Beheld, enamour’d; and amid the herd
In likeness of a coal-black steed appear’d;
Twelve foals, by him conceiving, they produc’d.
These, o’er the teeming corn-fields as they flew,
Skimm’d o’er the standing ears, nor broke the haulm;
And o’er wide Ocean’s bosom as they flew,
Skimm’d o’er the topmost spray of th’ hoary sea.[444]
Boreas, whom we may connote with Bress, the Consort of Brigit, or Bride, is here represented as wallowing, a term which Skeat derives from the Anglo-Saxon wealwian, to roll round: he adds, “see voluble,” but in view of the world-wide rites of immersion or baptism it is more seemly to connect wallow with hallow. Mr. Weller, Senr., preferred to spell his name with a “V”: there is no doubt that Weller and Veller were synonymous terms, and therefore that Fulham, in which is now Walham Green, was originally a home of Wal or Ful, perhaps the same as Wayland or Voland, the Blacksmith of Wayland’s Smithy and of Walland Park.[445] It is supposed that Fulham was the swampy home of fowlen, or water fowls, but it is an equally reasonable conjecture that it was likewise a tract of marshy meads whereon the foalen or foals were pastured. As already noted the Tartar version of the Pied Piper represents the Chanteur or Kentaur as a foal, coursing perpetually round the world. The coins of the Gaulish Volcae exhibit a wheel or veel with the inscription Vol, others in conjunction with a coursing horse are inscribed Vool, and we find the head of a remarkable maned horse on the coins of the Gaulish Felikovesi. As felix means happy, one may connote the hobby horse with happiness, or one’s hobby, and it is not improbable that both Felixstowe and Folkestone were settlements of the adjacent Felikovesi, whose coins portray the Hobby’s head or Foal.
Figs. 247 to 253.—Gaulish. From Akerman.