In Folklore as an Historical Science Sir Laurence Gomme lays some stress upon a tale which is common alike to Britain and Brittany, and is therefore supposed to be of earlier date than the separation of Britons and Bretons. This tale which centres at London, is to the effect that a countryman once upon a time dreamed there was a priceless treasure hidden at London Bridge: he therefore started on a quest to London where on arrival he was observed loitering and was interrogated by a bystander. On learning the purpose of his trip the Cockney laughed heartily at such simplicity, and jestingly related how he himself had also dreamed a dream to the effect that there was treasure buried in the countryman’s own village. On his return home the rustic, thinking the matter over, decided to dig where the cockney had facetiously indicated, whereupon to his astonishment he actually found a pot containing treasure. On the first pot unearthed was an inscription reading—
Look lower, where this stood
Is another twice as good.
Encouraged he dug again, whereupon to his greater astonishment he found a second pot bearing the same inscription: again he dug and found a third pot even yet more valuable. This fabulously ancient tale is notably identified with Upsall in Yorkshire; it is, we are told, “a constant tradition of the neighbourhood, and the identical bush yet exists (or did in 1860) beneath which the treasure was found; a burtree or elder.”[661] Upsall was originally written Upeshale and Hupsale (primarily Ap’s Hall?) and the idea is a happy one, for in mythology it is undeniably true that the deeper one delves the richer proves the treasure trove. In suggesting that eleven may have been the number of the ten digits guided and controlled by the Brain one may thus not only remark the injunction to the Jews: “Thou shalt make curtains of goatshair to be a covering upon the tabernacle: eleven curtains shalt thou make,”[662] but one may note also the probable elucidation of this Hebrew symbolism:—
Shall any gazer see with mortal eyes
Or any searcher know by mortal mind;
Veil after veil will lift, but there must be
Veil upon veil behind.[663]
Assuming that in the simplest sense the elphin eleven were the ten digits and the Brain, one may compare with this combination the ten Powers or qualities which according to the Cabala emanated from “The Most Ancient One”. “He has given existence to all things. He made ten lights spring forth from His midst, lights which shone with the forms which they had borrowed from Him and which shed everywhere the light of a brilliant day. The Ancient One, the most Hidden of the hidden, is a high beacon, and we know Him only by His lights which illuminate our eyes so abundantly. His Holy Name is no other thing than these lights.”[664]
According to The Golden Legend the Emperor of Constantinople applied to St. Ambrose to receive the sacred mysteries, and that Ambrose was Vera or Truth is hinted by the testimony of the Emperor. “I have found a man of truth, my master Ambrose, and such a man ought to be a bishop.” The word bishop, Anglo-Saxon biscop, supposed to mean overseer, is like the Greek episcopus, radically op, an eye.[665] Egyptian archæologists tell us that in Egypt the Coptic Land of the Great Optic, even the very games had a religious significance; whence there was probably some ethical idea behind the British “jingling match by eleven blind-folded men and one unmasked and hung with bells”. This joyous and diverting jeu is mentioned as part of the sports-programme at the celebrated Scouring of the White Horse: we have already noted the blind-folded Little Leaf Man, led blind Amor-like from house to house, also the Blind Man who is said to have sat for eleven years in the Church of St. Maur (or Amour?), and among other sports at the Scouring, eleven enters again into an account of chasing the fore wheel of a wagon down the hill slope. The trundling of a fiery wheel—which doubtless took place at the several British Trendle Hills—is a well-known feature of European solar ceremonies: the greater interest of the Scouring item is perhaps in the number of competitors: “eleven on ’em started and amongst ’em a sweep-chimley and a millard [milord], and the millard tripped up the sweep-chimley and made the zoot fly a good ’un—the wheel ran pretty nigh down to the springs that time”.[666]