Fig. 312.—Roman roads. From A New Description of England and Wales (Anon. 1724).
It was a prevalent notion among our earliest historians that “In such estimation was Britain held by its inhabitants, that they made in it four roads from end to end, which were placed under the King’s protection to the intent that no one should dare to make an attack upon his enemy on these roads”.[580] These four great roads, dating from the time of King Belinus, and supposedly running from sea to sea, were probably mythical, but in view of the sanctity of public highways and the King’s Peace which was enforced thereon, it is not improbable that numerous “Holloways”—now supposed to mean hollow or sunk ways—were originally and actually holy ways.
The Punjaub is so named because it is watered not by four but by five rivers, and that five streams possessed a mystic significance in British mythology is evident from the story of Cormac’s voyage to the Land of Paradise or Promise.[581] “Palaces of bronze and houses of white silver, thatched with white bird’s wings are there. Then he sees in the garth a shining fountain with five streams flowing out of it, and the hosts in turn a-drinking its water.”[582]
It has been recently pointed out that the Celtic conception of Paradise “offers the closest parallel to the Chinese,” whence it is significant to find that in the Chinese “Abyss of Assembly” there were supposed to lie five fairy islands of entrancing beauty, which were inhabited by spirit-like beings termed shên jên.[583] I have in my possession a Chinese temple-ornament consisting of a blue porcelain broccus of five rays or peaks, which, like the five fundamental cones of the Etruscan tomb (ante, [p. 237]), in all probability represent the five bergs or islands of the blessed. The inner circle of Stonehenge consisted of five upstanding trilithons of which the stones came—by popular repute—from Ireland. Among the Irish divinities mentioned by Mr. Westropp is not only the gracious Aine who was worshipped by five Firbolg tribes, but also an old god who kindled five streams of magic fire from which his sons—the fathers of the Delbna tribes—all sprang.[584]
It will be remembered that the Avebury district is the boss, gush, or spring of five rivers, and Avebury or Abury was almost without doubt another “abbey” or bri of Ab on similar lines to the six-spoked hub, hob, or boss of Abchurch, Londonstone. It is difficult to believe that the six roads meeting at Abchurch arranged themselves so symmetrically by chance, and it is still more difficult to attribute them to the Roman Legions.
As Mr. Johnson has pointed out there is a current supposition, seemingly well based, that some of the supposedly Roman roads represent older trackways, straightened and adapted for rougher usage.[585] That London stone at Abchurch was the hub, navel or bogel of the Cantian British roads may be further implied by the immediately adjacent Bucklesbury, now corrupted into Bucklersbury. Parts of the Ichnield Way—notably at Broadway—are known as Buckle Street, the term buckle here being seemingly used in the sense of Bogle or Bogie. It is always the custom of a later race to attribute any great work of unknown origin to Bogle or the Devil, e.g., the Devil’s Dyke, and innumerable other instances.
Ichnos in Greek means track, ichneia a tracking; whence the immemorial British track known as the Ichnield Way may reasonably be connoted with the ancient Via Egnatio near Berat in Albania. That Albion, like Albania, possessed very serviceable ways before the advent of any Romans is clear from Cæsar’s Commentaries. After mentioning the British rearguard—“about 4000 charioteers only being left”—Cæsar continues: “and when our cavalry for the sake of plundering and ravaging the more freely scattered themselves among the fields, he (Cassivelaunus) used to send out charioteers from the woods by all the well-known roads and paths, and to the great danger of our horse engage with them, and this source of fear hindered them from straggling very extensively”.[586]
It has been seen that the Welsh tracks by which the armies marched to battle were known as Elen’s Ways, whence possibly six such Elen’s Ways concentrated in the heart of London, which I have already suggested was an Elen’s dun. In French forests radiating pathways, known as etoiles or stars, were frequent, and served the most utilitarian purpose of guiding hunters to a central Hub or trysting-place.
One of the marvels which impress explorers in Crete is the excellence of the ancient Candian roads. According to Tacitus the British, under Boudicca, chiefly Cantii, Cangians, and Ikeni, “brought into the field an incredible multitude”.[587] The density of the British population in ancient times is indicated by the extent of prehistoric reliques, whereas the Roman invaders were never numerically more than a negligible fraction. It is now admitted by historians that Roman civilisation did not succeed in striking the same deep roots in British soil as it did into the nationality of Gaul or Spain. “For one thing, the numbers both of Roman veterans and of Romanised Britons remained comparatively small; for another, beyond the Severn and beyond the Humber lay the multitudes of the un-Romanised tribes, held down only by the terror of the Roman arms, and always ready to rise and overwhelm the alien culture.”[588]
Commenting upon the Icknield Way, Dr. Guest remarks the lack upon its course of any Roman relics, a want, however, which, as he says, is amply compensated for by the many objects, mostly of British antiquity, which crowd upon us as we journey westward—by the tumuli and “camps” which show themselves on right and left—by the six gigantic earthworks which in the intervals of eighty miles were raised at widely different periods to bar progress along this now deserted thoroughfare.[589] In a similar strain Mr. Johnson writes of the Pilgrim’s Way in Surrey: “To my thinking, the strongest argument for the prehistoric way lies in the plea expressed by the grim old earthworks and silent barrows which stud its course, and by the numerous relics dug up here and there, relics of which we may rest assured not one-half has been put on record.”[590]