[1034] All these “heretics” claimed to be the real possessors of the true Christian doctrine, and they charged Rome with being Mère sotte, an ignorant and blatant usurper: the incessant and insidious conflict which was carried on between Gnosticism and Rome has been considered in A New Light on the Renaissance, also in The Lost Language of Symbolism, and with the exception of a few surface errors there is little in those volumes which I should now rewrite. The murderous campaign which was launched against the Albigenses not only failed seemingly to stamp them out, but if Baring-Gould’s opinion is valid the descendants of the Albigenses are even to-day not extinct. In Cliff Castles he writes as follows: “There was a curious statement made in a work by E. Bose and L. Bonnemere in 1882, which if true would show that a lingering paganism is to be found among these people. It is to this effect: ‘What is unknown to most is that at the present day there exist adepts of the worship (of the Celts) as practised before the Roman invasion, with the sole exception of human sacrifices, which they have been forcibly obliged to renounce. They are to be found on the two banks of the Loire, on the confines of the departments of Allier and Saone-et-Loire, where they are still tolerably numerous, especially in the latter department. They are designated in the country as Les Blancs, because that in their ceremonies they cover their heads with a white hood, and their priests are vested like the Druids in a long robe of the same colour. They surround their proceedings with profound mystery; their gatherings take place at night in the heart of large forests, about an old oak, and as they are dispersed through the country over a great extent of land, they have to start for the assembly from different points at close of day so as to be able to reach home again before daybreak. They have four meetings in the year, but one, the most solemn, is held near the town of La Clayette under the presidence of the high priest. Those who come from the greatest distance do not reach their homes till the second night, and their absence during the intervening day alone reveals to the neighbours that they have attended an assembly of the Whites. Their priests are known, and are vulgarly designated as the bishops or archbishops of the Whites; they are actually druids or archdruids.... We have been able to verify these interesting facts brought to our notice by M. Parent, and our personal investigations into the matter enable us to affirm the exactitude of what has been advanced.’ If there be any truth in this strange story we are much more disposed to consider the Whites as relics of a Manichæan or Albigensian sect than as a survival of Druidism.” P. 46.
[1035] Origin and Meaning of Apple Cults.
[1036] “Lords and Commons of England—Consider what nation whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the Governors: a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit; acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to. Therefore, the studies of learning in her deepest sciences have been so ancient and so eminent among us, that writers of good antiquity and able judgment have been persuaded that the School of Pythagoras, and the Persian Wisdom, took beginning from the old philosophy of this Island, Britain.”—Milton.
[1037] In The Lost Language of Symbolism I anticipated this opinion.
[1038] Writing of the Pied Piper story Mr. Ernest Rhys observes: “There is every reason to believe that Hamelin was as near home as Newton, Isle of Wight, and that the Weser, deep and wide, was the Solent”.—Preamble to Fairy Gold (Ev. Library).
[1039] Proc. of Royal Irish Academy, xxxiv., C., No. 8, p. 140.
[APPENDIX A.]
IRELAND AND PHŒNICIA.
The following extract is taken from Britain and the Gael: or Notices of Old and Successive Races; but with special reference to the Ancient Men of Britain and its Isles.—Wm. Beal, London, 1860.