Fig. 341.—God, Beardless, either the Son or the Father. French Miniature of the XI. Cent. From Christian Iconography (Didron).
Fig. 342.—British. From Evans.
According to Borlase there is in Anglesea “a horse-shoe 22 paces in diameter called Brangwyn or Supreme court; it lies in a place called Tre’r Drew or Druids’ Town”.[659] Stonehenge consists of a circle enclosing a horse-shoe or hoof—the footprint and sign of Hipha the White Mare, or Ephialtes the Night Mare, and a variant of this idea is expressed in the circle enclosing a triangle as exhibited in the Christian emblem on p. 571. That Christianity did not always conceive the All Father as the Ancient of Days is evident from Fig. 341, where the central Power is depicted within the writhings of what is seemingly an acanthus wreath: the Cunob fairy on the British coin illustrated ante, [page 528], is extending what is either a ball of fire or else a wreath. The word wraith, meaning apparition, is connoted by Skeat with an Icelandic term meaning “a pile of stones to warn a wayfarer,” hence this heap may be connoted with rath the Irish, and rhaith the Welsh, for a fairy dun or hill. Skeat further connotes wraith with the Norwegian word vardyvle, meaning “a guardian or attendant spirit seen to follow or precede one,” and he suggests that vardyvle meant ward evil. Certainly the wraiths who haunted the raths were supposed to ward off evil, and the giant Wreath,[660] who was popularly associated with Portreath near Redruth, was in all probability the same wraith that originated the place-name Cape Wrath. In Welsh a speech is called ar raith or on the mound, hence we may link rhetoric to this idea, and assume that the raths were the seats of public eloquence as we know they were.
As wreath means a circle it is no doubt the same word as rota, a wheel, and Rodehengenne or Stonehengels may have meant the Wheel Angels. The cruciform rath, illustrated ante, [page 55], is pre-eminently a rota, and in Fig. 343 Christ is represented in a circle supported by four somewhat unaerial Evangelists or Angels.
Mount Ida in Phrygia was the reputed seat of the Dactyli, a word which means fingers, and these mysterious Powers were sometimes identified with the Cabiri. The Dactyli, or fingers, are described as fabulous beings to whom the discovery of iron and the art of working it by means of fire was ascribed, and as the philosophy of Phairie is always grounded upon some childishly simple basis, it is probable that the Elphin eleven in its elementary sense represented the ten fingers controlled by Emperor Brain. The digits are magic little workmen who level mountains and rear palaces at the bidding of their lord and master Brain: the word digit, French doight, is in fact Good god, and dactyli is the same word plus a final yli.
Fig. 343.—Christ with a Plain Nimbus, Ascending to Heaven in a Circular Aureole. Carving in Wood of the XIV. Cent. From Evans.