The spouting characteristic of the whale rendered it a marine equivalent to the elephant. Whale is the same word as whole, and leviathan is radically the lev of elephant. According to British mythology, Keridwen or Ked was a leviathian or whale, whence, as from the Ark, emerged all life.
Not only is the Man in the Moon or the Wandering Jew peculiarly identified with St. Albans in Britain, but he reappears at the Arabian city of Elvan. This name is cognate with elephant in the same way as alpha is correlate to alpa or alba: Ayliffe and Alvey are common English surnames. In Kensington the memory of Kenna, a fairy princess who was beloved by Albion a fairy prince, lingered until recently, and this tradition is seemingly commemorated in the neighbourhood at Albion Gate, St. Alban’s Road, and elsewhere. In St. Alban’s Road, Kensington, one may still find the family name Oliff which, like Ayliffe and Iliffe, is the same as alif, aleph, or alpha, the letter “a” the first or the beginning.
Panku, the great giant of the universe, is entitled by the Chinese the first of Beings or the Beginning, and it is claimed by the Christian Church that St. Alban was the first of British martyrs. Eastward of Kensington Gardens is St. Alban’s Place and also Albany, generally, but incorrectly termed “The Albany”. The neighbouring Old Bond Street and New Bond Street owe their nomenclature to a ground landlord whose name Bond is radically connected with Albany. The original Bond family were in all probability followers of “Bond,” and the curiously named Newbons, followers of the Little Bond or New Sun. In the Isle of Wight there are, half a mile apart, the hamlets of Great Pann and Little Pann which, considered in conjunction with Bonchurch, were probably once sacred to Old Pan and Little Pan. According to Prof. Weekley the name Lovibond, Loveband, or Levibond, “seems to mean ‘the dear bond’”.[171] Who or what “the dear bond” was is not explained, but we may connote the kindred surnames Goodbon, Goodbun, and Goodband.
By 24th December, the shortest day in the year, the Old Sun had sunk seemingly to his death, and at Yuletide it was believed that the rejuvenate New Sun, the Baby Sun, the Welsh Mabon, or Baby Boy, was born anew either from the sea or from a cave or womb of the earth. The arms of the Isle of Man, anciently known as Eubonia, are the three-legged solar wheel of the Wandering Joy. Eu of Eubonia is seemingly the Greek eu, meaning soft, gentle, pleasing and propitious, and the rolling wheel of Eubonia was like the svastika, a symbol of the Gentle Bounty running his beneficent and never-ending course. St. Andrew, with his limbs extended to the four quarters, was, I think, once the same symbol,[172] and it is probable that the story of Ixion bound to a burning wheel and rolling everlastingly through space was a perversion of the same original. Ixion is phonetically Ik zion, i.e., the Mighty Sun or Mighty Sein or Bosom. It was frankly admitted by the Greeks that their language was largely derived from barbarians or foreigners, and the same admission was made in relation to their theology.[173]
The circle of the Sun or solar wheel, otherwise the wheel of Good law, is found frequently engraved on prehistoric stones and coins. In Gaul, statues of a divinity bearing a wheel upon his shoulder have been found, and solar wheels figure persistently in Celtic archæology. It has been supposed, says Dr. Holmes, that they are symbolical of Sun worship, and that the God with the wheel was the God of the Sun. It is further probable that the wheel on the shoulder corresponded to the child on the shoulder of St. Kit, and I am at a loss to understand how any thinker can have ever propounded such a proposition as to require Dr. Holmes’ comment, “the supposition that the wheels were money is no longer admitted by competent antiquaries”.[174] Sir James Frazer instances cases of how the so-called “Fire of Heaven” used sometimes to be made by igniting a cart wheel smeared with pitch, fastened on a pole 12 feet high, the top of the pole being inserted in the nave of the wheel. This fire was made on the summit of a mountain, and as the flame ascended the people uttered a set form of words with eyes and arms directed heavenwards. In Norway to this day men turn cart wheels round the bonfires of St. John, and doubtless at some time the London urchin—still a notorious adept at cart-wheeling—once exercised the same pious orgy.
On Midsummer Eve, when the bonfires were lighted on every hill in honour of St. John, the Elves were at their very liveliest. Eléve in French means up aloft, and eléve means frequently transported with excitement. Shakespeare refers to elves as ouphes, which is the same word as oaf and was formerly spelt aulf. Near Wye in Kent there is a sign-post pointing to Aluph, but this little village figures on the Ordnance map as Aulph. The ouphes of Shakespeare are equipped “with rounds of waxen tapers on their heads,” and with Jack o’ lanthorn may be connoted Hob-and-his-lanthorn. In Worcestershire Hob has his fuller title, and is alternatively known as Hobredy:[175] with the further form Hobany may be correlated Eubonia, and with Hobredy, St. Bride, the Bona dea of the Hebrides. It is probable that “Hobany” is responsible for the curious Kentish place name Ebony, and that the Wandering Dame Abonde, Habonde, or Abundia of French faërie, was Hobany’s consort. The worship of La Dame Abonde, the star-crowned Queen of Fées, is particularly associated with St. John’s Day, and there is little doubt that in certain aspects she was cann, or the full moon:—
The moon, full-orbed, into the well looks down,
Her face is mirrored in the waters clear,
And fées are gathering in the beech shade brown,
From missions far and near.