Chapter 11

A cutty black sow on every styleSpinning and carding each November eve.

A cutty black sow on every style

Spinning and carding each November eve.

In Ireland Pooka was essentially a November spirit, and elsewhere November was pre-eminently the time of All Hallows or All Angels.Hallowis the same word asellethe Scandinavian forelforfairy, and at Michaelmas or Hallowe’en, pixies, spooks, and bogies were notoriously all-abroad:—

On November eveA Bogie on every stile.

On November eve

A Bogie on every stile.

The time of All Hallows, or Michaelmas used to be known as Hoketide, a festival which in England was more particularly held upon St. Blaze’s Day; and at that cheerless period the people used to light bonfires or make blazes for the purpose of “lighting souls out of Purgatory”. In Wales a huge fire was lighted by each household and into the ashes of thisbonfire, thisalbanorelphinfire,[269]every member of the family threw awhiteor “Alban,” or anelphinstone, kneeling in prayer around the dying fire.[270]In the Isle of Man Hallowtide was known as Hollantide,[271]which again permits the equation of St. Hellen or Elen and her train with Long Meg and her daughters. On the occasion of the Hallow or Ellie-time saffron or yellow cakes, said to be emblematical of the fires of purgatory, used to be eaten. To runamokin the East means afiery fury—the words are the same; and thatbake(orbeeakas in Yorkshire dialect) meant fire is obvious from the synonymouscook.Cochis Welsh for red, and the flaming red poppy or corncockle, French—coquelicot, was no doubt the symbol of the solar poppy, pope, or pap. The Irish for pap or breast iscich, and in Welshcychomeans a hive, or anything of concave or hivelike shape. Possibly here we have the origin ofquickin its sense of living or alive.

One of the features of Michaelmas in Scotland was the concoction and cooking of a giantcake, bun, or bannock. According to Martin this was “enormously large, and compounded of different ingredients. This cake belonged to the Archangel, and had its name from him. Every one in each family, whether strangers or domestics, had his portion of this kind of shew-bread, and had of course some tithe to the friendship and protection of Michael.”[272]InHertfordshire during a corresponding period of “joy, plenty, and universal benevolence,” the young men assembled in the fields choosing a very active leader who then led them a Puck-like chase through bush and through briar, for the sake of diversion selecting a route through ponds, ditches, and places of difficult passage.[273]The termGangingDay applied to this festival may be connoted with the Singin ’een of the Scotch Hogmanay, and with the leader of St. Micah’s rout may be connoteddemagog. This word, meaning popular leader, is attributed todemos, people, andagogos, leading, but more seemingly it isDame GogorGood Mother Gog.

In Durham is a Pickburn or Pigburn;beckis a generic term for a small stream; in Devon is a river Becky, and in Monmouthshire a river Beeg. In Kent is Bekesbourne, and Pegwell Bay near St. Margarets in Kent, may be connoted with Backwell or Bachwell in Somerset. In Herefordshire is a British earthwork, known as Bach Camp, and on Bucton Moor in Northumberland there are two earth circles. In Devonshire is Buckland-Egg, or Egg-Buckland, and with the various Boxmoors, Boxgroves, Boxdales, and Boxleys may be connoted the Box river which passes Keynton and crosses Akeman Street. A Christmasboxis a boon or a gift, a box or receptacle is the same word aspyx; and that the evergreen undying box-tree was esteemed sacred, is evident from the words of Isaiah: “I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine tree, and the box tree together”.[274]

Figs. 62 to 64.—Iberian. From Akerman.

Bacon, radicallybac, in neighbouring tongues varies intobaco,bakke,bak, andbache. Bacon is a family name immortally associated with St. Albans, and it is probablethat Trebiggan—a vast man with arms so long that he could take men out of the ships passing by Land’s End, and place them on the Long Ships—was the Eternal Biggan or Beginning. In British Romance there figures a mystic Lady Tryamour, whose name is obviouslyTriorThree Love, and it is probable that Giant Trebiggan was the pagan Trinity, or Triton, whose emblem was the three-spiked trident. TritonaliasNeptune was the reputed Father of Giant Albion, and the shell-haired deity represented on Figs. 62 to 64 is probably Albon, for theinscription in Iberian characters readsBLBAN. In the East Bel was a generic term meaninglord: in the West it seemingly meant, just as it does to-day,fineorbeautiful. The city ofBlbanorbeautiful Banis now Bilbao, and the three fish on this coin are analogous to the trident, and to numberless other emblems of the Triune.

The radiating fan of the cockle shell connects it with the Corn-cockle as the Dawn, standing jocund on the misty mountain tops, is related to the flaming midday Sun. Allconchas, particularly theechineaor “St. Cuthbert’s Bead,” were symbols of St. Katherine or Cuddy, and in Art St. Jacques or St. Jack was always represented with a shell.Coquille, the French for shell, is the same word asgoggle, and in England thecocklewas popularly connected with a strange custom known as Hot Cockles or Cockle Bread. Full particulars of this practice are given by Hazlitt, who observes: “I entertain a conviction that with respect to these hot cockles, and likewise to leap-candle, we are merely on the threshhold of the enquiry ... the question stands at present much as if one had picked up by accident the husk of some lost substance.... Speaking conjecturally, but with certain sidelights to encourage, this seems a case of the insensible degradation of rite into custom.”[275]

Shells are one of the most common deposits in prehistoric graves, and at Boston in Lincolnshire stone coffins have been found completely filled with cockle-shells. There would thus seem to be some connection between Ickanhoe, the ancient name for Boston, a town of the Iceni, situated on the Ichenield Way, and theechineaorconcha. As the cockle was particularly the symbol of Birth, thepresence of these shells in coffins may be attributed to a hope of New Birth and a belief that Death was theyonior Gate of Life.

The wordinimicalimpliesun-amicable, or unfriendly, whence Michael was seemingly the Friend of Man.Maculatemeans spotted, and the coins here illustrated, believed to have been minted at St. Albans, obviously feature no physical King but rather the Kaadman or Good Man of St. Albans in his dual aspect of age and youth. The starry, spotted, or maculate effigy is apparently an attempt to depict the astral or spiritual King, for it was an ancient idea that the spirit-body and the spirit-world were made of a so-called stellar-matter—a notion which has recently been revived by the Theosophists who speak of the astral body and the astral plane. Our modernbreath, old Englishbreeth, is evidently the Welshbrithwhich means spotted, and it is to this root that Sir John Rhys attributes the term Brython or Britain, finding in it a reference to that painting or tattooing of the body which distinguished the Picts.[276]The wordtattoo, Maoritatau, is the Celtictatameaning father, and the implication seems to follow that the custom oftattooingarose from picking, dotting, or maculating the tribal totem or caste-mark.

Figs. 65 and 66.—British. From Akerman.

In the Old English representation here illustrated either St. Peter or God the Father is conspicuously tattooed orspotted; Pan was always assigned apanther’s skin, or spotted cloak.

Aspeckis a minute spot, and among the ancients a speck or dot within a circle was the symbol of the central Spook or Spectre. This, like all other emblems, was understood in a personal and a cosmic sense, the little speck and circle representing the soul surrounded by its round of influence and duties; the Cosmic speck, the Supreme Spirit, and the circle the entire Universe. In many instances the dot and ring seems to have stood for the pupil in the iris of the eye. In addition it is evident that ⨀ was an emblem of the Breast, and hieroglyphed the speck in the centre of the zone or sein, for the Greek letterthetawritten—⨀ is identical withteta, teat, tada, dotordad. The dotted effigy on the coins supposedly minted at St.Albans may be connoted with the curious fact that in Welsh the wordalbanmeanta primary point.[277]

Fig. 67.—Christ’s Ascent from Hell. FromAncient Mysteries(Hone, W.).

Speckis the root ofspeculum, a mirror, and it might be suggested by the materialist that the first reflection in a metal mirror was assumed to be a spook. The mirror is an attribute of nearly every ancient Deity, and the British Druids seem to have had some system of flashing the sunlight on to the crowd by means of what was termed by the Bards, the Speculum of the Pervading Glance.Speculameans a watch-tower, andspectrummeans vision.Speech, speak, andspoke, point to the probability that speech was deemed to be the voice of the indwelling spook or spectre, which etymology is at any rate preferable to the official surmise “all, perhaps, from Teutonic basesprek—to make a noise”.

Fig. 68.—The Mirror of Thoth. FromThe Correspondences of Egypt(Odhner, C.T.)

Fig.69.Figs.70 to 72.—British. FromEnglish Coins and Tokens(Jewitt & Head).

Fig.69.

Figs.70 to 72.—British. FromEnglish Coins and Tokens(Jewitt & Head).

The Egyptian hieroglyph here illustrated depicts the speculum of Thoth, a deity whom the Phoenicians renderedTaut, and to whom they attributed the invention of the alphabet and all other arts. The whole land of Egypt was known among other designations as “the land of the Eye,” and by the Egyptians as also by the Etrurians, the symbolic blue Eye of Horus was carried constantly as an amulet against bad luck. Fig. 69 is an Egyptian die-stamp, and Figs. 70 to 72 are British coins of which the intricate symbolism will be considered in due course. The arms of Fig. 73 are extended into the act of benediction, andutat, the Egyptian word for this symbol, resolves into the soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious Tat. That theutator eye was familiar in Europe is evidenced by the Kio coin here illustrated.

Fig.73.—FromThe Correspondences of Egypt(Odhner, C. T.).

Fig.74.—FromNumismatique Ancienne(Barthelemy, J.B.A.A.)

Spica, which is also the same word as spook, meant ear of corn; the wheatear is proverbially the Staff of Life, andloaf, old Englishloof, is the same word aslife. Not infrequently theBona Deawas represented holding a loaf in her extended hand, and the same idea was doubtless expressed by the two breasts upon a dish with which St. Agatha, whose name meansGood, is represented. Christianity accounts for this curious emblem by a legend that St. Agatha was tortured by having her breasts cut off, and it is quite possible that this nasty tale is correctly translated; the original tyrant or torturer being probably Winter, or the reaper Death, which cuts short the fruit fulness of Spring. In the Tartar emblem herewith the Phrygian-capped Deity is holding, like St. Agatha, the symbol of the teat or feeder, orfodder.[278]

Fig.75.—FromSymbolism of the East and West(Aynsley, Mrs. Murray).

The wheatear or spica, orbuck-wheat was a frequent emblem on our British coins, and to account for this it has been suggested that the British did a considerable export trade in corn; but unfortunately for this theory thespicafigures frequently upon the coins of Spain and Gaul. As a symbol the buckwheat typified plenty, but in addition to the wheatear proper there appear kindred objects which have been surmised to be, perhaps, fishbones, perhaps fern-leaves. There is no doubt that these mysterious objects are variants of the so-called “ded” amulet, which in Egypt was the symbol of the backbone of the God of Life. This amulet, of which the hieroglyph has been rendered variously asded,didu,tet, andtat, has an ancestry of amazing antiquity, and according to Mackenzie, “in Paleolithic times, at least 20,000 years ago, the spine of the fish was laid on the corpse when it was entombed, just as the ‘ded,’amulet, which was the symbol of the backbone of Osiris, was laid on the neck of the Egyptian mummy”.[279]Frequently this “ded” emblem took the form of a column or pillar, which symbolised the eternal support and stability of the universe. On the summit of Fig. 85 is a bug,cockroach, orcockchafer: in Etruria as in Egypt the bug amulet orscarabeuswas as popular as the Eye of Horus.

Figs.76 and 77.—Iberian. From Akerman.

Figs.78 to 84.—British. Nos. 1 to 8 fromAncient British Coins(Evans, J.). No. 4 fromA New Description of England and Wales(Anon., 1724). No. 5 fromEnglish Coins and Tokens(Jewitt & Head).

Fig. 85.—FromThe Correspondences of Egypt(Odhner, C. T.).

In Fig. 68 the spectral Eye was supported by Thoth, whose name varies into Thot, Taut, and numerous intermediate forms, which equate it withdedordad: similarly it will be found that practically every place-name constituted from Tot or Tat varies into Dot or Dad,e.g., Llandudno, where is found the cradle of St.Tudno. Sometimes the Egyptians represented two or more pillars termeddeddu, and this word is traceable in Trinidad, an island which, on account of its three great peaks, was named aftertrinidad, the Spanish for trinity. Buttrinidadisevidently a very old Iberian word, for its British form wasdrindod, as in the place-name Llandrindod or “Holy Enclosure of the Trinity”. The three great mounts on Trinidad, and the three famous medicinal springs at Llandrindod Wells render it probable that the site of Llandrindodwas originally a pagan dedication to thetrine teat, ortriune dad.

Amid numerous hut circles at Llandudno is a rocking stone known as Cryd-Tudno, or the Cradle of Tudno. Who was the St. Tudno of Llandudno whose cradle or cot, like Kit’s Coty in Kent, has been thus preserved in folk-memory? The few facts related of him are manifestly fabulous, but the name itself seemingly preserves one of the numerous sites where the Almighty Child of Christmas Day was worshipped, and thenoofTudnomay be connoted withnew, Greek,neo, Danish,ny, allied to Sanscrit,no, hencenew, “that which is now”.

At Llanamlleck in Wales there is a cromlech known as St. Illtyd’s House, near which is a rude upright stone known as Maen-Illtyd, or Illtyd-stone. We may connote thisIlltyd withAll-tyd or All Father, in which respect Illtyd corresponds with the ScandinavianIlmatar,Almatar, or All Mother.

Fig.86.—FromNumismatique Ancienne.

It is told of Saint Illtyd that he befriended a hunted stag, and that like Semele, the wife of Jove, his wife was stricken with blindness for daring to approach too near him. The association of Illtyd with a stag is peculiarly significant in view of the fact that at Llandudno, leading to the cot or cradle of St. Tudno, are the remains of an avenue of standing stones called by a name which signifies “the High Road of the Deer”. The branching antlers of the deer being emblems of the dayspring, the rising ornewsun, is a fact somewhat confirmatory of the supposition that the Cradle of Tudno was the shrine of the new or Rising Tud, and in all probability the High Road of the Deer was once the scene of some very curious ceremonies.

Many of our old churches even to-day contain in their lofts antlers which formed part of the wardrobe of the ancient mummers or guise dancers.

In the Ephesian coin herewith Diana—thedivine Ana—the many-breasted Alma Mater, is depicted in the form of a pillar-palm tree between two stags. Among the golden treasures found by Schliemann at Mykenæ, were ornaments representing two stags on the top of a date palm tree with three fronds.[280]Thedatepalm may be connoted with thededpillar, and the triple-fronded date of Mykenæ with the trindod or drindod of Britain.

Assyrian Ornament. (Nimroud.)Greek Honeysuckle Ornament.Greek Honeysuckle Ornament.Sacred Tree (N.W. Palace, Nimroud).

Assyrian Ornament. (Nimroud.)Greek Honeysuckle Ornament.Greek Honeysuckle Ornament.

Assyrian Ornament. (Nimroud.)

Greek Honeysuckle Ornament.

Sacred Tree (N.W. Palace, Nimroud).

Ornament on the Robe of King.Fig.87.—FromNineveh(Layard).

The honeysuckle, termed conventionally a palmette, is classically represented as either seven or nine-lobed, and this symbol of the Dayspring or of Wisdom was common alike both East and West. The palm branch is merely another form of the fern or fish-bone, and the word palm is radicallyalma, the all nourisher. The palm leaf appears on one of the stones at New Grange, but as Fergusson remarks, “how a knowledge of this Eastern plant reached New Grange is by no means clear”.[281]Thefeatherwas a further emblem of the same spiritualfather,feeder, orfodder, and in Egypt Ma or Truth was represented with a single-feather headdress (ante,p. 136). From the mistletoeto the fern, a sprig of any kind was regarded as the spright, spirit, or spurt of new life or newThought(Thaut?), and the forms of this young sprig are innumerable. The gist, ghost, or essence of the Maypole was that it should be a sprout well budded out, whence to this day at Saffron Walden the children on Mayday sing:—

A branch of May we have brought you,And at your door it stands;It is a sprout that is well budded out,The work of our Lord’s hands.

A branch of May we have brought you,

And at your door it stands;

It is a sprout that is well budded out,

The work of our Lord’s hands.

Fig.88.—FromIrish Antiquities Pagan and Christian(Wakeman).

Teatmay be equated with the Gaulishtout, the whole or All, and it is probable that the Pelasgian shrine of Dodona was dedicated to thatAll OneorFather One. Itis noteworthy that the sway of the pre-Grecian Pelasgians extended over the whole of the Ionian coast “beginning from Mykale”:[282]this Mykale (Megale or Michael?) district is now Albania, and its capital is Janina,queryQueen Ina?

It is probable that Kenna, the fairy princess of Kensington who is reputed to have loved Albion, was canna, theNew KingorNew Queen. On the river Canna in Wales is Llanganor Llanganna: Llanganon the river Taff is dedicated to St. Canna, and Llangainto St. Synin. All these dedications are seemingly survivals ofKing,Queen, orSaint, Ina, Una, Une, ain or one. In Cornwall there are several St. Euny’s Wells: near Evesham is Honeybourne, and in Sussex is a Honey Child. Upon Honeychurch the authorities comment, “The connection between a church and honey is not very obvious, and this is probably Church ofHuna”. Quite likely, but not, I think, a Saxon settler.

The ancients supposed that the world was shaped like a bun, and they imagined it as supported by the tet or pillar of the Almighty. It is therefore possible that the Toadstool or Mushroom derived its name not because toads never sit upon it, but because it was held to be a perfect emblem of the earth. In some districts the Mushroom is named “Pooka’s foot,”[283]and as the earth is proverbially God’s footstool, the Toad-stool was held seemingly to be the stool of earth supported on theded, or pillar of Titan. The Fairy Titania, who probably once held sway in Tottenham Court Road, may be connoted with the Frenchteton, a teat;tetine, an udder;teter, to milk; andtetin, a nipple.

Fig. 89.—FromChristian Iconography(Didron).

Fig. 90.—The Spirit of Youth. From a French Miniature of the fourteenth century. FromChristian Iconography(Didron).

It is probable that “The Five Wells” at Taddington,“the Five Kings at Doddington,” where also is “the Duddo Stone,” likewise Dod Law at Doddington; Dowdeswell,Dudsbury, and the Cornish Dodman, are all referable originally to the fairy Titan or the celestial Daddy.

Fig.91.—FromChristian Iconography(Didron).

In accordance with universal wont this Titan or Almighty, “this senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid,” was conceived as anon a tiny toddling tot or Tom-tit-tot, anon as Old Tithonus, the doddering dotard: the Swedish fordeathordeadisdod; the German istod.Todis an English term for a fox, and Thot was the fox orjackal-headed maker-of-tracts or guide: thought is invariablythe guide to every action, and Divine Thought is the final bar to which the human soul comes up for judgment. It has already been seen that in Europe the holder of the sword and scales was Michael, and there is reason to suppose that the Dog-headed titanic Christopher, who is said to have ferried travellerspick-a-backacross a river, was at one time an exquisite conception of Great Puck or Father Death carrying his children over the mystic river. By thepagans—the unsophisticated villagers among whom Pucca mostly survived—Death was conceived as not invariably or necessarily frightful, but sometimes as a lovely youth. In Fig. 91 Death is Amor or Young Love, and in Fig. 90 an angel occupies the place of Giant Christopher: the wordsdeathanddeadare identical withdadandtod.

Fig.92.—Figure of Christ, beardless. Roman Sculpture of the IV. cent.FromChristian Iconography(Didron).

Fig. 93.—Iberian. From Akerman.

Fig. 94.—FromChristian Iconography(Didron).

The Christian emblems herewith represent Christ supported by the Father or Mother upon a veil or scarf, which is probably intended for the rainbow or spectrum: the pagan Europa was represented,videFig. 93, holding a similar emblem. According to mythology, Iris or theRainbow was like Thot or Mercury, the Messenger of the Gods, and the symbolists delighted to blend into their hieroglyphs that same elusive ambiguity as separates Iris from Eros and the blend of colours in the spectrum.

In the ninth century a learned monk expressed the opinion that only two words of the old Iberian language had then survived: one of these wasfern, meaninganything good, and with it we may connote the Fern Islands among which stands the Megstone. Ferns, the ancient capital of Leinster, attributes its foundation to a St. Mogue, and St. Mogue’s Well is still existing in the precincts of Ferns Abbey. The equation of Long Meg and her Daughters with Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins is supported by the tradition that the original name of St. Ursula’s husband was Holofernes,[284]seemingly Holy Ferns or Holy Phoroneus. What is described as “the highest term in Grecian history” was the ancestral Inachus, the father of a certain Phoroneus. The fabulous Inachus[285]—probably the Gaelic divinity Oengus[286]—is theAncient Mighty Life, and Phoroneus is radically fern or frond. There figures in Irish mythology “a very ancient deity” whose name, judging from inscriptions, was Feron or Vorenn, and it is noteworthy that Oengus is associated particularly with New Grange, where the fern palm leaf emblem has been preserved. The Dutch forfernisvaren, and the root of all these terms isferorver: the Latinferreis the root offertile, etc., and in connection with the Welshver, which means essence, may be notedverthe Spring andvert, green, whenceverdant, verdure, vernal,andinfernal(?).

Among the ferns whose spine-like fishbone fronds seemingly caused them to be accepted as emblems of the fertile Dayspring or the permeating Spirit of all Life, theosmundawas particularly associated with the Saints and Gods: in the Tyrol it is still placed over doors for Good Luck, and one species of Osmunda (Crispa) is in Norway called St. Olaf’s Beard. This is termed by Gerarde the Herb Christopher, and the Latincrispasomewhat connects it with Christopher. The name Osmund is Teutonic fordivine protector, but more radically Osmunda wasoes munda, or theLife of the World. In Devonshire the Pennyroyal is also known asorgan,organy,organie, ororigane, all of which are radically the same asorigin.

Figs. 95 to 102.—British. Nos. to from Akerman. Nos. to from Evans.

Fig. 103.—Green Man (Roxburghe Ballads, circa 1650).—FromThe History of Signboards(Larwood & Hotten).

The British coins inscribed Ver are believed to haveemanated from Verulam or St. Albans, but the sameVER,VIR, or kindred legend is found upon the coins of Iberia and Gaul. It is not improbable that Verulam was at one time the chief city in Albion, but the place which now claims to be the mother city is Canterbury or Durovern. The ancient name of Canterbury is supposed to have been bestowed upon it by the Romans, and to have denotedevergreen; but Canterbury is not physically more evergreen than every other spot in verdant England: Canterbury is, however, permeated with relics, memories, and traditions of St. George; and St. George is still addressed in Palestine as the “evergreen green one”. Green was the symbol of rejuvenescence and immortality, and “the Green Man” of our English Inn Signs, as also the Jack-in-Green who used to figure along with Maid Marian and the Hobby Horse in the festivities of May Day, was representative of the May King or the Lord of Life. The colour green, according to the Ecclesiastical authorities, still signifies “hope, plenty, mirth, youth, and prosperity”: as the colour of living vegetation, it was adopted as a symbol of life, and Angels and Saints,particularly St. John, are represented clad in green. In Gaul the Green Man was evidently conceived as Ver Galant, and the two cups, one inverted, in all probability implied Life and Death. According to Christian Legend, St. George was tortured bybeing forced to drink two cups, whereof the one was prepared to make him mad, the other to kill him by poison. The prosperity of an emblem lies entirely in the Eye, and it is probable that all the alleged dolours to which George was subjected are nothing more than the morbid misconceptions of men whose minds dwelt normally on things most miserable and conceived little higher. Thus seemingly the light-shod Mercury was degraded into George’s alleged torture of being “made to run in red hot shoes”: the heavy pillars laid upon him suggest that he was once depicted bearing up the pillars of the world: the wheel covered with razors and knives to which he was attachedimply the solar wheel of Kate or Catarina: the posts to which he was fastened by the feet and hands were seemingly a variant of thededdu, and the sledge hammers with which he was beaten were, like many other of the excruciating torments of the “saint,” merely and inoffensively the emblems of the Heavenly Hercules or Invictus.

Fig. 104.—FromThe Everyday Book(Hone, W.).

Fig. 105.—Ver Galant (Rue Henri, Lyons, 1759). FromThe History of Signboards.Fig. 106.—Green Man and Still(Harleian Collection, 1630).Ibid.

Fig. 105.—Ver Galant (Rue Henri, Lyons, 1759). FromThe History of Signboards.

Fig. 106.—Green Man and Still(Harleian Collection, 1630).Ibid.

Maid Marion, who was not infrequently associated with St. George, is radicallyMaid Big Ion, orFairy Ion, and that St. George was also a marine saint is obvious from the various Channels which still bear his name. The ensign of the Navy is the red cross on a white ground, known originally as the Christofer or Jack, and in Fig. 106 the Green Man is represented with the scales of a Merman, or Blue John. The Italian for blue isvera;verameanstrue; “true blue” is proverbial; and that Old George was Trajan, Tarchon, Tarragone, orDragonis obvious from the dragon-slaying incident. Little George has alreadybeen identified by Baring-Gould with Tammuz, the Adonis, or Beauty, who is identified with the Sun:[287]“Thou shining and vanishing in the beauteous circle of the Horæ, dwelling at one time in gloomy Tartarus, at another elevating thyself to Olympus, giving ripeness to the fruits”.[288]

Fig.107.—FromThe Everyday Book(Hone, W.).

The St. George of Diospolis, the City of Light, who by the early Christians was hailed as “the Mighty Man,” the “Star of the Morning,” and the “Sun of Truth,” figures in Cornwall, particularly at Helston, where there is still danced the so-calledFurrydance: Helston, moreover, claims to show the great granite stone which was intended to cover the mouth of the Nether Regions, but St. Michael met Satan carrying it and made him drop it.

It is unnecessary to labour the obvious identity between Saints George and Michael: “George,” meaninghusbandman,i.e., the Almighty in a bucolic aspect, is merely another title for the archangel, but more radically it may be traced togeo(as ingeology,geography,geometry) andurge,i.e.,earth urge. It is physically true that farmers urge the earth to yield her increase, and until quite recently, relics of the festival of the sacred plough survived in Britain. Within living memory farmers in Cornwall turned the first sod to the formula “In the name of God let us begin”:[289]in China, where the Emperor himself turns the first sod, much of the ancient ceremonies still survive.

The legend of St. George and the dragon has had its local habitation fixed in many districts notably in Berkshire at the vale of the White Horse. The famous George of Cappadocia is first heard of as “a purveyor of provisions for the Army of Constantinople,” and he was subsequently associated with a certain Dracontius (i.e.,dragon), “Master of the Mint”. The same legend is assigned at Lambton in England not to George but to “Johnthat slew ye worm”: in Turkey St. George is known as Oros, which is obviously Horus or Eros, the Lord of the Horæ or hours, and the English dragon-slayer Conyers ofSockburnis presumably King Yers, whose burn or brook was presumably named after Shock or Jock. In some parts of England a bogey dog is known under the title of “Old Shock,” and in connection with Conyers and John that slew ye worm may be noted near Conway the famous Llandudno headlands, Great and LittleOrmeorWorm.

The St. George of Scandinavia is named Gest: that Gest was the greatGustor Mighty Wind is probable, andit is more likely that Windsor, a world-famous seat of St. George, meant, not as is assumedwinding shore, butwind sire. That St. George was the Ruler of the gusts or winds is implied by the fact that among the Finns, anyone brawling on St. George’s Day was in danger of suffering from storms and tempests. The murmuring of the wind in the oak groves of Dodona was held to be the voice of Zeus, and the will of the All Father was there further deduced by means of a three-chained whip hanging over a metal basin from the hand of the statue of a boy. From the movements of these chains, agitated by the wind and blown by the gusts till they tinkled against the bowl, the will of theGhostwas guessed, and the wordguessseemingly implies that guessing was regarded as the operation of the good or badgeiswithin. In Windsor Great Forest stood the famous Oak or Picktree, where Puck,aliasHerne the Hunter, appeared occasionally in the form of an antlered Buck. The supposition that St. George was the greatGushorgeyseris strengthened by the fact that near the Cornish Padstow, Petrock-Stowe, or the stowe of the Great Pater, there is a well called St. George’s Well. This well is described as a “mere spring which gushes from a rock,” and the legend states that the water gushed forth immediately St. George had trodden on the spot and has ne’er since ceased to flow.

The Italian for blue—the colour of the deep water and of the high Heavens—is alsoturchino, and on 23rd April (FrenchAvril), blue coats used to be worn in England in honour of the national saint whose red cross on a white ground has immemorially been our Naval Ensign.[290]St. George figured particularly in the Furry or Flora dance at Helston, and the month ofAvril, a period when the earth is opening up its treasures, seemingly derives its name from Ver or Vera, the “daughter deare” of Flora. On 23rd April “the riding of the George” was a principal solemnity in certain parts of England: on St. George’s Day a White Horse used to stand harnessed at the end of St. George’s Chapel in St. Martin’s Church, Strand, and the Duncannon Street, which now runs along the south side of this church, argues the erstwhile existence either here or somewhere of a dun or down of cannon. A cannon is a gun, and our Dragoon guards are supposed to have derived their title from the dragons or fire-arms with which they were armed. The inference is that the first inventors of the gun, cannon, or dragon, entertained the pleasing fancy that their weapon was the fire-spouting worm.[291]The dragon was the emblem of theCynbro or Kymry: associated with the red cross of St. George it is the cognisance of London, and a fearsome dragon stands to-day at the boundary of the city on the site of Temple Bar.

In the reign of Elizabeth an injunction was issued that “there shall be neither George nor Margaret,” an implication that Margaret was once the recognised Consort of St. George, and the expression “riding of the George,” points to the probability that the White Horse, even if riderless, was known as “the George”. The White Horse of Kent with its legendInvictaimplies—unless Heraldry is weak in its grammar—not a horse but a mare: George was Invictus or the Unconquerable, and, as will be seen, there are good reasons to suppose that the White Horse and White Mare were indigenous to Britain long before the times of the Saxon Hengist and Horsa. It is now generally accepted that Hengist, which meanthorse, and Horsa, which meantmare, were mythical characters. With the coming of the Saxons no doubt the worship of the White Horse revived for it was an emblem of Hanover, and in Hanover cream-coloured horses were reserved for the use of royalty alone. With the notorious Hanoverian Georges may be connoted the fact that opposite St. George’s Island at Looe (Cornwall) is a strand or market-place named Hannafore: at Hinover in Sussex a white horse was carved into the hillside.

Fig.108.—FromThe Scouring of the White Horse(Hughes, T.).

Fig.109.—British. FromA New Description of England(1724).

Figs.110 to 113.—British No. 110 from Camden. No. 112 from Akerman. No. 113 from Evans.

Fig.114.—Iberian. From Akerman.

Figs.115 and 116.—British. From Akerman.

Fig.117.—Iberian. From Akerman.

Fig.118.—British. From Evans.Fig.119.—British. From Akerman.

Fig.118.—British. From Evans.

Fig.119.—British. From Akerman.

The White Horse—which subsequently became the Hobby Horse, or the Hob’s Horse, of our popular revels—has been carved upon certain downs in England and Scotland for untold centuries. That these animals were designedly white is implied by an example on the brown heather hills of Mormond in Aberdeenshire: here the subsoil is black and the required white has been obtained by filling in the figure with white felspar stones.[292]It will be noticed that the White Horse at Uffington as reproduced overleaf is beaked like a bird,and has a remarkable dot-and-circle eye: in Figs. 110 to 113 the animal is similarly beaked, and in Fig. 111 the object in the bill is seemingly an egg. The designer of Fig. 109 has introduced apparently a goose or swan’s head, and also a sprig or branch. The wordBODUOCmay or may not have a relation to Boudicca or Boadicea of the Ikeni—whose territories are marked by the Ichnield Way of to-day—but in any caseBoudigin Welsh meant victory or Victorina, whence the “very peculiar horse” on this coin may be regarded as a prehistoric Invicta. The St. George of Persia there known as Mithraswas similarly worshipped under the guise of a white horse, and Mithras was similarly “Invictus”. The winged genius surmounting the horse on Fig. 114, a coin of the Tarragona, Tarchon, ordragondistrict—is described as “Victory flying,” and there is little doubt that the idea of White Horse or Invictus was far spread. At Edgehill there used to be a Red Horse carved into the soil, and the tenancy of the neighbouring Red Horse Farm was held on the condition that the tenant scoured the Red Horse annuallyon Palm Sunday: the palm is the emblem of Invictus, and it will be noticed how frequently the palm branch appears in conjunction with the horse on our British coinage.

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