At Mykenae the celebrated titanic gateway is ornamented by two lions guarding or supporting a solitary pillar or numeral 1: at other times a figure of the Magna Mater takes the place of this One, and it is probable that the Io of Mykenae was originally My Kene, i.e., Mother Queen or, more radically, Mother Great One. That Io was represented by the horns or crescent moon is obvious from the innumerable idols in the form of cows horns found at Mykenae: we have already connected Cain, Cann, and Kenna with the moon or choon, Latin luna, French lune, otherwise Cynthia or Diana.
Not only was Crete or Candia essentially an island of caves, but the district of the British Cantii seems if anything to have been even more riddled: canteen is a generic term for cellar or cool cave, and the origin of this word is not known. In Mexico cun meant pudenda muliebris, in London cunny and cunt carry the same meaning, and with cenote, the Mexican for cistern, may be connoted our English rivers Kennet and Kent. Dr. Guest refers to the cauldron of Cendwen (Keridwen): according to Davidson the magic cup of the Cabiri corresponded to the Condy Cup[986] of the Gnostics which is the same as that in which Guion (Mercury) made his beverage—the beverage of knowledge or divine Kenning, the philosophical Mercury of the mediæval alchemists. Sometimes the Egg or Cup was encircled by two serpents said to represent the Igneous and Humid principles of Nature in conjunction: it is not improbable that the spirals found alike at Mykenae and New Grange represented this dual coil, spire, or maze of Life, and the Coil Dance or the Snail’s Creep, which was until recently executed in Cornwall, may have borne some relation to this notion.[987]
Fig. 482.—Entry to New Grange.
In the neighbourhood of Totnes and the river Teign is the world-famous Kent’s Cavern,[988] whence has emanated evidence that man was living in what is now Devonshire, contemporaneously with the mammoth, the cave-lion, the woolly rhinoceros, the bison, and other animals which are now extinct. Kent’s Cavern is in a hill, dun, tun, or what the Bretons term a torgen, and the torgen containing Kent’s Cavern is situated in the Manor of Torwood in the parish of Tor, whence Torbay, Torquay, etc.: in Cornwall tor, or tur, meant belly, and tor may be equated with door, Latin janua.
The entrance to Kent’s Hole is in the face of a cliff, and the people mentioned in the Old Testament as the Kenites were evidently cliff-cave dwellers, for it is related that Balaam looked on the Kenites and said: “Strong is thy dwelling-place, and thou puttest thy nest in a rock”:[989] Kent is the same word as kind, meaning genus; also as kind, meaning affectionate and well-disposed, and it is worthy of note that the cave-dwelling Kenites of the Old Testament were evidently a kindly people for the record reads: “Saul said unto the Kenites ‘Go, depart, get you down from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them: for ye shewed kindness to all the children of Israel when they came up out of Egypt’.[990] So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites.”[991]
There is evidence that Thor’s Cavern in Derbyshire was inhabited by prehistoric troglodites; the most high summit in the Peak District is named Kinder Scout, and in the southern side of Kinder Scout is the celebrated Kinderton Cavern: at Kinver in Staffordshire there are prehistoric caves still being lived in by modern troglodites, and at Cantal in France there are similar cave dwellings.
In Derbyshire are the celebrated Canholes and at Cannes, by Maestricht, is an entrance to the amazing grottos of St. Peter: this subterranean quarry is described as a succession of long horizontal galleries supported by an immense number of square pillars whose height is generally from 10 to 20 feet: the number of these vast subterranean alleys which cross each other and are prolonged in every direction cannot be estimated at less than 2000, the direct line from the built up entrance near Fort St. Peter to the exit on the side of the Meuse measures one league and a half. That these works were at one time in the occupation of the Romans, is proved by Latin inscriptions, but evidently the Romans did not do the building for, “underneath these inscriptions you can trace some ill-formed characters traditionally attributed to the Huns; which is ridiculous since the Huns did not build, and therefore had no need of quarries, and moreover were ignorant of the art of writing”.[992] In view of the fact that the gigantic cavern farther up the Meuse, is entitled the Han Grotto, this tradition of Hun “writing” is not necessarily ridiculous: the Huns in question, whoever they were, probably were the people who built the Hun’s beds and were worshippers of “the One Man and our Cauldron”.
The Peter Mount now under consideration does not appear to have been such a Peter’s Purgatory as found on “the island of the tribe of Oin”: on the contrary its galleries, based on pillars about 16 feet high, are traced on a regular plan. These cross one another at right angles, and their most noticeable feature is the extreme regularity and perfect level of the roof which is enriched with a kind of cornice—a cornice of the severest possible outline, but with a noble simplicity which gives to the galleries a certain monumental aspect.
Within the criss-cross bowels of the Peter Mount is another very remarkable curiosity—a small basin filled with water called Springbronnen (“source of living water”) which is incessantly renewed, thanks to the drops falling from the upper portion of a fossil tree fixed in the roof.[993] The modern showman does not vaunt among his attractions a “source of living water,” and we may reasonably assume that this appellation belongs to an older and more poetic age: the Hebrew for “fountain of living waters” is ain, a word to be connoted with Hun, Han, and St. Anne of the Catacombs: St. Anne is the patron of all springs and wells; at Sancreed is a St. Eunys Well, and the word aune or avon was a generic term for any gentle flowing stream.