The word Jew, when pronounced yew, will be considered subsequently; it may here be pointed out that Jay, Gee, and Joy are common surnames, query, once tribal names in Britain. Near Penzance is Marazion or Market Jew, and it may be suggested that the traditional Cornish “Jews” were pre-Phœnician followers of the Cretan Jou. With Market-Jew one may connote Margate, which, as will be shown later, was probably in its origin—like Marazion or Mara San—a port of mer, or mère, the generic terms for sea and mother. It is a well-recognised fact that Brittany, Cornwall, and Wales spoke more or less the same tongue, and according to Cæsar in his time there was little or no difference between the languages of Gaul and Britain.
As will also be seen later it is probable that the words mer and mère, and the names Maria and Marie, are radically rhi, the Celtic for lady or princess; that Rhea, the Mother-Goddess of Crete, is simply rhia, the Gælic and the Welsh for queen, and that Maria meant primarily Mother Queen, or Mother Lady. The early forms of Marazion figure as Marhasyon, Marhasion, etc.
Among the Basques of Spain jaun meant lord or master; in British chun or cun meant mighty chief,[107] whence it is probable that the name Tarchon meant Eternal Chief or Eternal Lord, and this anonymity would accord with the custom which most anciently prevailed at Dodona. “In early times,” says Herodotus, “the Pelasgi, as I know by information which I got at Dodona, offered sacrifices of all kinds and prayed to the gods, but had no distinct names and appellations for them, since they had never heard of any. They called them gods (theoi) because they had disposed and arranged all things in such a beautiful order.”[108]
The eternal Chon or Jonn of Etruria may be recognised Latinised in Janus, the most ancient deity of Rome or Janicula, and we may perhaps find him not only in John of Cornwall but among the innumerable Jones of Wales. The Ionians or Greeks of Ionia worshipped Ione, the Holy Dove, whence they are said to have derived their title. In Greek, ione, in Hebrew, juneh, means a dove, and the Scotch island of Iona is indelibly permeated with stories and traditions of St. Columba or Columbkille, the Little Dove of the Church. The dove was the immemorial symbol of Rhea, and it is highly probable that it was originally connected with the place-name Reculver, of which the root is unknown, but “has been influenced by Old English culfre, culver, a culver dove or wood pigeon”.[109] In Cornwall there is a St. Columb Major and St. Columb Minor, where the dedication is to a virgin of this name, and on the coast of Thanet the shoal now called Columbine, considered in conjunction with the neighbouring place-names Roas Bank and Rayham, may be assumed to be connected with Rhea’s sacred Columbine or Little Dove. A neighbouring spit is marked Cheney Spit, and close at hand are Cheyney Rocks. There is thus some probability that Great Cheyne Court, Little Cheyne Court, Old Cheyne Court, New Cheyne Court, and the Kentish surname Joynson have all relation to the mysterious ruin “Trojans or Jews Hall”.
Fig. 10.—From Nineveh (Layard).
Fig. 11.—From The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria (Dennis, G.).
Fig. 11 shows the Goddess of Etruria holding her symbolic columba, in Fig. 10, the same emblem worshipped in Assyria is being carried with pomp and circumstance, and Fig. 12 shows the columba, turtle, or tortora, being similarly honoured in Western Europe.
“Throughout the Ægean,” says Prof. Burrows, “we see traces of the Minoan Empire, in one of the most permanent of all traditions the survival of a place-name; the word Minoa, wherever it occurs, must mark a fortress or trading station of the Great King as surely as the Alexandrias, or Antiochs, or Cæsareas of later days.”[110]