Stow in his London uses the word fereno to denote an ironmonger, in old French feron meant a smith, and wherever the ancient ferenos or smiths were settled probably became known as Farindones or fereno towns. Stow mentions several eminent goldsmiths named Farendone; from feron, the authorities derive the surname Fearon, which may be seen over a shop-front near Farringdon Street to-day.
Modern Farringdon Street leads from Smithfield or Smithy field[524] to Blackfriars, and it may be suggested that the original Black Friars were literally freres or brethren, who forged with industrious ferocity at their fires and furnaces. Without impropriety the early fearons might have adopted as their motto Semper virens: smiting in smithies is smutty work, and all these terms are no doubt interrelated, but not, I think, in the sense which Skeat supposes them, viz.: “Smite, to fling. The original sense was to smear or rub over. ‘To rub over,’ seems to have been a sarcastic expression for ‘to beat’; we find well anoynted—well beaten.”
The word bronze was derived, it is said, from Brundusinum or Brindisi, a town which was famous for its bronze workers. Brindisi is almost opposite Berat in Epirus; the smith or faber is proverbially burly, i.e., bur like or brawny, and it is curious that the terms brass, brasier, burnish, bronze, etc., should all similarly point to Bru or Brut. With St. Bride or St. Brigit, who in one of her three aspects was represented as a smith, may be connoted bright, and with Bress, the Consort of Brigit, may be connoted brass. And as Bride was alternatively known as Fraid, doubtless to this form of the name may be assigned fer, fire, fry, frizzle, furnace, forge, fierce, ferocious, and force.
That the island of Bru or Barri in South Wales was a reputed home of the burly faber, feuber, or Fire Father, is to be inferred from the statement of Giraldus Cambrensis, that “in a rock near the entrance of the island there is a small cavity to which if the ear is applied a noise is heard like that of smiths at work, the blowing of the bellows, strokes of the hammers, grinding of tools and roaring of furnaces”.[525] It is supposed that Barri island owes its name to a certain St. Baroc, the remains of whose chapel once stood there: that St. Baroc was Al Borak, the White Horse or brok, upon whom every good Mussalman hopes eventually to ride, is implied by the story that St. Baroc borrowed a friend’s horse and rode miraculously across the sea from Pembrokeshire to Ireland.
On the coast between Pembroke and Tenby is Manorbeer, known anciently as Maenor Pyrr, that is, says Giraldus, “the mansion of Pyrrus, who also possessed the island of Chaldey, which the Welsh call Inys Pyrr, or the island of Pyrrus”. But the editor of Giraldus considers that a much more natural and congenial conjecture may be made in supposing Maenor Pyrr to be derived from Maenor a Manor, and Pyrr, the plural of Por, a lord. I have already suggested a possible connection between the numerous pre stones and Pyrrha, the first lady who created mankind out of stones.
Near Fore Street, in the ward of Farringdon by Smithfield, will be found Whitecross Street, Redcross Street, and Cowcross Street: the last of these three cross streets by which was “Jews Garden,” may be connoted with the Geecross of elsewhere. The district is mentioned by Stow as famous for its coachbuilders, and there is no more reason to assume that the word coach (French coche) was derived from Kocsi, a town in Hungary, than to suppose that the first coach was a cockney production and came from Chick Lane or from Cock Lane, both of which neighbour the Cowcross district in Smithfield. The supposition that the gig or coach (the words are radically the same) was primarily a vehicle used in the festivals to Gog the High High, or Mighty Mighty, is strengthened by the testimony of the solar chariot illustrated ante, [page 405].
Not only were the British famed from the dawn of history[526] for their car-driving but from the evidence of sepulchral chariots and sepulchral harness the authorities are of opinion that the fighting car was long retained by the Kelts, “and its presence in the Yorkshire graves seems to show that it persisted in Britain longer than elsewhere”.[527]
Somewhere in the Smithfield district originally existed what Stow mentions as Radwell, and this well of the Redcross, or Ruddy rood, may be connoted with the Rood Lane a mile or so more eastward. Between Rood Lane and Red Cross Street is Lothbury: the suffix bury (as in Lothbury, and Aldermanbury) is held by Stow, and also by Camden, to mean a Court of Justice, and this definition accords precisely with the theory that the barrow was originally the seat of Justice. At Lothbury the noise or bruit made by the burly fabers was so vexatious that Stow seriously defines the place-name Lothbury as indicating a loathsome locality.[528] The supposition that Cowcross Street, Jews Garden, and the Redcross or Ruddy rood site were primarily in the occupation of men of Troy or Droia may possibly be strengthened by the fact that here was a Tremill brook, and the seat of a Sir Drew Drury. The parish church of Blackfriars is St. Andrews, there is another St. Andrews within a bow-shot of Smithfield, and that the “drews” were a skilled family is obvious from the fact that the name Drew is defined as Teutonic skilful. Both Scandinavians and Germans possess the Trojan tradition; the All Father of Scandinavia was named Borr, Thor, the Hammer God, was assigned to Troy, and in Teutonic mythology there figure two celestial Smith-brethren named Sindre and Brok.
The cradle of the Cretan Zeus is assigned sometimes not to Mount Ida but to the neighbouring Mount Juktas which is described as an extraordinary “cone”. When the Cretan script is deciphered it will probably transpire that Mount Juktas was associated with Juk, Jock, or Jack, and the name may be connected with jokul, the generic term in Scandinavia for a snow-covered or white-crowned height. Jack is seemingly the same word as the Hebrew Isaac, which is defined as meaning laughter; Jack may thus probably be equated with joke and jokul with chuckle, all of which symptoms are the offspring of joy or gaiety. To kyg, an obsolete adjective meaning lively—and thus evidently a variant of agog—are assigned by our authorities the surnames Keach, Ketch, Kedge, and Gedge. In connection with kyg Prof. Weekley quotes the line—
Kygge or joly, jocundus.