[CHAPTER X]
HAPPY ENGLAND
“In the old time every Wood and Grove, Field and Meadow, Hill and Cave, Sea and River, was tenanted by tribes and communities of the great Fairy Family, and at least one of its members was a resident in every House and Homestead where the kindly virtues of charity and hospitality were practised and cherished. This was the faith of our forefathers—a graceful, trustful faith, peopling the whole earth with beings whose mission was to watch over and protect all helpless and innocent things, to encourage the good, to comfort the forlorn, to punish the wicked, and to thwart and subdue the overbearing.”—Anon, The Fairy Family, 1857.
“It is very much better to believe in a number of gods than in none at all.”—W. B. Yeats.
It is generally supposed that the site of London has been in continuous occupation since that remote period when the flint-knappers chipped their implements at Gray’s Inn, and the pile-dwelling communities, whose traces have been found in the neighbourhood of London Stone, drove their first stakes into the surrounding marshes. Not only are there in London the material evidences of antediluvian occupation, but “the fact remains that in the city of London there are more survivals from past history than can be found within the compass of any other British city, or of any other area in Britain.”[593]
Sir Laurence Gomme assigns some importance to the place-name “Britaine Street”—now “Little Britain”—where, according to Stow, the Earls of Britain were lodged, but it is probable that in Upwell, Ebgate, Abchurch, Apechurch or Upchurch, we may identify relics of an infinitely greater antiquity.
When Cæsar paid his flying visit to these islands he learned at the mouth of the Thames that what he terms an oppidum or stronghold of the British was not far distant, and that a considerable number of men and cattle were there assembled. As it has been maintained that London was the stronghold here referred to, the term oppidum may possibly have been a British word, Cæsar’s testimony being: “The Britons apply the name of oppidum to any woodland spot difficult to access, and fortified with a rampart and trench to which they are in the habit of resorting in order to escape a hostile raid”.[594] That the dum of oppidum was equivalent to dun is manifest from the place-name Dumbarton, which was originally Dunbrettan.
In view of the natural situation of St. Alban’s there is a growing opinion among archæologists that London, and not St. Alban’s, was the stronghold which stood the shock of Roman conquest when Cæsar took the oppidum of Cassivellaunus.
The inscriptions Ep, Eppi, and Ippi figure frequently on British coins, and there were probably local hobby stones, hobby towns, and oppi duns in the tribal centre of every settlement of hobby-horse worshippers. In Durham is Hoppyland Park, near Bridgewater is Hopstone, near Yarmouth is Hopton, and Hopwells; and Hopwood’s, Happy Valley’s, Hope Dale’s, Hope Point’s, Hopgreen’s, Hippesley’s and Apsley’s may be found in numerous directions. It is noteworthy that none of these terms can have had any relation to the hop plant, for the word hops is not recorded until the fifteenth century; nor, speaking generally, have they any direct connection with hope, meaning “the point of the low land mounting the hill whence the top can be seen”.[595]