FOOTNOTES:

Fig.3.—Section of the Dolmen Chapel of the Seven Sleepers near Plouaret.

It has long been generally appreciated that the lives of saints are not only for the most part mythical, but that even documentary evidence on that subject is equally suspect.[37]There is, indeed, no room to doubt that the majorityof the ancient saint-stories are Christianised versions of such scraps and traditions of prehistoric mythology as had continued to linger among the folk. To the best of my belief I am the first folklorist who has endeavoured to treatThe Golden Legendin a sympathetic spirit as almost pure mythology.

It is usually assumed that at any rate the Christian Church tactfully decanted the old wine of paganism into new bottles; but Christianity, as will be seen, more often did not trouble to provide even new bottles, and merely altered a stroke here and there on the labels, transformingSan tan, theHoly Fire, into St. Anne,Sin clair, theHoly Light, into St. Clare, and so forth.

The first written record of Christianity in Britain is approximatelyA.D.200, whence it is claimed that the Christian religion must have been introduced very near to, if not in, apostolic times. In 314 three British bishops, each accompanied by a priest and a deacon, were present at the Council at Arles, and it is commonly maintained by the Anglican Church that only a relatively small part of England owes its conversion to the Roman mission of the monk Augustine in 597.

We have it on the notable authority of St. Augustine that: “That very thing which is now designated the Christian religionwas in existence among the ancients, nor was it absent even from the commencement of the human race up to the time when Christ entered into the flesh, after which true religion,which already existed, began to be called Christian”.

We should undoubtedly possess more specific evidencesof the ancient faith but for the edicts of the Church that all writings adverse to the claims of the Christian religion, in the possession of whomsoever they should be found, should be committed to the fire. It is claimed for St. Patrick that he caused to be destroyed 180—some say 300—volumes relating to the Druidic system. These, said a complacent commentator, were stuffed with the fables and superstitions of heathen idolatry and unfit to be transmitted to posterity.

Mr. Westropp considers that much of value escaped destruction, for Christianity in Ireland was a tactful, warm-hearted mother, and learned the stories to tell to her children. This is true to some extent, but in Britain there are extant many bardic laments at the intolerance with which old ideas were eradicated,e.g., “Monks congregate like wolves wrangling with their instructors. They know not when the darkness and the dawn divide, nor what is the course of the wind, or the cause of its agitation; in what place it dies away or on what region it expands.” And implying that although one may be right it does not follow that all others must be wrong the same bard exclaims, “For one hour persecute me not!” and he pathetically asks: “Is there butonecourse to the wind, butoneto the waters of the sea? Is there butonespark in the fire of boundless energy?”

In the same strain another bard, in terms not altogether inapplicable to-day, alludes to his opponents as “like little children disagreeing on the beach of the sea”.

Although bigotry and materialism have suppressed facts, stifled testimony, misrepresented witnesses, and destroyed or perverted documents, the prehistoric fairy faith was happily too deeply graven thus to be obliterated, and it isonly a matter of time and study to reconstruct it. Most of the suggestions I venture to put forward are sufficiently documented by hard facts, but some are necessarily based upon “hints and equivocal survivals”.[38]At the threshold of an essay of the present character one can hardly do better than appropriate the words of Edmund Spenser:—I do gather a likelihood of truth not certainly affirming anything, but by conferring of times, language, monuments, and such like, I do hunt out a probability of things which I leave to your judgment to believe or refuse.

FOOTNOTES:[1]Dent, 1909.[2]The Lost Language of Symbolism: An inquiry into the origin of certain letters, words, names, fairy-tales, folklore, and mythologies. 2 vols. London, 1912 (Williams & Norgate).[3]Manchester Guardian, 23rd December, 1912.[4]Sonia.[5]“Topographical comment—I will not say criticism—has been equally inefficient. A theory is not refuted by saying ‘all the great antiquarians are against you,’ ‘the Psalter of Tara refutes that,’ or ‘O’Donovan has set the question past all doubt’. These remarks only prove that we have hardly commenced scientific archæology in this country.”—;Westropp, Thos. J.,Proc. of Royal Irish Acad., vol. xxxiv., C., No. 8, p. 129.[6]We found precisely the same things as were found by our predecessors, remains of extinct animals in the cave earth, and with them flint implements in considerable numbers. You want, of course, to know how the scientific world received these latter discoveries. They simply scouted them. They told us that our statements were impossible, and we simply responded with the remark that we had not said that they were possible, only that they were true.—Pengally, W.,Kent’s Cavern. Its Testimony to the Antiquity of Man, p. 12.[7]Lubbock, J.,Prehistoric Times.[8]In the course of his criticism the same writer pertinently observes:—“Why, what a wonderful thing is this! We have, in the first place, the most weighty and explicit testimony—Strabo’s, Cæsar’s, Lucan’s—that this race once possessed a special, profound, spiritual discipline, that they were, to use Mr. Nash’s words, ‘Wiser than their neighbours’. Lucan’s words are singularly clear and strong, and serve well to stand as a landmark in this controversy, in which one is sometimes embarrassed by hearing authorities quoted on this side or that, when one does not feel sure precisely what they say, how much or how little. Lucan, addressing those hitherto under the pressure of Rome, but now left by the Roman Civil War to their own devices, says:—“‘Ye too, ye bards, who by your praises perpetuate the memory of the fallen brave, without hindrance poured forth your strains. And ye, ye Druids, now that the sword was removed, began once more your barbaric rites and weird solemnities. To you only is given the knowledge or ignorance (whichever it be) of the gods and the powers of heaven; your dwelling is in the lone heart of the forest. From you we learn that the bourne of man’s ghost is not the senseless grave, not the pale realm of the monarch below; in another world his spirit survives still.’”[9]“Circles form another group of the monuments we are about to treat of.... In France they are hardly known, though in Algeria they are frequent. In Denmark and Sweden they are both numerous and important, but it is in the British Islands that circles attained their greatest development.”—;Fergusson, J.,Rude Stone Monuments, p. 47. Referring to Stanton Drew the same authority observes: “Meanwhile it may be well to point out that this class of circles is peculiar to England. They do not exist in France or Algeria. The Scandinavian circles are all very different, so too are the Irish.”—Ibid., p. 153.[10]Stevens, F.,Stonehenge To-day and Yesterday, 1916, p. 14.[11]Toland,History of the Druids, p. 163.[12]Schrader, O.,cf.Taylor, Isaac,The Origin of the Aryans, p. 48.[13]Latham, Dr. R. G.[14]Spain and Portugal, vol. i., p. 16.[15]Mr. Hammer, a German who has travelled lately in Egypt and Syria, has brought, it seems, to England a manuscript written in Arabic. It contains a number of alphabets. Two of these consist entirely of trees. The book is of authority.—Davies, E.,Celtic Researches, 1804, p. 305.[16]The Cretans were rulers of the sea, and according to Thucydides King Minos of Crete was “the first person known to us in history as having established a navy. He made himself master of what is now called the Hellenic Sea, and ruled over the Cyclades, into most of which he sent his first colonists, expelling the Carians and appointing his own sons governors; and thus did his best to put down piracy in those waters.”[17]Jones, J. J.,Britannia Antiquissima, 1866.[18]Mackenzie, D. A.,Myths of Crete, p. xxix.[19]Gray, Mrs. Hamilton,The Sepulchres of Etruria, p. 223.[20]This might be due to the coasts being less liable to the plough. See, however, the map of distribution, published by Fergusson, inRude Stone Monuments.[21]Herbert, A.,Cyclops Britannica, p. 68.[22]Taliesin, p. 23.[23]Connellan, A. F. M., p. 337.[24]Aristotle.[25]Smith, Worthington, G.,Man the Primeval Savage, p. 53.[26]Short History, p. 15.[27]Bede.[28]The cities which had been erected in considerable numbers by the Romans were sacked, burnt, and then left as ruins by the Anglo-Saxons, who appear to have been afraid or at least unwilling to use them as places of habitation. An instance of this may be found in the case of Camboritum, the important Roman city which corresponded to our modern Cambridge, which was sacked by the invaders and left a ruin at least until the time of the Venerable Bede, 673-735.—Windle, B. C. A.,Life in Early Britain, p. 14.[29]Hearnshaw, F. J. C.,England in the Making, p. 14.[30]Hawkins, E.,The Silver Coins of England, p. 17.[31]Coins of the Ancient Britons, p. 121.[32]Bello Gallico, Bk. v., 12, § 3.[33]Smith, Dr. Wm.,Lectures on the English Language, p. 29.[34]The Americans would describe Gildas as a “Calamity-howler”.[35]Le Braz, A.,The Night of Fires.[36]A Cantanzaro, dans la Calabre, la cathédrale fut le théâtre de scènes de désordre extraordinaires. Le nouvel archevêque avait dernièrement manifesté l’intention de mettre un terme à certaines coutumes qu’il considérait comme entachées de paganisme. Ses instructions ayant été méprisées, il frappa d’interdit pour trois jours un édifice religieux. La population jura de se venger et, lorsque le nouvel archevêque fit son entrée dans la cathédrale, le jour de Pâques pour célébrer la grand’ messe, la foule, furieuse, manifesta bruyamment contre lui. Comme on craignait que sa personne fût l’objet de violences, le clergé le fit sortir en hâte par une porte de derrière. Les troupes durent être réquisitionnées pour faire évacuer le cathédrale.—La Dernière Heure, April, 1914.[37]There is a story told of a certain Gilbert de Stone, a fourteenth century legend-monger, who was appealed to by the monks of Holywell in Flintshire for a life of their patron saint. On being told that no materials for such a work existed thelitterateurwas quite unconcerned, and undertook without hesitation to compose a most excellent legend after the manner of Thomas à Becket.[38]“Ireland being ‘the last resort of lost causes,’ preserved record of a European ‘culture’ as primitive as that of the South Seas, and therefore invaluable for the history of human advance; elsewhere its existence is only to be established from hints and equivocal survivals. Our early tales are no artificial fiction, but fragmentary beliefs of the pagan period equally valuable for topography and for mythology.”—Westropp, Thos. J.,Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xxxiv. sec. C, No. 8, p. 128.

[1]Dent, 1909.

[2]The Lost Language of Symbolism: An inquiry into the origin of certain letters, words, names, fairy-tales, folklore, and mythologies. 2 vols. London, 1912 (Williams & Norgate).

[3]Manchester Guardian, 23rd December, 1912.

[4]Sonia.

[5]“Topographical comment—I will not say criticism—has been equally inefficient. A theory is not refuted by saying ‘all the great antiquarians are against you,’ ‘the Psalter of Tara refutes that,’ or ‘O’Donovan has set the question past all doubt’. These remarks only prove that we have hardly commenced scientific archæology in this country.”—;Westropp, Thos. J.,Proc. of Royal Irish Acad., vol. xxxiv., C., No. 8, p. 129.

[6]We found precisely the same things as were found by our predecessors, remains of extinct animals in the cave earth, and with them flint implements in considerable numbers. You want, of course, to know how the scientific world received these latter discoveries. They simply scouted them. They told us that our statements were impossible, and we simply responded with the remark that we had not said that they were possible, only that they were true.—Pengally, W.,Kent’s Cavern. Its Testimony to the Antiquity of Man, p. 12.

[7]Lubbock, J.,Prehistoric Times.

[8]In the course of his criticism the same writer pertinently observes:—“Why, what a wonderful thing is this! We have, in the first place, the most weighty and explicit testimony—Strabo’s, Cæsar’s, Lucan’s—that this race once possessed a special, profound, spiritual discipline, that they were, to use Mr. Nash’s words, ‘Wiser than their neighbours’. Lucan’s words are singularly clear and strong, and serve well to stand as a landmark in this controversy, in which one is sometimes embarrassed by hearing authorities quoted on this side or that, when one does not feel sure precisely what they say, how much or how little. Lucan, addressing those hitherto under the pressure of Rome, but now left by the Roman Civil War to their own devices, says:—“‘Ye too, ye bards, who by your praises perpetuate the memory of the fallen brave, without hindrance poured forth your strains. And ye, ye Druids, now that the sword was removed, began once more your barbaric rites and weird solemnities. To you only is given the knowledge or ignorance (whichever it be) of the gods and the powers of heaven; your dwelling is in the lone heart of the forest. From you we learn that the bourne of man’s ghost is not the senseless grave, not the pale realm of the monarch below; in another world his spirit survives still.’”

[8]In the course of his criticism the same writer pertinently observes:—

“Why, what a wonderful thing is this! We have, in the first place, the most weighty and explicit testimony—Strabo’s, Cæsar’s, Lucan’s—that this race once possessed a special, profound, spiritual discipline, that they were, to use Mr. Nash’s words, ‘Wiser than their neighbours’. Lucan’s words are singularly clear and strong, and serve well to stand as a landmark in this controversy, in which one is sometimes embarrassed by hearing authorities quoted on this side or that, when one does not feel sure precisely what they say, how much or how little. Lucan, addressing those hitherto under the pressure of Rome, but now left by the Roman Civil War to their own devices, says:—

“‘Ye too, ye bards, who by your praises perpetuate the memory of the fallen brave, without hindrance poured forth your strains. And ye, ye Druids, now that the sword was removed, began once more your barbaric rites and weird solemnities. To you only is given the knowledge or ignorance (whichever it be) of the gods and the powers of heaven; your dwelling is in the lone heart of the forest. From you we learn that the bourne of man’s ghost is not the senseless grave, not the pale realm of the monarch below; in another world his spirit survives still.’”

[9]“Circles form another group of the monuments we are about to treat of.... In France they are hardly known, though in Algeria they are frequent. In Denmark and Sweden they are both numerous and important, but it is in the British Islands that circles attained their greatest development.”—;Fergusson, J.,Rude Stone Monuments, p. 47. Referring to Stanton Drew the same authority observes: “Meanwhile it may be well to point out that this class of circles is peculiar to England. They do not exist in France or Algeria. The Scandinavian circles are all very different, so too are the Irish.”—Ibid., p. 153.

[10]Stevens, F.,Stonehenge To-day and Yesterday, 1916, p. 14.

[11]Toland,History of the Druids, p. 163.

[12]Schrader, O.,cf.Taylor, Isaac,The Origin of the Aryans, p. 48.

[13]Latham, Dr. R. G.

[14]Spain and Portugal, vol. i., p. 16.

[15]Mr. Hammer, a German who has travelled lately in Egypt and Syria, has brought, it seems, to England a manuscript written in Arabic. It contains a number of alphabets. Two of these consist entirely of trees. The book is of authority.—Davies, E.,Celtic Researches, 1804, p. 305.

[16]The Cretans were rulers of the sea, and according to Thucydides King Minos of Crete was “the first person known to us in history as having established a navy. He made himself master of what is now called the Hellenic Sea, and ruled over the Cyclades, into most of which he sent his first colonists, expelling the Carians and appointing his own sons governors; and thus did his best to put down piracy in those waters.”

[17]Jones, J. J.,Britannia Antiquissima, 1866.

[18]Mackenzie, D. A.,Myths of Crete, p. xxix.

[19]Gray, Mrs. Hamilton,The Sepulchres of Etruria, p. 223.

[20]This might be due to the coasts being less liable to the plough. See, however, the map of distribution, published by Fergusson, inRude Stone Monuments.

[21]Herbert, A.,Cyclops Britannica, p. 68.

[22]Taliesin, p. 23.

[23]Connellan, A. F. M., p. 337.

[24]Aristotle.

[25]Smith, Worthington, G.,Man the Primeval Savage, p. 53.

[26]Short History, p. 15.

[27]Bede.

[28]The cities which had been erected in considerable numbers by the Romans were sacked, burnt, and then left as ruins by the Anglo-Saxons, who appear to have been afraid or at least unwilling to use them as places of habitation. An instance of this may be found in the case of Camboritum, the important Roman city which corresponded to our modern Cambridge, which was sacked by the invaders and left a ruin at least until the time of the Venerable Bede, 673-735.—Windle, B. C. A.,Life in Early Britain, p. 14.

[29]Hearnshaw, F. J. C.,England in the Making, p. 14.

[30]Hawkins, E.,The Silver Coins of England, p. 17.

[31]Coins of the Ancient Britons, p. 121.

[32]Bello Gallico, Bk. v., 12, § 3.

[33]Smith, Dr. Wm.,Lectures on the English Language, p. 29.

[34]The Americans would describe Gildas as a “Calamity-howler”.

[35]Le Braz, A.,The Night of Fires.

[36]A Cantanzaro, dans la Calabre, la cathédrale fut le théâtre de scènes de désordre extraordinaires. Le nouvel archevêque avait dernièrement manifesté l’intention de mettre un terme à certaines coutumes qu’il considérait comme entachées de paganisme. Ses instructions ayant été méprisées, il frappa d’interdit pour trois jours un édifice religieux. La population jura de se venger et, lorsque le nouvel archevêque fit son entrée dans la cathédrale, le jour de Pâques pour célébrer la grand’ messe, la foule, furieuse, manifesta bruyamment contre lui. Comme on craignait que sa personne fût l’objet de violences, le clergé le fit sortir en hâte par une porte de derrière. Les troupes durent être réquisitionnées pour faire évacuer le cathédrale.—La Dernière Heure, April, 1914.

[37]There is a story told of a certain Gilbert de Stone, a fourteenth century legend-monger, who was appealed to by the monks of Holywell in Flintshire for a life of their patron saint. On being told that no materials for such a work existed thelitterateurwas quite unconcerned, and undertook without hesitation to compose a most excellent legend after the manner of Thomas à Becket.

[38]“Ireland being ‘the last resort of lost causes,’ preserved record of a European ‘culture’ as primitive as that of the South Seas, and therefore invaluable for the history of human advance; elsewhere its existence is only to be established from hints and equivocal survivals. Our early tales are no artificial fiction, but fragmentary beliefs of the pagan period equally valuable for topography and for mythology.”—Westropp, Thos. J.,Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xxxiv. sec. C, No. 8, p. 128.

“As the palimpsest of language is held up to the light and looked at more closely, it is found to be full of older forms beneath the later writing. Again and again has the most ancient speech conformed to the new grammar, until this becomes the merest surface test; it supplies only the latest likeness. Our mountains and rivers talk in the primeval mother tongue whilst the language of men is remoulded by every passing wave of change. The language of mythology and typology is almost as permanent as the names of the hills and streams.”—Gerald Massey.

It is generally admitted that place-names are more or less impervious to time and conquests. Instances seemingly without limit might be adduced of towns which have been sacked, destroyed, rebuilt, and rechristened, yet the original names—and these only—have survived. Dr. Taylor has observed that the names of five of the oldest cities of the world—Damascus, Hebron, Gaza, Sidon, and Hamath—are still pronounced in exactly the same manner as was the case thirty, or perhaps forty centuries ago, defying oftentimes the persistent attempts of rulers to substitute some other name.[39]

As another instance of the permanency of place-names, the city of Palmyra is curiously notable. Though the Greek Palmyra is a title of 2000 years’ standing, yet to the native Arab it is new-fangled, and he knows the place not as Palmyra but as Tadmor, its original and infinitelyolder name. Five hundred yearsB.C.the very ancient city of Mykenæ was destroyed and never rose again to any importance: Mykenæ was fabulously assigned to Perseus, and even to-day the stream which runs at the site is known as the Perseia.[40]

If it be possible for local names thus to live handed down humbly from mouth to mouth for thousands of years, for aught one knows they may have endured for double or treble these periods; there is no seeming limit to their vitality, and they may be said to be as imperishable and as dateless as the stones of Avebury or Stonehenge.

History knows nothing of violent and spasmodic jumps; the ideas of one era are impalpably transmitted to the next, and the continuity of custom makes it difficult to believe that the builders of Cyclopean works such as Avebury and Stonehenge, have left no imprint on our place-names, and no memories in our language. Even to-day the superstitious veneration for cromlechs and holy stones is not defunct, and it is largely due to that ingrained sentiment that more of these prehistoric monuments have not been converted into horse-troughs and pigsties.

If, as now generally admitted, there has been an unbroken and continuous village-occupation, and if, as is also now granted, our sacred places mostly occupy aboriginal and time-honoured sites, it is difficult to conceive that place-names do not preserve some traces of their prehistoric meanings. In the case of villages dedicated to some saintly man or sweetest of sweet ladies, the connection is almost certainly intact; indeed, in instances the pagan barrows in the churchyard are often actually dedicated to some saint.[41]

That memories of the ancient mythology sometimes hang around our British cromlechs is proved by an instance in North Wales where there still stands a table stone known locally asLlety-y-filiast, orthe stone of the greyhound bitch. “This name,” says Dr. Griffith, “was given in allusion to the British Ceres or Keridwen who was symbolised by the greyhound bitch”.[42]I shall have much to say about Keridwen—“the most generous and beauteous of ladies”—meanwhile it is sufficient here to note that her symbol, the greyhound bitch, is found unmistakably upon our earliest coinage.

British.Fig.4.—From Evans.Fig.5.—From Akerman.

All place-names of any real antiquity are generally composed of various languages, and like compound rocks contain fragments in juxtaposition which belong properly to different ages. The analysis of these is not difficult, as the final -hill, -ton, -ville, -ham, and so forth is usually the comparatively modern work of newcomers. Frequently the later generations forgot the original meanings of the ancient terms; and thus, for instance, at Brandon Hill in Suffolk there is the curious phenomenon ofHill Hill Hill—in three languages,i.e.,bran,don, andhill. On this site the flint knappers are still at work, using practically the same rude tool as their primitive woad-painted ancestors. At Brandon not only has the art of flint-making survived,but anthropologists have noted the persistence of a swarthy and most ancient type—a persistence the more remarkable as Suffolk was supposed to be a district out of which the Britons had been wholly and irretrievably eradicated. Whether there is anything in the world to parallel the phenomenon of the Brandon flint knappers I do not know, and it may well be questioned. In the words of Dr. Rice Holmes:—The industry has been carried on since neolithic times, and even then it was ancient: for Brandon was an abode of flint makers in the Old Stone Age. Not only the pits but even the tools show little change: the picks which the modern workers use are made of iron, but here alone in Britain the old one-sided form is still retained, only the skill of the workers has degenerated: the exquisite evenness of chipping which distinguished the neolithic arrow heads is beyond the power of the most experienced knapper to reproduce.[43]

At Brandon is Broomhill; the wordsbranandbroomwill be subsequently shown to be radically the same, and I shall suggest reasons why this term, even possibly in Old Stone times, meanthill.

During recent years the study of place-names has been passing through a period of spade-work, and every available document from Doomsday Book to a Rent Roll has been scrupulously raked. The inquirer now therefore has available a remarkably interesting record of the various forms which our place-names have passed through, and he can eliminate the essential features from the non-essential. Although the subject has thus considerably been elucidated, the additional information obtained has, however, donenothing to solve the original riddle and in some cases has rendered it more complex.

The new system which is popularly supposed to have eliminated all guesswork has in reality done nothing of the kind. In place of the older method, which, in the words of Prof. Skeat, “exalted impudent assertions far above positive evidence,” it has boldly substituted a new form of guesswork which is just as reckless and in many respects is no less impudent than the old. The present fashion is to suppose that the riverxor the town ofymayhave been the property of, or founded by, some purely hypothetical Anglo-Saxon. For example: the river Hagbourne of Berkshire is guessed to have beenHacca’s burn or brook, which possibly it was, but there is not a scintilla of real evidence one way or the other.

If one is going to postulate “Hacca’s” here and there, there is obviously a space waiting for a member of the family on the great main road entitled Akeman Street. As this ancient thoroughfare traverses Bath we are, however, told that it “received in Saxon times the significant name of Akeman Street from the condition of the gouty sufferers who travelled along it”.[44]One would prefer even a phantom Hacca to thisaching man, nor does the alternatively suggestedaqua, water, bring us any nearer a solution.

There sometimes appears to be no bottom to the vacuity of modern guesswork. It is seriously and notpour riresuggested that Horselydown was where horses could lie down; that Honeybrook was so designated because of its honey-sweet water, and that the name Isle of Dogs was “possibly because so many dogs were drowned in theThames here”.[45]In what respect do these and kindred definitions, which I shall cite from standard authors of to-day, differ from the “egregious” speculations, the “wild guesses,” and the “impudent assertions” of earlier scholars?

There is in Bucks a small town now known as Kimball, anciently as Cunebal. Tradition associates this site with the British King Cymbeline or Cunobelin, and as the place further contains an eminence known as Belinsbury or Belinus Castle, the authorities can hardly avoid accepting the connection and the etymology. But for Kimbolton, which stands on a river named the Kym, the authorities—notwithstanding the river Kym—provide the purely supposititious etymology “Town of Cynebald”. There were, doubtless, thousands of Saxons whose name was Cynebald, but why Kimbolton should be assigned to any one of these hypothetical persons instead of to Cymbeline is not in any way apparent. The river name Kym is sufficient to discredit Cynebald, and the greater probability is that not only the Kym but also all our river and mountain names are pre-Saxon.

It will be seen hereafter that the name Cunobelin or Cymbeline, which the dictionaries define as meaningsplendid sun, was probably adopted as a dynastic title of British chiefs, and that the effigies of Cymbeline on British coins have no more relation to any particular king than the mounted figure on our modern sovereign has to his Majesty King George V. The prefixCymorCunowill subsequently be seen to be the forerunner of the modernKonigorKing. Hence like Kimball or Cunebal, Kimbolton onthe Kym was probably a seat of a Cymbeline, and the imaginary Saxon Cynebald may be dismissed as a usurper.

Kimboltonused at one time to be known as Kinnebantum, whence it is evident that the essential part of the word is Kinne or Kim, and as another instance of the perplexing variations which are sometimes found in place-names the spot now known as Iffley may be cited. This name occurs at various periods as follows: Gifetelea, Sifetelea, Zyfteleye, Yestley, Iveclay and Iftel. This is a typical instance of the extraordinary variations which have perplexed the authorities, and is still causing them to cast vainly around for some formula or law of sound-change, which shall account satisfactorily for the problem. “We are at present,” says Prof. Wyld, “quite unable to formulate the laws of the interchange of stress in place-names, or of the effects of these in retaining, modifying, or eliminating syllables.... Until these laws are properly formulated, it cannot be said that we have a scientific account of the development of place-names. The whole thing is often little better than a conjuring trick.”[46]

No amount of brainwork has conjured any sense from Iffley, and the etymology has been placed on the shelf as “unknown”. I shall venture to suggest that the initial G, S, Z, or Y, of this name, and of many others being adjectival, the radical Ive or Iff, as being the essential, has alone survived. It will be seen that Iffley was in all probability a lea or meadow dedicated to “The Ivy Girl” or May Queen, and that quite likely it was one of the many sites where, in the language of an old poet—

Holly and his Merry men they dawnsin and they sing,Ivy and her maydonsthey wepen and they wryng.

Holly and his Merry men they dawnsin and they sing,

Ivy and her maydonsthey wepen and they wryng.

I shall connote with Ivy and her maidens, not only Mother Eve, but also the clearly fabulous St. Ive. We shall see that the Lady Godiva of Coventry fame was known as Godgifu, just as Iffley was onceGifetelea, and we shall see that St. Ives in Cornwall appears in the registers alternatively as St. Yesses, just as Iffley was alternatively Yestley. Finally we shall trace the connection between Eve, the Mother of all living, andAvebury, the greatest of all megalithic monuments.

If it be objected that my method is too meticulous, and that it is impossible for mere farm- and field-names to possess any prehistoric significance, I may refer for support to the Sixth Report of the Royal Commission appointed to inventory the ancient monuments of Wales and Monmouthshire.[47]In the course of this document the Commissioners write as follows:—

“The Tithe Schedules, unsatisfactory and disappointing though many of them are, contain such a collection of place-names, principally those of fields, that the Commissioners at the outset of their inquiry determined upon a careful investigation of them. The undertaking involved in the first place the examination of hundreds of documents, many of them containing several thousands of place-names; secondly, in the case of those names which were noted for further inquiry, the necessity of discovering the position of the field or site upon the tithe map; and, thirdly, the location of the field or site on the modern six-inch ordnance sheet. This prolonged task called for much patience and care, as well as ingenuity in comparing the boundaries of eighty years ago with those of the present time.

“Of the value of this work there can be no doubt. We do not venture to express any opinion on the question whether, or to what extent, farm and field names are of service to the English archæologist; but with regard to their importance to the Welsh archæologist there can be no two opinions. The fact that the Welsh place-names are being rapidly replaced by English names, so that the local lore which is often enshrined in the former is in danger of being lost, was in itself a sufficient reason for the undertaking. The results have more than justified our decision. There is hardly a parish, certainly not one of the ancient parishes, of the principality, where the schedule of field names has not yielded some valuable results. Scores of small but in some cases important antiquities would have passed unrecorded, had it not been for the clue to their presence given by the place-name which was to be found only in the schedule to the Tithe Survey.”

In Cornwall almost every parish is named after some saintly apostle, and many of these saints are alleged to have travelled far and wide in the world founding towns and villages. It is almost a physical impossibility that this was literally true, and it becomes manifestly incredible on consideration of the miracles recorded in the lives of the travellers. As already suggested the greater probability is that the lives of the saints enshrine almost intact the traditions of pre-Christian divinities. Of the popular and most familiar St. Patrick, Borlase (W. C.), writes: “Of the reality of the existence of this Patrick, son of Calporn, we feel not the shadow of a doubt. But he was notthe onlyPatrick, and as time went on traditions of one other Patrick at least came to be commingled with his own. We have before us the names of ten other contemporaryPatricks, all ecclesiastics, and spread over Wales, Ireland, France, Spain, and Italy. The name appears to be that of a grade or order in the Church rather than a proper name in the usual sense. Thus Palladius is called also Patrick in the ‘Book of Armagh’ andthePatrick (whichever he may have been) is represented as styling Declan ‘the Patrick of the Desii,’ and Ailbhe ‘the Patrick of Munster’. When Patrick sojourned in a cave in an island in the Tyrrhene Sea he found three other Patricks there.” Precisely: and there is little doubt that our London Battersea or Patrixeye was originally aneaor island where the patricks or padres of St. Peter’s at Westminster once congregated.

The arguments applied to St. Patrick apply equally to, say, St. Columba, or the Holy Dove, and similarly to St. Colman, a name also meaningDove. In Ireland alone there are 200 dedications to St. Colman, and evidence will be brought forward that the archetype of all the St. Colmans and all the St. Columbas and all the Patricks was Peter thePater, who was symbolised bypetra, the stone or rock.

The so-called Ossianic poems of Gaeldom, although of “a remarkably heathenish character,” preserve the manners of and opinions of what the authorities describe as “a semi-barbarous people who were endowed with strong imagination, high courage, childlike tenderness, and gentle chivalry for women,”[48]and that the ancients were tinctured through and through with mysticism and imagination, finding tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything, is a fact which can be denied. When our words were framed andour ancient places, hills, and rivers named, I am persuaded that the world was in its imaginative childhood, and hence that traces of that state of mind may reasonably be anticipated. It is remarkable that the skulls found in the first or oldest Troy exhibit the most intellectual characteristics,[49]and in many quarters seemingly the remoter the times the purer was the theology whether in Phrygia, Egypt, India, Persia, or Great Britain. Among the Cretans “religion entered at every turn” of their social system; in Egypt even the very games and dances had a religious significance, and the evidence of folklore testifies to the same effect in Britain. It was one among the many grievances of the pessimistic Gildas that the British were “slaves to the shadows of things to come,” and this usually overlooked aspect of their character must, I think, be recognised in relation to their place-names. To a large degree the mystical element still persists in Brittany, where even to-day, in the words of Baring-Gould:—At a Pardon one sees and marvels at the wondrous faces of this remarkable people: the pure, sweet, and modest countenances of the girls, and those not less striking of the old folk. “It is,” says Durtal, “the soul which is everything in these people, and their physiognomy is modelled by it. There are holy brightnesses in their eyes, on their lips, those doors to the borders of which the soul alone can come, from which it looks forth and all but shows itself. Goodness, kindness, as well as a cloistral spirituality, stream from their faces.”[50]

What is still true of Brittany was once equally true of Britain, and although the individuality of the Gael has now largely been submerged by prosaic Anglo-Saxondom, the poetic temperament of the chivalrous and dreamy Celtwas essentially a frame of mind that cared only for the heroic, the romantic, and the beautiful.

The science of etymology as practised to-day is unfortunately blind to this poetic element which was, and to some extent still is, an innate characteristic of “uncivilised” and unsophisticated peoples. Archbishop Trench, one of the original planners and promoters ofThe New English Dictionary, was not overstating when he wrote: “Let us then acknowledge man a born poet.... Despite his utmost efforts, were he mad enough to employ them, he could not succeed in exhausting his language of the poetical element which is inherent in it, in stripping it of blossom, flower, and fruit, and leaving it nothing but a bare and naked stem. He may fancy for a moment that he has succeeded in doing this, but it will only need for him to become a little better philologer to go a little deeper into the study of the words which he is using, and he will discover that he is as remote from this consummation as ever.”

Nevertheless, current etymologyhasachieved this inanity, and has so completely dismissed the animate or poetic element from its considerations that one may seek vainly the columns of Skeat and Murray for any hint or suggestion that language and imagination ever had anything in common. According to modern teaching language is a mere cluster of barbaric yawps: “No mystic bond linked word and thought together; utility and convenience alone joined them”.[51]

Words, nevertheless, were originally born not from grammarians but amid the common people, andpaceMr. Clodd they enshrine in many instances the mysticism andthe superstitions of the peasantry. How can one account, for instance, for the Greek wordpsyche, meaningbutterfly, and alsosoul, except by the knowledge that butterflies were regarded by the ancients as creatures into which the soul was metamorphosised? According to Grimm, the German name for stork means literallychild-, orsoul-bringer; hence the belief that the advent of infants was presided over by this bird. But why “hence”? and why put the cart before the horse? If one may judge from innumerable parallels of word-equivocation the legends arose not from the accident of similar words, nor from “misprision of terms,” or from any other “disease of language,” but the creatures were namedbecause ofthe attendant legend. It is common knowledge that in Egypt the animal sacred to a divinity was often designated by the name of that deity; similarly in Europe the bee, a symbol of the goddessMylitta, was called amylitta, and a bull, the symbol of the godThor, was named athor. We speak to-day of anAdonis, because Adonis was a fabulously lovely youth, and parallel examples may be found on almost every hand. Irish mythology tells of a certain golden-haired hero named Bress, which meansbeautiful, whence we are further told that every beautiful thing in Ireland whether plain, fortress, or ale, or torch, or woman, or man, was compared with him, so that men said of them “That is a Bress”. Elsewhere and herein I have endeavoured to prove that this principle was of worldwide application, and that it is an etymological key which will open the meaning of many words still in common use. It is a correlative fact that the names of specific deities such as Horus, Hathor, Nina, Bel, etc., developed in course of time into generic terms for anyLordorGod.

Very much the same principles are at work with us to-day, whenceadreadnought from the prime “Dreadnought,” and the etymologer of the future, who tries by strictly scientific methods to unravel the meaning of such words asmackintosh,brougham,Sam Browne,gladstone,boycott, etc., will find it necessary to investigate the legends attendant on those names rather than practice a formal permutation of vowels and consonants.

By common consent the quintessence of the last fifty years’ philological progress is being distilled into Sir James Murray’sNew English Dictionary, and in a conciser form the same data may be found in Prof. Skeat’sConcise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. Both these indispensable works are high watermarks of English scholarship, and whatever absurdities they contain are shortcomings not of their compilers but of the Teutonic school of philology which they exemplify. If these two standard dictionaries were able to answer even the elementary questions that are put to them it would be both idle and presumptuous to cavil, but one has only to refer to their pages to realise the ignorance which prevails as to the origin and the meaning of the most simple and everyday words.

It is unfortunately true that “in philology as in all branches of knowledge it is the specialist who most strongly opposes any attempt to widen the field of his knowledge”.[52]Hence, as was only to be expected, one of the reviewers of myLost Language of Symbolismdeemed it quite insufferable that I should throw to the winds the laborious work on the science of phonetics built up by generations of careful research.

But in point of fact I discarded none of the sound work of my predecessors; I only tried to supplement it and fished deeper. My soundings do not begin until I am well beyond the limits of modern etymology, and they are no more affected by the cross-currents of historic languages than the activities of a deep-water fisherman are interrupted or affected by the tide eddies on the shore. The defect of official philology is that it offers no explanation for radicals. It does not, for example, attempt to explain why the wordapwas the Sanscrit for water, whypriwas the Sanscrit for love, or whypatwas the Sanscrit for fly. It refers the word oak to the Anglo-Saxonac, Dr. Murray merely describing it as “a consonantal stem, ulterior meaning obscure”. Etymology to-day is in fact very much in the situation of an insolvent bank which, unable to satisfy its creditors with cash on demand, blandly endeavours to satisfy them with corresponding cheques of equally uncashable face value. Words can never properly be interpreted merely by parallel words: originally they must have expressed ideas, and it is these underlying ideas that I am in search of. My previous work was a pioneer, and in many respects bungling attempt to pick up the threads where at present philology is content to lose them. Using the same keys as hitherto, I shall attempt to explore further the darkness which is at present the only achieved goal of the much trumpeted Science of Language.

In a moment of noteworthy frankness Prof. Skeat has admitted that “Scientific etymology is usually clumsy and frequently wrong”. Similarly, Prof. Sayce issues the warning: “Comparative philology has suffered as much from its friends as from its opponents; and now that it has at last won its way to general recognition and respect,there is a danger that its popularity may lead to the cessation of sound and honest work, and to an acquiescence in theories which, however plausible, are not yet placed upon a footing of scientific certainty. It is much easier for the ordinary man to fill in by patient elaboration what has already been sketched for him in outline, than to venture upon a new line of discovery, in which the sole clue must be the combinative powers of his own imagination and comprehensive learning. And yet, now as much as ever, comparative philology has need at once of bold and wide-reaching conceptions, of cautious verification, and of a mastery of facts. It is true the science is no longer struggling for mere life, and the time is gone by for proving the possibility of its existence. But it is still young, scarcely, indeed, out of its nursery; a small portion only of its province has hitherto been investigated, and much that is at present accepted without hesitation will have to be subjected to a searching inquiry, and possibly be found baseless after all.”[53]

The value of any system must be measured by its results, and the fruits of philology as formulated only a year or so ago were unquestionably false. Where now are the “successes” of the Max Müller school which were advertised in such shrill and penetrating tones? Sanscrit is deposed from its pride of place, it being now recognised that primitive sounds are preserved more faithfully in Europe than elsewhere. Who to-day admits there is any basis for the Disease of Language theory, or that all fairy-tales and myths are resolvable into the Sun chasing the Dawn?[54]What anthropologist accepts the theory of Aryan overland immigration from somewhere in Asia? The archæologists of the last generation were, in the light of modern findings, quite justified when, contrary to the then stereotyped idea, they maintained that skulls were harder things than consonants. In short, large sections of the card-castle of German philology have more or less crumbled, and in the cruel words of a modern authority on Crete: “Happily, archæology has emerged from the slough into which the philologists had led her”.

For the causes of this fiasco it is unnecessary to seek further than the fundamental fallacy upon which the “Science of Language” has been erected. According to Max Müller, “etymology is indeed a science in which identity, or even similarity, whether of sound or meaning, is of no importance whatever. Sound etymology has nothing to do with sound. We know words to be of the same origin which have not a single letter in common, and which differ in meaning as much as black and white.”

To maintain that “sound etymology has nothing to do with sound,” is tantamount to the contention that language is not sound, which is obviously absurd. In the saner view of Dr. Latham: “language begins with voice, language ends with voice”. The Germans, Poles, and Russians had no acquaintance with letters until the ninth century, and speech, which certainly existed for unnumbered centuries before either writing or spelling was evolved, must, primarily and essentially, have been a system of pure and simple phonetics, spreading, as a mother teaches her child, syllable by syllable, word upon word, and line upon line. To rule sound out of language, is, indeed, far more fatal than to purge Hamlet out ofHamlet. Onemay prove by super-ingenious logic and an elaborate code of cross references that black is white and white black, yet common sense knows all the time that it is not so. There are, I am aware, certain races who are unable to vocalise certain sounds and accordingly modify them. The obscure causes governing these phonetic changes must be taken into account, and as far as possible formulated into “laws,” but the pages of Skeat and Murray demonstrate beyond refutation two very simple but very certain fundamental, universal facts, to which hitherto wholly insufficient attention has been given. These elementary and seemingly never-varying facts are: (1) That originally vowel sounds were of no importance whatever, for in the same word they vary to the utmost limits, not only in different areas and in different eras, but contemporaneously in different grades of society; (2) that heavy and light consonants such asbandp,dandt,fandv,gandk, etc., are always interchangeable. Whether in place-names, words, or proper names, the changes are foundalwaysto occur, and they are precisely those variations which common sense would suggest must occur in every case where words travelviva voceand not via script or print. A man suffering from what Shakespeare would term “a whoreson rheum,” says, for instance,did vor dadinstead oftit for tat, and there is, so far as I can discover, not a single word or a solitary place-name in which a similar variation of thin and thick consonants is not traceable.

The formidable Grimm’s Law, any violation of which involves summary and immediate condemnation, is merely a statement of certain phonetic facts which happen invariably—unless they are interfered with by other facts. The permutations of sound codified by Grimm are as follows:—

It is said that the causes which brought about the changes formulated in Grimm’s Law are “obscure” (they may have been due to nothing more obscure than a prevalence to colds in the head), and that they were probably due to the settlement of Low German conquerors in Central and Southern Germany. The changes above formulated all fall, however, within the wider theory I am now suggesting, with the exception ofdandtbecoming in High Germanz. This particular syllabic change was, I suggest, due tozat one time being synonymous withdort, and not to any inability of certain tribes to vocalise the soundt.

Max Müller observes that “at first sight the English wordfirdoes not look very like the Latin wordquercus, yet it is the same word”.Fircertainly does not look likequercus, nor, of course, is it any more the “same word” thansixis the same word ashalf a dozen. There are a thousand ways of provingsixto be radically and identically the same ashalf a dozen, and the ingenious system of permutations by which philologists identifyfirwithquercus, andalphanawithequus,[55]are parallel to some of themethods by which common sense, by cold gradation and well-balanced form, would quite correctly equatesixwithhalf a dozen.

The term “word” I understand not in the loose sense used by Max Müller, but as the dictionary defines it—“an oral or written sign expressing an idea or notion”. Thus I treat John as the same word asJaneorJean, and it is radically the same word asgiant, old Englishjeyantt, Frenchgeante, Cornishgeon. Jean is also the same word aschien, a dog, Irishchoin; Welshchinorcyn, and all these terms by reason of their radicalanare cognate with the Greekkuon, a dog, whencecynical. The Gaelic forJohnisJain, the Gaelic forJeanorJaneisSine, with which I equateshine,shone, andsheen, all of which have respect to thesun, as also had the Arabicjinn,genii, and “Gian Ben Gian,” a title of the fabulous world-ruler of the Golden Age. Among the BasquesJaunmeans Lord or Master, and the Basque term for God,Jainko,Jeinko, orJinko, is believed to have meant “Lord or Master on High”. The Irish Church attributes its origin to disciples of St.John—IrishShaun, and one may detect the pre-ChristianSinjohnin the British divinity Shony, and evolving from the primevalShenat Shenstone near Litchfield. Here, a little distance from the church, was a well, now calledSt. John’sWell, after the saint in whose honour the parish church is dedicated. In all probability the present-day church of St. John was built on the actual site of the originalShen stoneor rock; and that John stones were once plentiful in Scotland is probably implied by the common surname Johnstone. Near the Shannon in Ireland, and in close proximity to the church and village of Shanagolden, is “castle”Shenetor Shanid, attached to which isa rath or earthwork of which the ground-plan, from Mr. Westropp’s survey, is here reproduced. As it is a matter of common knowledge that the worldwide wheel cross was an emblem of the sun, I should therefore have no scruples in connoting Castle Shenet with the primevaljeyanttor the GoldenShine; and suggesting that it was a sanctuary originally constructed by the Ganganoi, a people mentioned by Ptolemy as dwelling in the neighbourhood of the Shannon. The eponymous hero of the Ganganoi was a certain Sengann,[56]who is probably the original St. Jean or Sinjohn to whom the fires of St. Jean and St. John have been diverted.

We shall see thatGiantChristopher was symbolically represented aschienheaded, that he was a personification of theShineorSheenof theSun, and that he was worshipped as the solar dog at the holy city of Cynopolis ordog-town. We have already noted English “chien” orcyncoins inscribedcun, which is seemingly one of the innumerable puns which confront philology.

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