| Greek | p | Gothic | f | Old High German | b(v) |
| " | b | " | p | " | f |
| " | ph | " | b | " | p |
| " | t | " | th | " | d |
| " | d | " | t | " | z |
| " | th | " | d | " | t |
| " | k | " | (h) | " | g(h) |
| " | g | " | k | " | ch |
| " | kh | " | g | " | k |
It is said that the causes which brought about the changes formulated in Grimm’s Law are “obscure” (they may have been due to nothing more obscure than a prevalence to colds in the head), and that they were probably due to the settlement of Low German conquerors in Central and Southern Germany. The changes above formulated all fall, however, within the wider theory I am now suggesting, with the exception of d and t becoming in High German z. This particular syllabic change was, I suggest, due to z at one time being synonymous with d or t, and not to any inability of certain tribes to vocalise the sound t.
Max Müller observes that “at first sight the English word fir does not look very like the Latin word quercus, yet it is the same word”. Fir certainly does not look like quercus, nor, of course, is it any more the “same word” than six is the same word as half a dozen. There are a thousand ways of proving six to be radically and identically the same as half a dozen, and the ingenious system of permutations by which philologists identify fir with quercus, and alphana with equus,[55] are parallel to some of the methods by which common sense, by cold gradation and well-balanced form, would quite correctly equate six with half a dozen.
The term “word” I understand not in the loose sense used by Max Müller, but as the dictionary defines it—“an oral or written sign expressing an idea or notion”. Thus I treat John as the same word as Jane or Jean, and it is radically the same word as giant, old English jeyantt, French geante, Cornish geon. Jean is also the same word as chien, a dog, Irish choin; Welsh chin or cyn, and all these terms by reason of their radical an are cognate with the Greek kuon, a dog, whence cynical. The Gaelic for John is Jain, the Gaelic for Jean or Jane is Sine, with which I equate shine, shone, and sheen, all of which have respect to the sun, as also had the Arabic jinn, genii, and “Gian Ben Gian,” a title of the fabulous world-ruler of the Golden Age. Among the Basques Jaun means Lord or Master, and the Basque term for God, Jainko, Jeinko, or Jinko, is believed to have meant “Lord or Master on High”. The Irish Church attributes its origin to disciples of St. John—Irish Shaun, and one may detect the pre-Christian Sinjohn in the British divinity Shony, and evolving from the primeval Shen at Shenstone near Litchfield. Here, a little distance from the church, was a well, now called St. John’s Well, after the saint in whose honour the parish church is dedicated. In all probability the present-day church of St. John was built on the actual site of the original Shen stone or rock; and that John stones were once plentiful in Scotland is probably implied by the common surname Johnstone. Near the Shannon in Ireland, and in close proximity to the church and village of Shanagolden, is “castle” Shenet or Shanid, attached to which is a rath or earthwork of which the ground-plan, from Mr. Westropp’s survey, is here reproduced. As it is a matter of common knowledge that the worldwide wheel cross was an emblem of the sun, I should therefore have no scruples in connoting Castle Shenet with the primeval jeyantt or the Golden Shine; and suggesting that it was a sanctuary originally constructed by the Ganganoi, a people mentioned by Ptolemy as dwelling in the neighbourhood of the Shannon. The eponymous hero of the Ganganoi was a certain Sengann,[56] who is probably the original St. Jean or Sinjohn to whom the fires of St. Jean and St. John have been diverted.
We shall see that Giant Christopher was symbolically represented as chien headed, that he was a personification of the Shine or Sheen of the Sun, and that he was worshipped as the solar dog at the holy city of Cynopolis or dog-town. We have already noted English “chien” or cyn coins inscribed cun, which is seemingly one of the innumerable puns which confront philology.
Fig. 6.—From Proc. of the Royal Irish Acad., xxxiii., C., No. 2.
Years ago Bryant maintained that “the fable of the horse certainly arose from a misprision of terms, though the mistake be as old as Homer”. There was nothing therefore new in the theories of the Max Müller school that all mythologies originated from a “disease of language”. Dr. Wilder, alluding to symbolism, speaks of the punning so common in those days, often making us uncertain whether the accident of similar name or sound led to adoption as a symbol or was merely a blunder. It was, I think, neither, and many instances will be adduced in favour of the supposition, that words originated from symbolic ideas, and not vice versa. That symbolism existed before writing is evident from the innumerable symbols unearthed at Mykenæ, Troy, and elsewhere, where few traces of script or inscriptions have been found. By symbolism, primitive man unquestionably communicated ideas, and, as has already been pointed out, the roots of language bear traces of the rudimentary symbolism by which our savage forefathers named the objects around them as well as the conceptions of their primitive religion.[57] Faced by the “curiosity” that the Greek and Latin words for archaic, arch, ark, arc, are all apparently connected in an intricate symbolism in which there is more than a suspicion that there is an etymological as well as a mystical interconnection, a writer in The Open Court concludes: “it would seem as though the roots of such words derived their meaning from the Mysteries rather than that their mystical meaning was the result of coincidence”.[58]
That the Mysteries—or in other words dramatised mythology—Symbolism, and Etymology, are all closely connected with each other is a certitude beyond question. The theory, so pertinaciously put forward by Max Müller, was that myths originated from a subsequent misunderstanding of words. Using the same data as Max Müller, I suggest that words originated from the mysteries and not myths from the words.
In The Holy Wells of Cornwall, Mr. T. Quiller Couch observes that Dr. Borlase, learned, diligent, and excellent antiquary as he was, to whom we are all indebted in an iconoclastic age for having copied for us fair things which time had blurred, seems to have had little sympathy with the faiths of the simple, silly, country folk (I use these adjectives in their older meaning), and to have passed them with something like contempt. At present the oral traditions of a people, their seeming follies even, have become of value as indicating kinship between nations shunted off by circumstances, to use the most modern term, in divergent ways.