Chapter 6

The Anglo-Saxons, down to a late period, retained the heathenish Yule, as all Teutonic Christians did the sanctity of Easter-tide; and from these two, the Yule-boar and Yule-bread, the Easter pancake, Easter sword, Easter fire, and Easter dance could not be separated. As faithfully were perpetuated the name and, in many cases, the observances of midsummer. New Christian feasts, especially of saints, seem purposely as well as accidentally to have been made to fall on heathen holidays. Churches often rose precisely where a heathen god or his sacred tree had been pulled down; and the people trod their old paths to the accustomed site: sometimes the very walls of the heathen temple became those of the church; and cases occur in which idol-images still found a place in a wall of the porch, or were set up outside the door, as at Bamberg Cathedral where lie Sclavic-heathen figures of animals inscribed with runes.”—Grimm.

Our Chronicles state that when Brute and his companions reached these shores, “at that time the name of the island was Albion”. According to tradition Alba, Albion, or Alban, whence the place-name Albion, was a fairy giant, but this, in the eyes of current scholarship, is a fallacy, andalbais merely an adjective meaningwhite, whence wherever met with it is so translated. But because there happens to be a relatively small tract of white cliffs in the neighbourhood of Dover, it is a barren stretch of imagination to suppose that all Britain thence derived its prehistoric title, and in any case the question—why didalbamean white?—would remain unanswered. The Highlanders of Scotland still speak of their country as Albany or Alban;the national cry of Scotland was evidently at one time “Albani,” and even as late as 1138, “the army of the Scots with one voice vociferated their native distinction, and the shout of Albani! Albani! ascended even to the heavens”.[140]

Not only by the Romans but likewise by the Greeks, Britain was known as Albion, and one may therefore conjecture that the white-cliff theory is an unsound fancy.

Strabo alludes to a certain district generally supposed to be Land’s End, under the name “Kalbion,”[141]a word manifestly having some radical relation to “Albion”. By an application of the comparative method to place-names and proper-names, I arrived several years ago at the seemingly only logical conclusion that in many directionsakand its variants meantgreatormighty. On every hand there is presumptive evidence of this fact, and I have since found that Bryant and also Faber, working by wholly independent methods, reached a very similar conclusion. Mymodus operandi, with many of its results, having been already published,[142]it is unnecessary here to restate them, and I shall confine myself to new and corroborative evidence.

In addition togreatormightyit is clear that the radical in question meanthigh. The German trisagion ofhoch! hoch! hoch!is still equivalent to the Englishhigh! high! high!the Swedish forhighishog, the Dutch isoog, and in Welsh or Britishhighisuch. It is presumably a trace of the gutteralchthat remains in our modern spelling ofhighwith aghnow mute, but the primordial Welshuchhas also become the Englishok, as in Devonshire whereOkment Hill is said to be the Anglicised form ofuch mynydd, the Welsh or British forhighhill. I shall, thus, in this volume treat the syllable’kor’gas carrying the predominant and apparently more British meaning ofhigh. That the sounds ’g and ’k were invariably commutable may be inferred from innumerable place-names such asOgbourne St. Andrew, alternatively printedOkebourne, and that the same mutability applies to words in general might be instanced from any random page of Dr. Murray’sNew English Dictionary. We may thus assume that “Kalbion,” meant Great Albion or High Albion, and it remains to analyse Alba or Albion.

B and P being interchangeable, thebaofAlbais the same word aspa, which, according to Max Müller, meant primarilyfeeder;papais in Turkishbaba, and in Mexico alsobameant the same as our infantilepa,i.e., feeder or father. Inpaab, the British forpope, onephas becomebthe other has remained constant.

The inevitable interchange ofpandbis conspicuously evident in the place-name—Battersea, alternatively known as Patrickseye, and on that littleea,eye, oreyotin the Thames at one time, probably, clustered the padres or paters who ministered to the church of St. Peter—the architypal Pater—whose shrine is now Westminster Abbey.

It is a custom of children to express their superlatives by duplications, such aspretty pretty, and in the childhood[143]of the world this habit was seemingly universal. Thuspa, the Aryan root meaning primarilyfeeder, has been duplicated intopapa, which is the same word aspope, defined as indicating the father of a church. InA.D.600 the British Hierarchy protested against the claims of the “paab” of Rome to be considered “the Father of Fathers,”[144]and there is little doubt that Pope is literallypa-paorFather Father. In Stow’s time there existed in London a so-called “Papey”—“a proper house,” wherein sometime was kept a fraternity of St. Charity and St. John. This was, as Stow says, known as the Papey;[145]“for in some language priests are called papes”.

In the Hebrides the place-names Papa Stour, Papa Westray, and so forth are officially recognised as the seats of prehistoric padres, patricks, or papas. Skeat imagines that the wordspapmeaning food, andpapmeaning teat or breast, are alike “of infantine origin due to the repetition ofpa pain calling for food”. They may be so, but to understand the childhood of the world one must stoop to infantile levels.

In Celticalporailpemeanthigh, and alsorock. Among the ancients rock was a generally recognised symbol of the undecaying immutable High Father, and in seemingly every tongue will be found puns such aspierreandpere, Peter the pater, and Petra the Rock. The papacy of Peter is founded traditionally upon St. Petra, the Rock of Ages, “Upon this Rock will I found my Church,” and the St. Rock of this country, whose festival was celebrated upon Rock Monday, was assumedly a survival of pagan pre-Christian symbolism.

Fig.20.—FromAnalysis of Ancient Mythology(Bryant, J.).

In the group of coins here illustrated it will be noticed that theMater Deorumis conventionally throned upon a rock. “Unto Thee will I cry, O Lord my Rock,” wrote the Psalmist, and the inhabitants of Albion probably once harmonised in their ideas with the Kafirs of India, who still say of the stones they worship, “This stands for God, but we know not his shape.” In Cornwall, within living memory, the Druidic stones were believed in some mysterious way to be sacred to existence, and the materialistic theory which attributes all primitive worship to fear or self-interest, will find it hard to account satisfactorily for stone worship. Cold, impassive stone, neither feeds, nor warms, nor clothes, yet, as Toland says: “’Tis certain that all nations meant by these stones without statues the eternal stability and power of the Deity, and that He could not be represented by any similitude, nor under any figure whatsoever”.

Fig.21.—Christ and His Apostles, under the form of Lambs or of Sheep. (Latin sculpture; first centuries of the Church.)FromChristian Iconography(Didron).

It is asserted by one of the classical authors that stones were considered superior in two respects, first in being not subject to death, and second in not being harmful. ThatAlbionwas harmless and beneficent is implied by the adjectivesbien,bonny,benevolent,bounteous, andbenignant. That St. Alban was similarly conceived is implied by the statement that this Lord’s son of the City of Verulam was “a well disposed and seemly young man,” who “always loved to do hospitalitygranting meat and drinkwherever necessary”. That St. Alban was not onlyAlpa, the All Feeder, but that he was alsoAlpe, the High One and the Rock whence gushed a “living water,” is clear from the statement: “Then at the last they came to the hill where this holy Alban should finish and end his life, in which place lay a great multitude of people nigh dead for heat ofthe sun, and for thirst. And then anon the wind blew afresh, cool, and also at the feet of this holy man Alban sprang up a fair well whereof all the people marvelled to see the cold water spring up in the hot sandy ground, and so high on the top of an hill, which water flowed all about and in large streams running down the hill. And then the people ran to the water and drank so that they were well refreshed, and then by the merits of St. Alban their thirst was clean quenched. But yet for all the great goodness that was showed they thirsted strongly for the blood of this holy man.”[146]

From this and other miraculous incidents in the life of St. Alban it would appear that the original compilers had in front of them some cartoons, cameos, or symbolic pictures of “The Kaadman,” which had probably been recovered from the ruins of the ancient city. The authenticity of St. Alban’s “life” is further implied by the frequency with which allusions are made to the blazing heat of the sun, a sunshine so great, so conspicuous, that it burnt and scalded the feet of the sightseers. The Latin for yellow, which is the colour of the golden sun, isgalbinus, a word which like Kalbion resolves into’g albinus, the high or mighty Albanus. Fromgalbinusthe French authorities derive their wordjaune, butjauneis simplyJoan,Jeanne,shine,shone, orsheen.

In HebrewAlbanahorLebanahproperly signifies the moon, andalbonmeansstrengthandpower, but more radically these terms may be connoted with our English surname Alibone and understood as eitherholy good,wholly good, orall good.

Yellow is not only the colour of the golden sun, but it is similarly that of the moon, and at the festivals of theyellowLights of Heaven our ancestors most assuredlyhalloe’d,yelled,yawled, andyowled. The Cornish for the sun ishoul, the Breton isheol, the Welsh ishayl, and until recently in English churches the congregation used at Yule Tide tohailthe day with shouts oryellsof Yole, Yole, Yole! or Ule, Ule, Ule! The festival of Yule is a reunion, a coming together in amity of the All, and as in Welshymeantthe, the wordswhole, andYulewere perhapsoriginallyye allorthe all. Analloyis a mixture or medley, anythingallowedis according tolaw, andhallowis the same word asholy.

The word Alban is pronounced Olbun, and in WelshOl, meant not onlyall, but also the Supreme Being. The Dictionaries translate the SemiticElas having meantGodorPower, and it is so rendered when found amid names such as Bethel, Uriel,Eleazar,[147]etc. But among the Semitic races the deity El was subdivided into a number of Baalim or secondary divinities emanating from El, and it would thus seem that although the Phœnicians may have forgotten the fact,Elmeant among them whatAlldoes amongst us. According to Anderson, El was primarily Israel’s God and only later did He come to be regarded as the God of the Universe—“Rising in dignity as the national idea was enlarged, El became more just and righteous, more and more superior to all the other gods, till at last He was defined to be the Supreme Ruler of Nature, the One and only Lord”.[148]

The motto of Cornwall is “One and All,” and among the Celtic races there is still current a monotheistic folk-song which is supposed to be the relic of a Druidic ritual or catechism. This opens with the question in chorus, “What is your one O”? to which the answer is returned:—

One isall alone,And ever doth remain so.

One isall alone,

And ever doth remain so.

There figures in the Celtic memory a Saint Allen or St. Elwyn, and this “saint” may be modernised into St.“Alone” or St. “All one”: his third variant Elian is equivalent to Holy Ane or Holy One.[149]

The Greek philosophers entertained a maxim that Jove, Pluto, Phœbus, Bacchus, all were one and they accepted as a formula the phrase “All is one”. In India Brahma was entitled “The Eternal All” and in theBhagavad Gitathe Soul of the world is thus adored:—

O infinite Lord of Gods! the world’s abode,Thou undivided art, o’er all supreme,Thou art the first of Gods, the ancient Sire,The treasure-house supreme of all the worlds.The Knowing and the Known, the highest seat.From Thee the All has sprung, O Boundless Form!Varuna, Vazu, Agni, Yama thou,The Moon; the Sire and Grandsire too of men.The infinite in power, of boundless force,The All thou dost embrace; the “Thou art All”.

O infinite Lord of Gods! the world’s abode,

Thou undivided art, o’er all supreme,

Thou art the first of Gods, the ancient Sire,

The treasure-house supreme of all the worlds.

The Knowing and the Known, the highest seat.

From Thee the All has sprung, O Boundless Form!

Varuna, Vazu, Agni, Yama thou,

The Moon; the Sire and Grandsire too of men.

The infinite in power, of boundless force,

The All thou dost embrace; the “Thou art All”.

Near Stonehenge there is a tumulus known nowadays as El barrow, and Salisbury Plain itself was once named Ellendune or Ellen Down. The Greeks or Hellenes claimed to be descendants of the Dodonian Ellan or Hellan, a personage whom they esteemed as the “Father of the First-born Woman”. Ellan or Hellan was alternatively entitled Hellas, and in Greek the wordallosmeant “the one”.

Tradition said that the Temple of Ellan at Dodona—a shrine which antedated the Greek race, and was erected by unknown predecessors—was founded by a Dove, one of two birds which flew from Thebes in Egypt. The super-sacred tree at Dodona, as in Persia and elsewhere, was the oak, and the rustling of the wind in the leaves of the oak was poetically regarded as the voice of the All-Father. The Hebrew for an oak tree isallon,elon, orallah, andAllah is the name under which many millions of our fellow-men worship The Alone. To this day the oak tree is sacred among the folk of Palestine,[150]particularly one ancient specimen on the site of old Beyrut or Berut—a place-name which, as we shall see, may be connoted with Brut.

Diana, the Moon, with a circular nimbus. (Roman sculpture.)Mercury with a circular nimbus. (Roman sculpture.)

Diana, the Moon, with a circular nimbus. (Roman sculpture.)

Mercury with a circular nimbus. (Roman sculpture.)

Apollo as the Sun, adorned with the nimbus, and crowned with seven rays. (Roman sculpture.)Sun, with rays issuing from the face, and a wheel-like nimbus on the head. (Etruscan sculpture.)

Apollo as the Sun, adorned with the nimbus, and crowned with seven rays. (Roman sculpture.)

Sun, with rays issuing from the face, and a wheel-like nimbus on the head. (Etruscan sculpture.)

Fig.22.—FromChristian Iconography. (Didron.)

Fig.23.—The statue of Diana of the Ephesians worshipped at Massilia.FromStonehenge(Barclay, E.).

B being invariably interchangeable with P, the Ban of Alban is the same as the Greek Pan.[151]From Pan comesthe adjectivepanmeaningall,universal, so that Alban may perhaps be equated with Holy Pan.Halealso means healthy, and the circularhalosymbolising the glorious sun was used by the pagans long before it was adopted by Christianity. By the Cabalists—who were indistinguishable from the Gnostics—Ell was understood to mean “the Most Luminous,” Il “the Omnipotent,” Elo “the Sovereign, the Excelsus,” and Eloi “the Illuminator, the Most Effulgent”. Among the Greekselemeant refulgent, and Helios was a title of Apollo or the Sun.

The Peruvians named their Bona Dea Mama Allpa, whom they represented, like Ephesian Diana, as having numerous breasts, and they regarded Mama Allpa as the dispenser of all human nourishment. In Egyptpameantancestor,beginning,origin, and the Peruvian many-breasted Mama Allpa seeminglymeant just as it does in English,i.e., mother,All paorAll-feeder.

It is important to note that the British Albion was not always considered as a male, but on occasions as the “Lady Albine”.[152]

The Sabeans worshipped the many-breasted Artemis under the name Almaquah, which is radicallyalma, and the Greeks used the wordalmaas an adjective meaningnourishing. The river Almo near Rome was seemingly named after the All Mother, for in this stream the Romans used ceremoniously to bathe and purify the statue of Ma, the World Mother, whose consort was known as Pappas. Pappas is the Greek equivalent to Papa, and Ma or Mama meaningmotheris so used practically all the world over. Skeat is contemptuous towardsmama, describing it as “a mere repetition ofmaan infantile syllable; many other languages have something like it”. Not only all over Asia Minor but also in Burmah and Hindustanmameant mother; in Chinamotherismiormu, and in South America as in Chaldea and all over Europemamameant mother; Mammal is of course traceable to the same root, and it is evident that even weremamerely an infantile syllable it obviously carried far more than a contemptible or negligible meaning.

MA.Fig.24.—The Egyptian Maor “Truth”.

In Europe, Alma and Ilma are proper names which are defined as having meant either Celticall good, Latinkindly, or Jewishmaiden. In Finnish mythology theCreatrix of the Universe, or Virgin Daughter of the Air is named Ilmatar, which is evidently theAll MaterorAll Mother. Alma was no doubt the almoner of aliment, and her symbol was thealmond. In Scotland where there is a river Almond,benmeans mountain or head, andbenvaries almost invariably intopen, from the Apennines to the Pennine Range.

It is said that Pan was worshipped in South America, and that his name was commemorated in the place-name Mayapan. Among the Mandan Indians,panmeanthead, and alsopertaining to that which is above; in China,panmeant mountain or hill, and in Phœnician,pennahhad the same meaning. As, however, I have dealt somewhat fully elsewhere with Pan the President of the Mountains, I shall for the sake of brevity translate his name intouniversalorgood.

In England we have the curious surname Pennefather;[153]in Cornwall, Pender is very common, and it is proverbial thatPenis one of the three affixes by which one may know Cornishmen.

As Pan was pre-eminently the divinity of woods and forests, Panshanger or Pan’s Wood in Hertfordshire may perhaps be connected with him, and the river Beane of Hertfordshire may be equated with the kindred British river-names, Ben, Bann, Bane, Bain, Banon, Bana, Bandon, Banney, Banac, and Bannockburn.

Bannock or Panak theGreat Panis probably responsible for the English river name Penk, and the name Pankhurst necessarily implies a hurst or wood of Pank. Penkhull was seemingly once Penkhill, and it is evident that Pan or Pank, the God of the Universe, may be recognised in Panku,the benevolent Chinese World Father, for the account of this Deity is as follows: “Panku was thefirst, being placed upon the earth at a period when sea, land, and sky were all jumbled up together. Panku was a giant, and worked with a mallet and chisel for eighteen thousand years in an effort to make the earth more shapely. As he toiled and struggled so he grew in strength and stature, until he was able to push the heavens back and to put the sea into its proper place. Then he rounded the earth and made it more habitable, and then he died. But Panku was greater in death than he was in life, for his head became the surface of the earth; his sinews, the mountains; his voice, the thunder, his breath, the wind, the mist, and the clouds; one eye was converted into the sun; the other the moon; and the beads of perspiration on his forehead were crystallised into the scintillating stars.”

The name Panku is radically the same as Punch, and there is no doubt that Mr. Punch of to-day represented, according to immemorial wont, with a hunch, hill, or mountain on his back, has descended from the sacred farce or drama. Punch and Punchinello, or Pierre and Pierrot are the father and the son of the ancient holy-days or holidays.

AtBancroft, in the neighbourhood of St. Albans, the festivities of May-day included “first” a personage with “a large artificial hump on his back,”[154]and we may recognise the Kaadman of St. Albans in the Cadi of Welsh pageantry. In Wales all the arrangements of May-day were made by the so-called Cadi, who was always the most active person in the company and sustained the joint rôle of marshal, orator, buffoon, and money collector. The whole party beingassembled they marched in pairs headed by the Cadi, who was gaudily bedecked with gauds and wore a bisexual, half-male, half-female costume. With gaud and gaudy, which are the same words asgoodandcadi, may be connotedgaudeothe Latin forI rejoice.

Punch is always represented with an amplepaunch, and this conspicuous characteristic of bonhomie is similarly a feature of Chinese and Japanese bonifaces or Bounty Gods. The skirt worn by the androgynous British Cadi may be connoted with the kilt in which the Etrurians figured their Hercules, and that in Etruria the All Father was occasionally depicted like Punch, is clear from the following passage fromThe Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria: “Hercules and Minerva were the most generally honoured of the Etruscan divinities, the one representing the most valuable qualities of a man’s body and the other of his soul. They were the excellencies of flesh and spirit, and according to Etruscan mythology they were man and wife. Minerva has usually a very fine face with that straight line of feature which we call Grecian, but which, from the sepulchral paintings and the votive offerings, would appear also to have been native. Hercules has a prominent and peaky chin, and something altogether remarkably sharp in his features, which, from the evidence of vases and scarabæi together, would appear to have been the conventional form of depicting a warrior. It is probably given to signify vigilance and energy. A friend of mine used to call it, not inaptly, ‘the ratcatcher style’. Neptune bears the trident, Jove the thunderbolt or sceptre, and these attributes are sometimes appended to the most grotesque figures when the Etruscans have been representing either some Greek fable, or some native version ofthe same story. This may be seen on one vase where Jove is entering a window, accompanied by Mercury, to visit Alcmena. Jove has just taken his foot off the ladder, and in my ignorance I looked at the clumsy but extraordinary vase, thinking that the figures represented Punch; and though I give the learned and received version of the story, I am at this moment not convinced that I was wrong, for I do not believe the professor who pointed it out to me, notwithstanding all his learning, extensive and profound as it was, knew that Punch was an Etruscan amusement. Supposing it, however, to have been Punch, which I think was my own very just discovery, the piece acted was certainly Giove and Alcmena.”

It is very obvious that the termholyhas changed considerably in its meaning. To the ancients “holidays” were joy-days, pandemoniums, and the pre-eminent emblem of joviality was the holly tree. The reason for the symbolic eminence of the holy tree was its evergreen horned leaves which caused it to be dedicated to Saturn the horned All Father, now degraded into Old Nick. But “Old Nick” is simply St. Nicholas, or Santa Claus, and the name Claus is Nicholas minus the adjective’norancient. Janus, the Latinised form of Joun, was essentially the God ofgeniality andjoviality, otherwise Father Christmas and he is the same as Saturn, whose golden era was commemorated by the Saturnalia. The Hebrew name for the planet Saturn was Chiun, and this Chiun or Joun (?) was seemingly the same as the Gian Ben Gian, or Divine Being, who according to Arabian tradition ruled over the whole world during the legendary Golden Age.

On the first of January, a month which takes its name from Janus as being the “God of the Beginning,” allquarrelling and disturbances were shunned, mutual good-wishes were exchanged, and people gave sweets to one another as an omen that the New Year might bring nothing but what was sweet and pleasant in its train.

This “execrable practice,” a “mere relique of paganism and idolatry,” was, like the decorative use of holly, sternly opposed by the mediæval Church. In 1632 Prynne wrote: “The whole Catholicke Church (as Alchuvinus and others write), appointed a solemn publike faste upon this our New Yeare’s Day (which fast it seems is now forgotten), to bewail these heathenish enterludes, sports, and lewd idolatrous practices which had been used on it: prohibiting all Christians, under pain of excommunication, from observing the Calends, or first of January (which we now call New Yeare’s Day) as holy, and from sending abroad New Yeare’s Gifts upon it (a custom now too frequent), it being a mere relique of paganisme and idolatry, derived from the heathen Romans’ feast of two-faced Janus, and a practice so execrable unto Christians that not only the whole Catholicke Church, but even four famous Councils” [and an enormous quantity of other authorities which it is useless to quote], “have positively prohibited the solemnisation of New Yeare’s Day, and the sending abroad of New Yeare’s Gifts, under an anathema and excommunication.”

There is little doubt that the “Saint” Concord—an alleged subdeacon in a desert—who figures in the Roman Martyrology on January 1st, was invented to account for the Holy Concord to which that day was dedicated. Janus of January 1st, who was ranked by the Latins even above Jupiter, was termed “ThegoodCreator,” the “Oldest of the Gods,” the “Beginning of all Things,” and the “Godof Gods”. From him sprang all rivers, wells, and streams, and his name is radically the same as Oceanus.

Before the earth was known to be a ball, Oceanus, the Father of all the river-gods and water-nymphs, was conceived to be a river flowing perpetually round the flat circle of the world, and out of, and into this river the sun and stars were thought to rise and set. Our wordoceanis assumed to be from the Greek formokeanus, and the official surmise as to the origin of the word is—“perhaps fromokis—swift”. But what “swiftness” there is about the unperturbable and mighty sea, I am at a loss to recognise. In the Highlands the islanders of St. Kilda used to pour out libations to a sea-god, known as Shony, and in this British Shony we have probably the truer origin ofocean.

Fig.25.—Personification of River.FromChristian Iconography(Didron).

The ancients generally supposed the All Good as wandering abroad and peering unobserved into the thoughts and actions of his children. This proclivity was a conspicuous characteristic of Jupiter, and also of the Scandinavian All Father, one of whose titles was Gangrad, or “The Wanderer”. The verb togad, and the expression “gadding about,” may have arisen from this wandering proclivity of the gods or gads, and the wordjaunt, a synonym for “gadding” (of unknown etymology), points to the probability that the rambling tendencies of “Gangrad” and other gods were similarly assigned by the British to theirGiant, “jeyantt,” or GoodJohn.Jauntyorjantymeans full of fire or life, and the wordsgentle,genial, andgenerousare implications of the original good Giant’s attributes.

Fig.26.—Figure of Time with Three Faces. From a French Miniature of the XIV. cent.FromChristian Iconography(Didron).

Fig.27.—The Three Divine Faces with two eyes and one single body. From a French Miniature of the XVI. cent.FromChristian Iconography(Didron).

The coins of King Janus of Sicily bore on their obversethe figure of god Janus; on the reverse a dove, and it is evident that the dove was as much a symbol of Father Janus as it was of Mother Jane or Mother Juno. Christianity still recognises the dove or pigeon as the symbol of the Holy Ghost, and it is probable that the wordpigeonmay be attributed to the fact that the pigeon was invariably associated withpi, orpa geon.[155]

Fig.28.—Brahma.—FromA Dictionary of Non-classical Mythology(Edwardes & Spence).

Janus, “the one by whom all things were introduced into life,” was figured as two-faced, or time past, and time to come, and Janus was the “I was,” the “I am,” and the “I shall be”.[156]As the “God of the Beginning,” Janus is clearly connected with the wordgenesis; Juno was the goddess who presided over childbirth, and to their names may be traced the wordsgenerate,genus,genital, and thelike. Just asJanuary is the first or opening month of the year, soJune,[157]FrenchJuin, was the first or opening month of the ancient calendar. It was fabled that Janus daily threw open the gate of day whencejanuawas the Latin for a gate, andjanitormeans a keeper of the gate.

All men were supposed to be under the safeguard of Janus, and all women under that of Juno, whence the guardian spirit of a man was termed hisgeniusand that of a woman herjuno. The wordsgeniusandgenieare evidently cognate with the Arabianjinn, meaning a spirit. In Ireland the fairies or “good people” are known as the “gentry”; as the giver of all increase Juno may be responsible for the wordgenerous, and Janus the Beginning or Leader is presumably allied toGeneral. Occasionally the two faces of Janus were represented as respectively old and young, a symbol obviously of time past and present, time andchange, the ancient of days and thejuniororjeun. In Irishsenmeantsenile.

It is taught by the mothers of Europe that at Yule-Tide the Senile All Bounty wanders around bestowing gifts, and St. Nicholas, or Father Christmas, is in some respects the same as the Wandering Jew of mediæval tradition. The earliest mention of the Everlasting Jew occurs in the chronicles of the Abbey of St. Albans,[158]and is probably a faint memory of the original St. Alban or All Bounty. It was said that this mysterious Wanderer “had a little child on his arm,” and was an eye-witness of the crucifixion of Christ. Varied mythical appearances of the Everlasting Jew are recorded, and his name is variously stated asJoseph, and as Elijah. Joseph is radicallyJo, Elijah isHoly Jah, whence it may follow, that “Jew” should be spelled “Jou,” and that the Wandering or Everlasting Jew may be equated with the Sunshine or the Heavenly Joy.

Fig.29.—The Three Divine Heads within a single triangle. From an Italian Wood Engraving of the XV. cent.FromChristian Iconography(Didron).

In France the sudden roar of the wind at night is attributed to the passing of the Everlasting Jew. In Switzerland he is associated with the mighty Matterhorn, in Arabia he is represented as an aged man with a bald head, and I strongly suspect that the Elisha story of “Go up, thou bald head” arose from the misinterpretation of a picture of the Ancient of Days surrounded by a happy crowd of laughing youngsters. In this respect it wouldhave accorded with the representation of the Divine bald-head of the Celts, leading a joyful chain of smiling captives. In England the Wandering Jew was reputed never to eat but merely to drink water which came from a rock. Some accounts specify his clothing sometimes as a “purple shag-gown,” with the added information, “his stockings were very white, but whether linen or jersey deponent knoweth not, his beard and head were white and he had a white stick in his hand. The day was rainy from morning to night, but he had not one spot of dirt upon his clothes”.[159]This tradition is evidently a conception of the white and immaculate Old Alban, in the usual contradistinction to theyoungorle jeun, and we still speak of an honest or jonnock person as “a white man”. By the Etrurians it was believed that the soul preserved after death the likeness of the body it had left and that this elfin or spritely body composed of shining elastic air was clothed in airy white.[160]There figures inThe Golden Legendan Italian St. Albine, whose name, says Voragine, “is as much as to say primo; as he was white and thus this holy saint was all white by purity of clean living”. The tale goes on that this St. Albine had two wives, also two nurses which did nourish him. While lying in his cradle he was carried away by a she-wolf and borne into the fields where happily he was espied by a pair of passing maidens. One of these twain exclaimed “Would to God I had milk to foster thee withal,” and these words thus said her paps immediately rose and grew up filled with milk. Semblably said and prayed the second maid, and anon she had milk as her fellow had and so they two nourished the holy child Albine.

Figs.30 to 38.—FromLes Filigranes(Briquet, C. M.).

It has been suggested that the Wandering Jew is a personification “of that race which wandersCain-like over the earth with the brand of a brother’s blood upon it”; by others the story is connected particularly with the gipsies. The Romany word for moon ischoon, the Cornish forfull mooniscann, and it is a curious thing that the Etrurian Dante entitles the Man in the Moon, Cain:—

Now doth Cain with fork of thorns confineOn either hemisphere touching the waveBeneath the towers of Seville. YesternightThe moon was round.[161]

Now doth Cain with fork of thorns confine

On either hemisphere touching the wave

Beneath the towers of Seville. Yesternight

The moon was round.[161]

Christian symbology frequently associates the Virgin Mary with the new moon, and in Fig. 39 a remarkable representation of the Trinity is situated there.

Fig.39.—The Holy Ghost, as a child of eight or ten years old, in the arms of the Father. French Miniature of the XVI. cent.FromChristian Iconography(Didron).

In the illustrations overleaf of mediæval papermarks, some of which depict the Man in the Moon in his conventional low-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, there is a conspicuous portrayal of the two breasts, doubtless representative of the milk and honey flowing in the mystic Land ofCanaan. This paradise was reconnoitred by Joshua accompanied by Caleb, whose name meansdog, and it willbe remembered that dog-headed St. Christopher was said to be a Canaanitish giant.

Irishmen assign the name Connaught to a beneficent King Conn, during whose fabulously happy reign all crops yielded ninefold, and the furrows of Ireland flowed with “the pure lacteal produce of the dairy”. Conn of Connaught is expressly defined as “good as well as great,”[162]and the Hibernian “pure lacteal produce of the dairy” may be connoted with the Canaanitish “milk”. We shall trace King Conn of Connaught at Caen or Kenwood, near St. John’s Wood, London, and also at Kilburn, a burn or stream alternatively known as theCuneburn. This rivulet comes first within the ken of history in the time of Henry I., when a hermit named Godwyn—queryGood One?—had his kil or cell upon its banks. King Conn of Connaught reigned in glory with “Good Queen Eda,” a Breaton princess who was equally beloved and esteemed. This Eda is seemingly the Lady of Mount Ida in Candia, and her name may perhaps be traced in Maida Vale and Maida Hill. Pa Eda or Father Ida is apparently memorised at the adjacent Paddington which the authorities derive from Paedaington, orthe town of the children of Paeda. Cynthia, the Goddess of the Moon orcann, may be connoted with Cain the Man in the Moon, and we shall ultimately associate her with Candia the alternative title of Crete, and with Caindea, an Irish divinity, whose name in Gaelic meansthe gentle goddess.

NearConiston in Cumberland is Yew Barrow, a rugged, cragged, pyramidal height which like the river Yeo, rising from Seven Sisters Springs, was probably associated with Jou or Yew. The culminating peak knownas “The Old Man” of Coniston is suggestive of the Elfin tradition:—

High on the hill-top the Old King sitsHe is now so old and grey, he’s nigh lost his wits.

High on the hill-top the Old King sits

He is now so old and grey, he’s nigh lost his wits.

The Egyptians figured Ra, the Ancient of Days, as at times so senile that he dribbled at the mouth.

The traditional attributes of Cain, the Man in the Moon, or Cann, the full moon, are a dog, a lanthorn, and a bush of thorn. The dog is thekuonorchienof St. Kit, the Kaadman or the Good Man, and the lanthorn is probably Jack-a-lantern or Will-o-the-wisp, known of old as Kit-with-a-canstick or Kitty-with-a-candlestick. The thorn bush was sacred to the Elves for reasons which will be discussed in a subsequent chapter. It is sufficient here to note that the equivalent of the sacred hawthorn of Britain is known in the East as the Alvah or Elluf.[163]The Irish title of the letteraorhawisalif, as also is the Arabian: the Greekalphais eitheralpaoralfa.

The Welsh Archbard Taliesin makes the mystic statement:—

Of the ruddy vine,Planted on sunny days,And on new-moon nights;And the white wine.The wheat rich in grainAnd red flowing wineChrist’s pure body make,Son of Alpha.

Of the ruddy vine,Planted on sunny days,And on new-moon nights;And the white wine.

Of the ruddy vine,

Planted on sunny days,

And on new-moon nights;

And the white wine.

The wheat rich in grainAnd red flowing wineChrist’s pure body make,Son of Alpha.

The wheat rich in grain

And red flowing wine

Christ’s pure body make,

Son of Alpha.

The same poet claims, “I was in the Ark with Noah and Alpha,” whence it would seem that Alpha was Mother Eve or the Mother of All Living. Alfa the Elf King and hisfollowers the elves were deemed to be ever-living, and the wordslove,life, andaliveare all one and the same. That Spenser appreciated this identity betweenElfeandlifeis apparent in the passage:—

Prometheus did createA man of many parts from beasts derived,That man so made he called Elfe to wit,Quick the first author of all Elfin kind,Who wandering through the world with wearie feetDid in the gardens of Adonis findA goodly creature whom he deemed in mindTo be no earthly wight, but either spriteOr angel, the author of all woman-kind.[164]

Prometheus did create

A man of many parts from beasts derived,

That man so made he called Elfe to wit,

Quick the first author of all Elfin kind,

Who wandering through the world with wearie feet

Did in the gardens of Adonis find

A goodly creature whom he deemed in mind

To be no earthly wight, but either sprite

Or angel, the author of all woman-kind.[164]

Quickas in “quick and dead” meant living, whence “Elfe, to wit Quick,” was clearly understood by Spenser as life. It meant further, allvieor allfeu, for the ancients identified life and fire, and they further identified thefaysor elves withfeuxor fires. The place-name Fife is, I suspect, connected withviforvive, and it is noteworthy that in Fifeshire to this day a circular patch of white snow which habitually lingers in a certain hill cup is termed poetically “the Lady Alva’s web”. Whether this Lady Alva was supposed to haunt Glen Alva—a name now associated with a more material spirit—I do not know.

The dictionaries define “Alfred” as meaning “Elf in council,” and Allflatt or Elfleet as “elf purity”. The big Alfe was no doubt symbolised by the celebrated Alphian Rock in Yorkshire, and the little Alf was almost certainly worshipped in his coty or stone cradle at Alvescott near Witney. That this site was another Kit’s Coty or “Cradle of Tudno,” as at Llandudno, is implied by the earlier forms Elephescote (1216) and Alfays (1274). The Fays and theElves are one and the same as the Jinns, the Genii, or “the Gentry”.

There used to be an “Alphey” within Cripplegate on the site of the present Church of St. Alphage in London. It was believed that the Elf King inhabited the linden tree, and the elder was similarly associated with him. Linden is the same word as London, and the name elder resolves into thedreorderor abode of El: in Scandinavia the elves were known as the Elles, whence probably Ellesmere—the Elves pool—and similar place-names.

We shall subsequently consider a humble Hallicondane orEllie King dunstill standing in Ramsgate. There was also a famous Elve dun or Elve-haunt atElboton, a hill in Yorkshire, where according to local legend:—

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