The word dean, French doyen, is supposed to be the Latin decanum the accusative of decanus, one set over ten soldiers or ten monks: it is, as already suggested, more probable that the original deans were the priests of Diane, and that they worshipped in dene holes, in dens, in denes, on downs, and at dunhills. The word grot is probably the same as kirit, the Turkish form of Crete, and as the Keridwen or Kerid Holy of Britain. The ministers of the Cretan Magna Mater were entitled curetes, and the modern curate may in all likelihood claim a verbal descent from the Keridwen or Sancreed whose name is behind our great, crude, and cradle. The Magna Mater of Kirid or Crete was sometimes as already mentioned depicted with a cat upon her head: I have equated the word cat with Kate, Kitty, or Ked, and in all probability the catacombs of Rome anciently Janicula were originally built in her honour. In Scotland souterrains are termed weems, a word which is undoubtedly affiliated both in form and idea with womb, tomb, and coombe: the British bards allude frequently to the grave as being the matrix or womb of Ked; as archæologists are well aware, primitive burials frequently consisted of contracting the body into the form of the fœtus, depositing it thus in a stone cist, chest, or “coty”: and there is little doubt that the St. Anne who figures so prolifically in the catacombs of Janicula, was like St. Anne of Brittany the pre-Christian Anne, Jana, or Diane.
At Caddington by Dunstable there is a Dame Ellen’s Wood; Caddington itself is understood to have meant—“the hill meadow of Cedd or Ceadda,” and among the prehistoric tombs found in this neighbourhood was the interment illustrated on page 64. It has been cheerily suggested that “the child may have been buried alive with its mother”: it may, but it equally may not; the pathetic surround of sea-urchins or popularly-called fairy loaves points to sentiment of some sort, particularly in view of the tradition that whoso keeps a specimen of the fairy loaf in his house shall never lack bread.[964] Echinus, the Latin for sea-urchin, is radically the same word as Janus; in the Margate grotto an echinus forms the centre of most of the conchological suns or stars with which the walls are decorated, and a large echinus appears in each of the four top corners of the oblong chamber.
I have suggested that the Kentish Rye, a town which once stood on a conical islet and near to which is an earthwork known nowadays as Rhee wall, was once dedicated to Rhea or Maria, and that Margate owes its designation to the same Ma Rhea or Mother Queen. According to “Morien” Rhi was a Celtic title of the Almighty, and is the root of the word rhinwedd (Virtue): according to Rhys rhi meant queen, and was a poetic term for a lady: according to Thomas Rhea is the feminine noun of rhi, prince or king; it would thence follow that regina, like the French name Rejane, meant originally Queen Gyne, either Queen Woman or Royal Jeanne. There are numerous Ryhalls, Ryhills, and in Durham is a Ryton which figured anciently as Ruyton, Rutune, and Ruginton: near Kingston is Raynes Park, and at Hackney, in the neighbourhood of the Seven Sisters and Kingsland Roads, is Wren’s Park.
That the Candians colonised the North of Africa is generally supposed, whence it becomes likely that the marvellous excavations at Rua were related to the worship of the serpentine Rhea: these are mentioned by Livingstone who wrote: “Tribes live in underground houses in Rua. Some excavations are said to be 30 miles long, and have running rills in them; a whole district can stand a siege in them. The ‘writings’ therein, I have been told by some of the people, are drawings of animals and not letters, otherwise I should have gone to see them.”[965]
The word grotesque admittedly originated from the fantastic designs found so frequently within grottos or grots, and if the natives of Rua could construct a souterrain 30 miles in extent, I see no reason to doubt the accuracy of the tradition that the natives of Reigate had run a tunnel towards Rye which is within a few miles of St. Clement’s Caves at Hastings. The gate of Margate and Reigate means opening; wry means awry or twisting, and we may probably find the original name of Reigate in the neighbouring place-name Wray Common.
The Snake grotto at Margate, which is situated almost below a small house named “Rosanna Lodge,” is decorated throughout with a most marvellous and beautiful mosaic of shellwork, the like of which certainly exists nowhere else in Britain: the dominant notes of this decoration are roses or rosettes, and raisins or grapes; over the small altar in the oblong chamber, at the extremity, are rising the rays of the Sun. The shells used as a groundwork for this decorative scheme were the yellow periwinkle now naturally grey with antiquity but which, when fresh, must, when illuminated, have produced an effect of golden and surpassing beauty. In the shrines of Candia large numbers of sea-shells, artificially tinted in various colours, have come to light:[966] that the altar at the Cantian Margate grotto was constructed to hold a lamp or a candle cannot be doubted, in which connection one may connote a statement by “Morien” that “All shell grottos with a candle in it (sic) were a symbol of the cave of the sun near the margin of the ocean with the soul of the sun in it”.[967] There is indeed little doubt that the snake trou under Rosanna Lodge was, like the grotto at St. Sulpice le Donseil, dedicated to le Donseil or donna sol. At the mouth of the shrine is a figurine seated, of which, unfortunately, the head is missing, but the right hand is still holding a cup: in Fig. 44 ante, page 167, Reason is holding a similar cup into which is distilling la rosee, or the dew of Heaven—doubtless the same goblet as was said to be offered to mortals by the fairy Idunns; their earthly representatives, the Aeddons, may be assumed once to have dwelt in the Dane Park or at Addington Street, now leading to Dane Hill where the grotto remains.
We have connected the Cup of Reason with the mystic Cauldron of Keridwen, or “cauldron of four spaces,” and have noted among the recipe “the liquor that bees have collected and resin,” to be prepared “when there is a calm dew falling”: another Bard alludes to “the gold-encircled liquor contained in the golden cup,” and I have little doubt that resin, rosin, or rosine was valued and venerated as being, like amber, the petrified tears of Apollo. I do not suggest that the Rosanna Lodge in the dene at Margate has any direct relation to the grotto of Reason beneath, but there is evidently a close connection with the small figurine holding a cup and the Lady Rosamond of Rosamond’s Well at Woodstock. “There was,” says Herbert, “a popular notion of an infernal maze extending from the bottom of Rosamond’s Well”: this labyrinth almost certainly once existed, for as late as 1718 there were to be seen by the pool at Woodstock the foundations of a very large building which were believed to be the remains of Rosamond’s Labyrinth.[968]
The story of Fair Rosamond being compelled to swallow poison is precisely on a par with the monkish legend that St. George was “tortured by being forced to drink a poisoned cup,” and how the Rosamond story originated is fairly obvious from the fact that on her alleged tombstone, “among other fine sculptures was engraven the figure of a cup. This, which perhaps at first was an accidental ornament (perhaps only the chalice), might in aftertimes suggest the notion that she was poisoned; at least this construction was put upon it when the stone came to be demolished after the nunnery was dissolved.” The above is the opinion of an archæologist who died in 1632, and it is in all probability sound: the actual site of Rosamond’s Bower at Woodstock seems to have been known as Godstone, and it was presumably the ancient Ked Stone that gave birth to the distorted legend. According to the Ballad of Fair Rosamond, that maiden was a ladye brighte, and most peerlesse was her beautye founde:—
Her crisped locks like threads of gold