But like a serpent which has cast its skin,
Rose to new life in youthful vigour strong.
In Calmet’s Biblical Dictionary there is illustrated a medal of ancient Corinth representing an old man in a state of decrepitude entering a whale, but on the same medal the old man renewed is shown to have come out of the same fish in a state of infancy.
Among the Greeks Apollo or the Sun was represented as riding on a dolphin’s back: the word dolphin is connected with delphus, the womb, and doubtless also with Delphi, the great centre of Apollo worship and the legendary navel of the Universe. Alpha has been noted as the British name of Noah’s wife, and it is probable that Delphi meant at one time the Divine Alpha or Elf: in the Iberian coin here illustrated (origin uncertain) the little Elf or spriggan is equipped with a cross; in the coin of Carteia (Spain) the inscription Xidd probably corresponds to the name which the British Bards wrote—“Ked”.
Figs. 411 and 412.—Iberian. From Akermann.
In India the Ark or Leviathan of Life is represented as half horse or half mare, and among the Phœnicians the word hipha denoted both mare and ship: in Britain the Magna Mater, Ked, was figured as the combination of an old giantess, a hen, a mare, and as a ship which set sail, lifted the Bard from the earth and swelled out like a ship upon the waters. Davies observes: “And that the ancient Britons actually did portray this character in the grotesque manner suggested by our Bard appears by several ancient British coins where we find a figure compounded of a bird, a boat, and a mare”. The coin to which Davies here refers is that illustrated on page 596, Fig. 356: that the Babylonians built their ships in the combined form of a mare and fish is clear from the illustration overleaf.
The most universal and generally understood emblem of peace is a dove bearing in its beak an olive-branch,[756] or sprig, and this emblem is intimately associated with the Ark: among the poems of the Welsh Bard Aneurin is the expectation—
The crowned Babe will come like Iona
Out of the belly of the whale; great will be his dignity.