In Fig. 302, Jehovah is rather surprisingly represented as a puer or boy: as already mentioned, the Eros of Etruria was named Epeur, and it is possible that the London church of St. Peter le Poor—which stood in Brode Street next Pawlet or Little Paul House—was originally a shrine of Jupiter the puer, or Jupiter the Boy.[562]
In the design now under consideration the Family consists of three—the Almighty and Adam and Eve—but frequently the holy group consists of five, the additional two probably being Cain and Abel, Cain who slew his brother Abel, being obviously Night or Evil. In the emblems here illustrated which are defined by Briquet as “cars”; four cycles are supported by a broca or spike, constituting the mystic five. In Jewish mysticism the Chariot of Jehovah, or Yahve, was regarded as “a kind of mystic way leading up to the final-goal of the soul”.[563]
Figs. 303 to 306.—Mediæval Paper Marks. From Les Filigranes (Briquet, C. M.).
The number of the Cabiri was indeterminate, and there is a probability that the sacerdotal Solar Chariot of the Cabiri, whether four or two-wheeled, originated the term cabriolet, whence our modern cab. I have elsewhere reproduced two pillars bearing the legend Cab, and we might assume that the two-wheeled vehicle illustrated, ante, [page 454], represented a cab were it not for the official etymology of cabriolet. This term, we are told, is from cabriole, a caper, leap of a goat, “from its supposed lightness”.[564] I have never observed a cab either skipping like a ram, or capering like a goat; and in the days before springs the alleged skittishness of the cab must have been even less marked. In any case the particular vehicle illustrated ante, [page 454], cannot with propriety be termed “a caperer,” for it is reproduced by the editor of Adamnan’s Life of Columba, as being no doubt the type of car in which the Saint, even without his lynch pins, successfully drove a sedate and undeviating course.
The goat or caper was a familiar emblem of Jupiter, and our words kid and goat are doubtless the German gott: the horns and the hoofs of the Solar goat—see ante, [page 361]—are perpetuated in the current notions of “Old Nick,” and in many parts of Europe Saints Nicholas and Michael are equated;[565] hence there is very little doubt that these two once occupied the position of the two Cabiri, Nick or Nixy being nox or night, and Michael—Light or Day.
The Gaulish coin here illustrated is described by Akerman, as “Two goats (?) on their hind legs face to face; the whole within a beaded circle”: on the reverse is a hog, and some other animal represented with a broccus, or saw on its back. As this is a coin of the people inhabiting Agedincum Senonum (now Sens), the revolving twain are probably gedin—either goats, kids, or gods, and the baroque animal with the broccus on its back may be identified with a boar. There is not much evidence in this coin, which was found at Brettenham, Norfolk, of “degradation” from the Macedonian stater illustrated ante, [page 394], nevertheless, Sir John Evans sturdily maintains: “the degeneration of the head of Apollo into two boars and a wheel, impossible as it may at first appear, is in fact but a comparatively easy transition when once the head has been reduced into a form of regular pattern”.[566]
Fig. 307.—Gaulish. From Akerman.
The Meigle in Perthshire, where the two-wheeled barrow or barouche was inscribed on the Thane stone, may be equated with St. Michael, and upon another stone at the same Meigle there occurs a carving which is defined as a group of four men placed in svastika form, one hand of each man holding the foot of the other. The author of Archaic Sculpturings describes this attitude as indicating the unbreakable character of the association of each figure with its neighbours, and expresses the opinion: “This elaborate variant of the symbol seems to symbolise aptly the four quarters of the earth, each quarter being represented by a man. The four quarters make a complete circle, and therefore all humanity, through love and affinity, should join from the four parts and form one inseparable bond of brotherhood.”[567]