In France and Italy prayers are addressed to Great St. Nicholas, and it is probable that there was always a Nichol and a Nicolette or nucleus: we are told that St. Nicholas, whose mother’s name was Joanna, was born at Patara, and that he became the Bishop of Myra: on his fete day the proper offering was a cock, and that Nicholas or Invictus was the chanteur or Chanticleer, is implied by the statement: “St. Nicholas went abroad in most part in London singing after the old fashion, and was received with many people into their houses, and had much good cheer, as ever they had in many places”: on Christmas Eve St. Nicholas still wanders among the children, notwithstanding the sixteenth century censure—“thus tender minds to worship saints and wicked things are taught”.
Nicholas is an extended form of Nike, Nick, or Neck, and the frequent juxtaposition of St. Nicholas and St. George is an implication that these Two Kings were once the Heavenly Twins. We have already noted an Eleven Stone at Trenuggo—the abode of Nuggo? and there is a likelihood that Nuggo or Nike was there worshipped as One and Only, the Unique: that he was Lord of the Harvests is implied by the fabrication of a harvest doll or Neck. According to Skeat neck originally meant the nape or knop of the neck; it would thus seem that neck—Old English nekke—was a synonym for knob or knop. In Cornwall Neck-day was the great day of the year, when the Neck was “cried”[721] and suspended in the ingle nook until the following year: in the words of an old Cornishwoman: “There were Neck cakes, much feasting and dancing all the evening. Another great day was Guldise day when the corn was drawn: Guldise cakes and a lump of pease-pudding for every one.”[722]
Near London Stone is the Church of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, and at Old Jewry stood St. Mary Cole Church: it is not unlikely that this latter was originally dedicated to Old King Cole, the father of the lovely Helen and the Merry Old Soul whose three fiddlers may be connoted with the three green fiddlers of the Kings of Brentford. The great bowl of Cole, the ghoul of other ages, may be equated with the cauldron or calix of the Pastor Vere: the British word for cauldron was pair, and the Druidic bards speak with great enthusiasm of “their cauldron,” “the cauldron of Britannia,” “the cauldron of Lady Keridwen,” etc. This cauldron was identified with the Stone circles, and the Bardic poets also speak of a mysterious pair dadeni which is understood to mean “the cauldron of new birth or rejuvenescence”.[723] The old artists seemingly represented the Virtues as emerging from this cauldron as three naked boys or Amoretti, for it is said that St. Nicholas revived three murdered children who had been pickled in brine by a wicked inn-keeper who had run short of bacon. This miracle is his well-known emblem, and the murder story by which the authorities accounted for the picture is probably as silly and brutal an afterthought as the horrid “$1”tures” and protracted dolours of other saints. Nevertheless some ghoulish and horrible practices seem to have accompanied the worship of the cauldron, and the author of Druidism Exhumed reproduces a Scotch sculpture of a cauldron out of which protruding human legs are waving ominously in the air.
St. Nicholas of Bari is portrayed resuscitating three youths from three tubs: that Nicholas was radically the Prince of Peace is implied, however, from the exclamation “Nic’las!” which among children is equivalent to “fainites”: the sign of truce or fainites is to cross the two fore-fingers into the form of the treus or cross.
St. Nicholas is the unquestioned patron of all children, and in the past bands of lads, terming themselves St. Nicholas’ Clerks or St. Nicholas’ Knights, added considerably to the conviviality of the cities. Apparently at all abbeys once existed the custom of installing upon St. Nicholas’ Day a Boy Bishop who was generally a choir or singing boy: this so-called Bearn Bishop or Barnebishop was decked, according to one account, in “a myter of cloth and gold with two knopps of silver gilt and enamelled,” and a study of the customs prevailing at this amazing festival of the Holy Innocent leaves little doubt that the Barnebishop personified the conception of the Pastor Vere in the aspect of a lad or “knave”. The connection between knop and knave has already been traced, and the “two knopps” of the episcopal knave or bairnbishop presumably symbolised the bren or breasts of Pastor Vere, the celestial Parent: it has already been suggested that the knops on Figs. 30 to 38 (p. 149) represented the Eyes or Breasts of the All Mighty.
In Irish ab meant father or lord, and in all probability St. Abb’s Head, supposedly named after a Bishop Ebba, was once a seat of Knebba worship: that Cunobe was the Mighty Muse, singing like St. Nicholas after the old fashion, is evident from the British coin illustrated on page 305, a sad example of carelessness, declension, and degradation from the Macedonian Philippus.
The festival of the Burniebishop was commemorated with conspicuous pomp at Cambrai, and there is reason to think that this amazing institution was one of Cambrian origin: so fast and furious was the accompanying merriment that the custom was inevitably suppressed. The only Manor in the town of Brentford is that of Burston or Boston, whence it is probable that Brentford grew up around a primeval Bur stone or “Denbies”. That the place was famous for its merriment and joviality is sufficiently evidenced by the fact that in former times the parish rates “were mainly supported by the profits of public sports and diversions especially at Whitsuntide”.[724]
According to The Rehearsal when the True Kings or Two Kings, accompanied by their retinue of three green-clad fiddlers, descended from the clouds, a dance was then performed: “an ancient dance of right belonging to the Kings of Brentford, but since derived with a little alteration to the Inns of Court”. On referring to the famous pageants of the Inns of Court we find that the chief character was the Lord of Misrule, known otherwise as the King of Cockneys or Prince of Purpool. We have seen that the Hobby Horse was clad in purple, and that Mary was weaver of the true purple—a combination of true blue and scarlet. The authorities connote purple, French purpre, with the Greek porphureos, “an epithet of the surging sea,” and they ally it with the Sanscrit bhur, meaning to be active. The cockney, and very active Prince of Purpool or Portypool was conspicuously celebrated at Gray’s Inn which occupies the site of the ancient Manor of Poripool, and the ritual—condemned and suppressed by the Puritans as “popish, diabolical, and antechristian”—seems invariably to have started by a fire or phare lighted in the hall: this at any rate was the custom and status with which the students at St. John’s, Oxford, opened the proceedings on All Hallows’ Eve.
The Druidic Bards allude to their sacred pyreum, or fire-circle, as a pair dadeni, and that a furious Fire or Phare was the object of their devotion is obvious from hymns such as—
Let burst forth ungentle