themselves in among the troops of horse, they alight and fight on foot; the charioteers retiring a little with their chariots, but posting themselves in such a manner, that if they see their masters pressed, they may be able to bring them off; by this means the Britons have the agility of horse, and the firmness of foot, and by daily exercise have attained to such skill and management, that in a declivity they can govern the horses, though at full speed, check and turn them short about, run forward upon the pole, stand firm upon the yoke, and then withdraw themselves nimbly into their chariots.”[421]
According to Mr. and Mrs. Hawes, two-wheeled chariots are delineated on Gnossian seals, among which is found a four-wheeled chariot having the front wheels armed with spikes:[422] the Britons are traditionally supposed to have attached scythes to their wheels, and Homer’s description of a chariot fight might well have expressed the sensations of the British Jehu:—