Apparently some of these same lawless and predatory troglodytes were at one time dwelling in Wales, for a few miles further north of Aberystwith we find the place-name Goginan there applied to what is described as “a locality with extensive lead-mines”. The Welsh for cave is ogof, or gogof, and in Cornish not only gougou, but also ugo, or hugo meant the same: thus og and gog would seem to have been synonymous, a conclusion confirmed in many other directions, such as goggle and ogle. In Hebrew, og meant gigantic, mighty, or long-necked, which evidently is the same word as the British uch, German hoch, meaning high; whence, there is every probability that Og, or Gog, meant primarily High-High, or the Most High, and Magog, Mother Most High.
Okehampton, on the river Okement in Devonshire, held, like Launceston, a giglet fair, whence it is probable that Kigbear, the curious name of a hamlet in Okehampton, took its title from the same Kig as was responsible for giglet. There are numerous allusions in the classics to a Cyclopean rocking-stone known as the Gigonian Rock, but the site of this famous oracle is not known. Joshua refers to the coast of Og, King of Bashan, which was of the remnant of the giants, and that this obnoxious ruler was a troglodyte is manifest from his subterranean capital at Edrei, which is in existence to this day, and will be described later. That at one time Og was a god of the ocean may be deduced from the Rabbinic tradition that he walked by the side of the ark during the flood, and the waters came up only to his knees. From the measurements of Og’s famous bedstead it has been calculated that Og himself “was about nine feet high”.[201]
In Hebrew og is also understood to mean he who goes in a circle, which is suggestive of the Sun or Eye of Heaven. That the sun was the mighty, all-seeing ogler or goggler of the universe is a commonplace among the poets, whence Homer, alluding to the Artist of the World, observes: “His spy the Sun had told him all”. To the jocund Sun, which on Easter Day in particular was supposed to dance, may be referred the joyful gigues, or jigs of our ancestors. Gig also meant a boy’s top, and to the same source may be assigned whirligig. Shec is the Irish form of Jack, and gigans or gigantic are both radically Jack or Jock. In English, Jack means many things, from a big fresh-water fish to a jack pudding, and from Jack-in-Green to Jack-a-lanthorn: Skeat defines it, inter alia, as a saucy fellow, and in this sense it is the same as a young cock. Among the characteristics of Mercury—the Celtic Ogmius, or Hercules—were versatility, fascination, trickery, and cunning: sometimes he is described as “a mischievous young thief,” whence, perhaps, the old word cog, which meant cheating, or trickery.
The names Badcock, Adcock, Pocock, Bocock, Meacock, and Maycock, as also Cook and Cox, are all familiar ones in London or Cockayne. As Prof. Weekley observes, “many explanations have been given to the suffix cock, but I cannot say that any of them have convinced me. Both Cock and Cocking are found as early personal names.”[202] In London or Cockaigne, coachmen used to swear, “By Gog and Magog,”[203] and it may prove that “By Gosh” is like the surnames Goodge and Gooch, an inflection of Gog.
Cogs are the teeth or rays upon a wheel, and that cog meant sun or fire is implied by the word cook, i.e., baked or fried. Coch is Welsh for red, kakk was the Mayan for fire; in the same language kin meant sun and oc meant head, and among the Peruvians Mama Cocha was the title of the Mother of all Mankind. As coke is cooked coal, one might better refer that term to cook, than, as officially at present, to colk, the core of an apple. It is difficult to appreciate any marked resemblance between coke and the core of an apple.
The authorities connote Cockayne with cookery, and there is undoubtedly a connection, but the faerie Cockayne was more probably the Land of All Highest Ayne. The German for cock is hahn, and the cock with his jagged scarlet crest was pre-eminently the symbol of the good Shine. Chanticleer, the herald of the dawning sun, was the cognisance of Gaul, and East and West he symbolised the conqueror of darkness:—
Aurora’s harbinger—who
Scatters the rear of darkness thin.
The Cockayne of London, France, Spain and Portugal was a degraded equivalent to the Irish Tir nan Og, which means the Land of the Young, and the word Cockayne is probably cognate with Yokhanan, the Hebrew form of John, meaning literally, “God is gracious”. According to Wright, “the ancient Greeks had their Cockaigne. Athenæus has preserved some passages from lost poets of the best age of Grecian literature, where the burlesque on the golden age and earthly paradise of their mythology bears so striking a resemblance to our descriptions of Cockaigne, that we might almost think, did we not know it to be impossible, that in the one case whole lines had been translated from the other.”[204] The probability is, that the poems, like all ancient literature, were long orally preserved by the bards of the two peoples.
In Irish mythology, it is said of Anu, the Great Mother, that well she used to cherish the circle of the Gods; in England Ked or Kerid was “the Great Cherisher,” and her symbol as being perpetual love was, with great propriety, that ideal mother, the hen. The word hen, according to Skeat, is from the “Anglo-Saxon hana, a cock,” literally “a singer from his crowing”. But a crowing hen is notoriously a freak and an abomination.