What would’st thou that I should sing?
Sing to me the series of number one, that I may learn it this very day.
There is no series for one, for One is Necessity alone.
The father of death, there is nothing before and nothing after.[544]
The Magna Mater of Fig. 266 might thus appropriately have been known as Fate, Destiny, Necessity, or Fortune. Fortuna is radically for, and with the Fortunes or fates may be connoted the English fairies known as Portunes. The Portunes are said to be peculiar to England, and are known by the French as Neptunes: the English Portunes are represented as diminutive little people who, “if anything is to be carried into the house, or any laborious work to be done, lend a hand and finish it sooner than any man could”.[545] A jocular and amiable little people who loved to warm themselves at the fire.
Fig. 283.—From Christian Iconography (Didron).
Among the heathen chants of the Spanish peasantry is one in which the number One stands for the wheel of Fortune, and the number six “for the loves you hold”. These six loves may be connoted with the six pinions of the Dove illustrated on page 486, and that Janus of the Dove was regarded as the Chaos, Ghost, or Cause is obvious from the words which are put into his mouth by Ovid: “The ancients called me Chaos (for I am the original substance). Observe, how I can unfold the deeds of past times. This lucid air, and the three other bodies which remain, fire, water, and earth, formed one heap.[546] As soon as this mass was liberated from the strife of its own discordant association, it sought new abodes. Fire flew upwards: air occupied the next position, and earth and water, forming the land and sea, filled the middle space. Then I, who was a globe, and formless, assumed a countenance and limbs worthy of a god. Even now, as a slight indication of my primitive appearance, my front and back are the same.”
In the mouth of Fig. 283 is the wheel of the four quarters, and variants of this wheel-cross form the design of a very large percentage of English coins: I here use the word English in preference to British as “there was no native coinage either in Scotland, Wales, or Ireland”: in England alone have prehistoric British coins been found,[547] and in England alone apparently were they coined. Somewhat the same conclusions are indicated by the wheel-cross which is peculiar to Wales, Cornwall, and the Isle of Man: neither in Scotland or Ireland does the circular form exist.[548]
