The word hope, meaning expectation, is in Danish haab, in German hoffe: Hopwood, near Hopton, is at Alvechurch (Elf Church?), apart from which straw one would be justified in the assumption that Hop, Hob, or Hoph, where it occurs in place-names, had originally reference to Hob-with-a-canstick, alias Hop-o’-my-Thumb. The Hebrew expression for the witch of Endor, consulted by King Saul, is ob or oub, but in Deuteronomy xviii. 11, the term oph is used to denote a familiar spirit.[596] As we find a reference in Shakespeare to “urchins, ouphes, and fairies,” the English ouphes would seem to have been one of the orders of the Elphin realm: the authorities equate it with alph or alp, and the word has probably survived in the decadence of Kipling’s “muddied oaf”.
Offa, the proper name, is translated by the dictionaries as meaning mild, gentle: it is further remarkable that the root oph, op, or ob, is very usually associated with things diminutive and small. In Welsh of or ov means “atoms, first principles”;[597] in French œuf, in Latin ova, means an egg; the little egg-like berry of the hawthorn is termed a hip; to ebb is to diminish, and in S.W. Wiltshire is “a small river,” named the Ebbe. Hob, with his flickering candlestick, or the homely Hob crouching on the hob, seems rarely to have been thought of otherwise than as the child Elf, such as that superscribed Ep upon the British coin here illustrated: yet to the ubiquitous Hob may no doubt be assigned up, which means aloft or overhead, and hoop, the symbol of the Sun or Eye of Heaven.
Fig. 313.—British. From Akermann.
Within and all around the oppida the military and sacerdotal hubbub was undoubtedly at times uproarious, and the vociferation used on these occasions may account for the word hubbub,[598] a term which according to Skeat was “imitative”. This authority adds to his conjecture: “formerly also whoobub, a confused noise. Hubbub was confused with hoop-hoop, re-duplication of hoop and whoobub with whoop-hoop.” But even had our ancestors mingled hip! hip! in their muddled minds even then the confusion would have been excusable.
Ope, when occurring in proper-names such as Panope or Europe, is usually translated Eye—thus, Panope as Universal Eye, and Europa as Broad Eye. The small red eye-like or optical berries of the hawthorn are termed hips or haws, and it is probable that once upon a time the hips were deemed the elphin eyes of Hob, the Ubiquitous or Everywhere. In India the favourite bead in rosaries is the seed named rudraksha, which means “the Eye of the god Rudra or S’iva”: Rudra, or the ruddy one, is the Hub or centre of the Hindoo pantheon, and S’iva, his more familiar name (now understood to mean “kindly, gracious, or propitious”) is more radically “dear little Iva or Ipha”. In India millions of S’eva stones are still worshipped, and the rudraksha seeds or Eyes of S’iva are generally cut with eleven facets,[599] evidently symbolising the eleven Beings which are said to have sprung from the dual personalities—male and female—of the Creative Principle.
Epine, the French for thorn, is ultimately akin to Hobany, and hip may evidently be equated with the friendly Hob. According to Bryant Hip or Hipha was a title of the Phœnician Prime Parent, and it is probable that our Hip! Hip! Hip!—the parallel of the Alban Albani! Albani!—long antedated the Hurrah!
The Hobdays and the Abdys of Albion may be connoted with Good Hob, and that this Robin Goodfellow or benevolent elf was the personification of shrewdness and cunning is implied by apt and inept, and that happy little Hob was considered to be pretty is implied by hübsch, the Teutonic for pretty: the word pretty is essentially British, and the piratical habits of the early British are brought home to them by the word pirate. We shall, however, subsequently see that pirates originally meant “attempters” or men who tried.
The surname Hepburn argues the existence at some time of a Hep bourne or brook; in Northumberland is Hepborne or Haybourne, which the authorities suppose meant “burn, brook, with the hips, the fruit of the wild rose”: but hips must always have been as ubiquitous and plentiful as sparrows. In Yorkshire is Hepworth, anciently written Heppeword, and this is confidently interpreted as meaning Farm of Heppo: in view, however, of our hobby-horse festivals, it is equally probable that in the Hepbourne the Kelpie, the water horse, or hippa was believed to lurk, and one may question the historic reality of farmer Heppo.
The hobby horse was principally associated with the festivals of May-Day, but it also figured at Yule Tide. On Christmas Eve either a wooden horse head or a horse’s skull was decked with ribbons and carried from door to door on the summit of a pole supported by a man cloaked with a sheet: this figure was known as “Old Hob”:[600] in Welsh hap means fortune—either good or bad.