Fig. 478.—Kerris Roundago. From Antiquities of Cornwall.
Fig. 479.—Christ, with a Nimbus Resembling a Flat Cap, or Casquette. From a Carving on Wood in the Stalls of Notre Dame d’Amiens. XVI. Cent. From Didron.
According to ecclesiastical legend the beloved St. Rosalie—whose fete is celebrated in Sicily on the day of St. Januarius—was the daughter of a certain Tancred, the first King of Sicily: it is not unlikely that this Tancred was Don Cred or Lord Cred, a relation of the Cornish Sancreed.[978] Sancreed is supposed to derive its name as being “an abstract dedication to the Holy Creed”: but it is alternatively known as Sancris: the Cretans, or Kiridians, or Eteocretes claimed Cres the Son of Jupiter by the nymph Idea as their first King, and they traced their descent from Cres. In a subsequent volume we shall consider this Cres at greater length, and shall track him to India in the form of Kristna, to whose grace the subterranean cross at Madura seems to have been dedicated. In Celtic cris meant pure, holy; crios meant the Sun:[979] the principal site of Apollo-worship was the island of Crissa; in England Christy[980] is a familiar surname, and I am convinced that the Christ tradition in Britain owed little to the Roman mission of Augustine, but was of far older origin. We may perhaps trace the original transit of Cris to Sancris at Carissa, now Carixa, in Spain: among the numerous coins of this district some as figured herewith bear the legend Caris, some bear the head of the young Hercules, others a female head.[981] As in classic Latin C was invariably pronounced hard, it is probable that the maiden Caris was Ceres, and that the Cretan pair are responsible for Kerris Roundago, an egg-like monument near Sancreed; also for Cresswell in Durham where is the famous Robin Hood Cave:[982] one may further trace Caris at Carisbrook near Ryde, at the diminutive Criss Brook near Maidstone, and at the streamlet Crise in Santerre.
The town of Carissa, now Carixa, may be connoted with the synonymous cross or crux: the Cornish for cross was crows, and at Crows-an-Rha, near St. Buryans, there is a celebrated wayside cross or crouch.[983] That Caris was carus or dear, and that he was the inception of charis or charity will also eventually be seen: I have elsewhere suggested that charis, or love, was originally ’k Eros or Great Eros; in the Christian emblem here illustrated Christ is associated with a rose cross, which is fabricated from the four hearts, and thus constitutes the Rosa mystica. At Kerris Roundago are four megaliths.
Fig. 480.
