FOOTNOTES:

The blest Feridoon an angel was not,Of musk or of amber, he formed was not;By justice and mercy good ends gained he,Be just and merciful thou’lt a Feridoon be.[876]

The blest Feridoon an angel was not,

Of musk or of amber, he formed was not;

By justice and mercy good ends gained he,

Be just and merciful thou’lt a Feridoon be.[876]

In Germany, Frei or Frey meant a privileged place or sanctuary: in London such a sanctuary until recently existed around the church of St. Mary Offery, or Overy (now St. Saviours, Southwark), and in a subsequent chapter we shall consider certain local traditions which permit theequation of St. Mary Overy, and of the Brixton-Camberwell riverEffra, with the FairyOvaryof the Universe. The Gaelic and Welsh for an opening ormouthisaber, whence Aberdeen is held to mean the mouth of the Don: but at Lochaberor LochAporthis interpretation cannot apply, and it is not improbable that Aberdeen on the river Don was primarily a Pictish Abri town—a Britain or Prydain. As the capital of Caledonia is Edinburgh or Dunedin, it may be suggested that the whole of Caledonia stern and wild was originally aKille, or church of Don.

At Braavalla, in Osturgothland, there are remains of a marvellous “stone town,” whence we may assume that this site was originally a Braavalla, orabri valley: the chief of the Irish Barony of Barrymore who was entitled “The Barry” is said to have inhabited an enchanted brugh in one of the Nagles Hills. Near New Grange in Ireland there is a remarkable dolmen known locally as the house or tomb of Lady “Vera, or Birra”:[877]five miles distant is Bellingham, and I have little doubt that every fairy dun or fairy town, the supposed local home of Bellinga, the Lord Angel or the Beautiful Angel, was synonymously a “Britain”; that Briton and Barton are mere variants of the same word is evident from such place-names as Dumbarton, originally Dunbrettan.

Fig. 459.—New Grange, Ireland.Fig. IThe Barrow at New GrangeFig. IISection of the TumulusFig. IIISection of the Gallery & Dome

Fig. 459.—New Grange, Ireland.

Fig. IThe Barrow at New Grange

Fig. IISection of the Tumulus

Fig. IIISection of the Gallery & Dome

Fig. 460—Kit’s Coty, near Maidstone.[To face page 751.

Fig. 460—Kit’s Coty, near Maidstone.

[To face page 751.

It has been seen that Prydain—of whom it was claimed that before his coming there was little ordinance in these Islands save only a superiority of oppression—was the reputed child of King Aedd: Aedd was one of the titles of Hu, the first of our national Three Pillars, and he was probably identical with Aeddon, a name which, says Davies, “I think was a title of the god himself”: the priests ofHu were apparently termed Aeddons, whence like the Mountjoys of France we may assume they were the denizens of the Aeddon duns: inquiry will probably establish one of these sanctuaries at Haddington; at Addington (DomesdayEdintone) in Kent there are the remains ofone still standing. With the pagan Aeddons may be connoted the Celtic Saint Aidan, Æden, or Aiden, whose name is associated with Lindisfarne, also the St. Aidan, or Maidoc ofFerns, who among other prodigies is recorded as having driven to and from Rome in twenty-four hours. AtFarnMacBride in Glencolumkille, there are some cromlechs which exactly resemble in plan the house of Lady Vera, or Birra, at New Grange:[878]at Evora, inPortugal, situated on bleak heathland, is a similar monument which Borrow described as the most perfect and beautiful of its kind he had ever seen: “It was circular, and consisted of stones immensely large and heavy at the bottom, which towards the top became thinner, having been fashioned by the hand of art to something like the shape ofscallop shells.... Three or four individuals might have taken shelter within the interior in which was growing a small thorn tree.”[879]The scallop shell, like the cockle and all coquilles, was obviously an emblem of Evora, the Ovary, the Aber, the opening.

TheBona deaof Candia was represented with a headdress in the form of a cat; we shall connote this animal (Germankater) with St. Caterina or Kate, the immaculate pure one, and it is not unnoteworthy that the KentishKit’scoty, near Maidstone,videthe photograph here reproduced, contains what might be a rude much-weathered image of the sacredcat, lioness, orkitten:[880]In Caledonia is a famousCat[881]Stane, and the Duchess of Sutherland still bears the honorary title “Lady of the Cat”.[882]The wordkitten resolves into Great Itten: the New Forest used to be known as the Forest of Ytene,[883]and I do not think that the great British Forest of Dean has any real connection with the supposition that the Danes may have taken up their residence there:Deanwas almost a generic name for forest, and we meet with it from Arden to the Ardennes.[884]

For an explication of the worddawnSkeat observes: “see day”; it is, however, probable thatdawnwas the little or young Don or Adon. By the Welsh the constellation Cassiopeaia is known under the title of Don’s chair. That the Irish Don was Truth is probable from the statement “His blue dome (the sky) was an infallible weather-glass, whence its name the Hill of Truth”.[885]

According to the Edda,[886]a collection of traditions which have been assigned variously by scholars to Norway, Greenland, and the British Isles, the world was created by the sons of Bor, and in the beginning the gods built a citadel in Ida-plain and an age of universal innocence prevailed. Situated on Cockburn Law in Berwickshire—awick or fortress of Ber upon which stands the largest of all the brochs—is a prehistoric circle known as Edina or Wodens Hall. The English name Edana or Edna, defined as meaningperfect happinessorrich gift, is stated to be a variant of Ida or Ada: in Hebrew the name Adah meansbeauty, and Ada, the lovely daughter of Adam, is probably Eda, the “passionately beloved”[887]Breaton princess of Hibernia, or Ma Ida of Tyburnia or Marylebone.

The Garden of Eden has somewhat unsuccessfully, I believe, been located in Mesopotamia: the Jews doubtlesshad their Edens even though Palestine is arid, and the authorities translate the name Adam as having meantred earth: according to early Rabbinical writers Adam was a giant; he touched the Arctic pole with one hand and the Antarctic with the other.[888]I have here noted but a handful of the innumerable Edens in Britain which includes five rivers of that name:[889]that the Lady of Britain was Prydain, Brython, orpure Athene,i.e., Wisdom, is a well-recognised tradition, for she is conventionally represented as Athene. In Greece the girl-name Theana meantDivine Intelligence,[890]and Ida was interpretedfar seeing: in Troy the goddess of the city, which originally stood upon a dun hill, was Athene, and the innumerable owl-headed emblems found there by Schliemann were her sign: “Before the human form was adopted her (Athene’s) proper symbol was the Owl; a bird which seems to surpass all other creatures in acuteness and refinement, of organic perception; its eyes being calculated to discern objects which to all others are enveloped in darkness; its ear to hear sounds distinctly when no other can perceive them at all, and itsnostrils to discriminate effluvia with such nicety that it has been deemed prophetic from discovering the putridity of death even in the first stages of disease.”[891]

We have noted the existence of some exclusively British fairies known as Portunes: among the Latins Portunas was a name of Tritonor Neptune: the Mother of the British Portunes might be termed Phortuna, or, as we should now write the word, Fortuna, and the stone circle at Goodaver in Cornwall might be described as a Wheel of Good Phortune: the Hebrew forfortuneisgad, and it is probable that the famous Gadshill, near Rochester, was at one time a God’s Hill; from Kit’s Coty on the heights above Rochester it is stated that according to tradition a continuous series of stone monuments once extended to Addington where are still the remains of another coty or cromlech.

There are in England numerous Addingtons or Edintones, and at at least two of these are Druidic remains: the Kentish Addington, near Snodland and Kit’s Coty, is dedicated to St. Margaret, and the church itself is situated on a rise or dun. Half a mile from Bacton in Hereford is a small wood known as St. Margaret’s Park, and in the centre of this is a cruciform mound, its western arm on the highest ground, its eastern on the lowest: this cruciform mound was described in 1853 as being 15 feet at base,[892]a familiar figure which may be connoted with the statement inThe Golden Legendthat St. Margaret was fifteen years of age. In addition to the cruciform mount at St. Margaret’s Park, Bacton, there are further remains of archæologic interest: about 100 years ago nine large yew treeswhich were surrounding it—one of gigantic size—were felled to the ground, and my authority states that its venerable antiquity was evident from the decayed stumps ofoaksstill visible felled ages ago together with more recent ones.[893]In addition to the cross in this prehistoric Oak grove of the Lady Margaret there are three curious cavities, two of them circular, the third oval or egg-shaped: the ancient veneration for theoeuf, or egg, has degenerated to the Easter egg, and in Ireland the Dummy’s Hill,[894]associated with egg-trundling may, I think, be equated with Donna or the Dame.

The Cretan Britomart in Greek was understood to meansweet maiden; in Welshprydmeant precious, dear, fair, beautiful; Eda of Ireland was “passionately beloved,” and to the Britons the sweet maiden was inferentially Britannia, thenewpure Athene, Ma Ida the Maid or Maiden whose character is summed up in the wordsprude,proud,pride, andpretty. In Ireland we may trace her as Meave,aliasQueen Mab, and the headquarters of this Maiden were either at Tara or at Moytura: the latter written sometimes Magh Tuireadh, probably meant the plain of Troy, for there are still all the evidences here of a megalithic Troy town. The probabilities are that Stanton Drew in Somerset, like Drewsteignton in Devon, with which tradition connects St. Keyna, was another Dru stonetown for here are a cromlech, a logan stone, two circles, some traces of the Via Sacra or Druid Way and an ancient British camp: in Aberdeen there are circles atTyrebagger, Dunadeer, and at Deer.

Among other so-called monuments of the Brugh at Moytura recorded in the old annalists are “the Two Paps of the Morrigan,” “The Mound of the Morrigan,”i.e., the Mound of the Great Queen, also a “Bed of the Daughter of Forann”:[895]Forann herself was doubtless the Hag whose weirdly-sculptured chair exists at Lough Crew in Meath:Meathwas esteemed themid,middle, ormidst, of Ireland, and here as we have seen existed the central stone at Birr. There is a celebrated Hag’s Bed at Fermoy, doubtless the same Hag as the “Old Woman of Beare,” whose seven periods of youth necessitated all who lived with her to die of old age: this Old Woman’s grandsons and great grandsons were, we are told, tribes and races, and in severalstories she appears to the hero as a repulsive hag who suddenly transforms herself into a beautiful Maid. At Moytura—with which tradition intimately associates the Children of Don—is a cairn called to this day the “cairn of the One Man”: with this One Man we may connote Un Khan or Prester John, of whose mystic Kingdom so many marvellous legends circulated during the Middle Ages.

Among the miracles attributed to St. Patrick is one to the effect that by the commandment of God he “made in the earth a great circle with his staff”: this might be described as abyre,i.e., an enclosure or bower, and we may connote the word with the stone circle in Westmoreland, at Brackenbyr,i.e., the byre of Brecon, Brechin, or the Paragon? The husband of Idunn was entitled Brage, whose nameinter aliameant King: Brage was the god of poetry and eloquence; a superfluity of prating, pride, and eloquence is nowadays termedbrag.

The burial place of St. Patrick, St. Bride, and Columba the Mild, is alleged to be at Duno in Ulster: “In Duno,” saysThe Golden Legend, “these three be buried all in one sepulchre”: the word Duno isd’uno, the divine Uno, and the spot was no doubt an Eden of “the One Man”: Honeyman[896]is a fairly common English surname, and although this family may have been dealers in honey, it is more probable that they are descendants of the One Man’s ministers: in Friesland are megalithic Hunnebeds, or Giant’s Beds, and I have little doubt that the marvellously scooped stone at Hoy in the Hebrides[897]—the parallel ofwhich existed in Egypt, the Land of the Eye—was originally a Hunne Bed orgrotte des fees.

“Of Paradise,” says Maundeville, “I cannot speak for I have not been there”: nevertheless this traveller—who was not necessarily the arch liar of popular assumption—has recorded many artificial paradises which he was permitted to explore: the wordparadiseis the Persianpairidaeza, which means an enclosure, or place walled in: it is thus cognate with ourpark, and the first parks were probably sanctuaries of the divine Pair. Nowhere that I know of is the place-name Paradise[898]more persistent than in Thanet or Tanet, a name supposed by the authorities to be Celtic forfire: at the nose of the North Foreland old maps mark Faire Ness, and I have little doubt thatThanet, “by some called Athanaton and Thanaton,”[899]was originally sacred to Athene. In Suffolk is a Thingoe, which is understood to mean “how, or mound of thething, or provincial assembly”: the chief Cantianthingor folkmoot was probably held at the Dane John at Cantuarbig or Durovernon; the wordthinkimplies that Athene was a personification of Reason or Holy Rhea, and the equivalence of the wordsremercieandthank, suggest that all dons, donatives, and donations were deemed to have come from the Madonna or Queen Mercy, to whom thanks or remerciements were rendered by the utterance of her name. In the North of England there are numerous places named Unthank, which seemingly is ancient Thank: the Deity is still thanked formeat,i.e.,fare, orforage;free, according to Pearsall, “comes from an Aryan root meaningdear(whence also our wordfriend), and meant in old Teutonic times those who aredearto the head of the household—that is connected with him by ties of friendship, and not slaves, or in bondage”.[900]The worddear, Frenchadore, connectstreor abode with Droia or Troy: yet theSweet Maidenof Crete could at times show dour displeasure, and one of her best known representations is thus described: “The pose of the little figure is dignified and firm, the side face is even winning, but the eyes are fierce, and the outstretched hands holding the heads of the snakes are so tense and show such strength that we instinctively feel this was no person to be played with”.[901]The connection at Edanhall of The Maiden’s Step with Giant Torquin establishes a probability that the Maid or the Maiden was either theTroy Queen or the Eternal Queen, ordur queen, the hard Queen, at times a little dragon, oftener adear Queen,i.e., Britomart, the Sweet Maiden, or Eda, the passionately beloved, theAdorée. “Bride, thegentle” is an epithet traditionally applied to St. Bride, St. Brigit, or St. Brig; in Welsh,brigandbrigantmeantip toporsummit, and these terms may be connoted with the Irishbrigmeaning pre-eminent power, influence, authority, and high esteem. At Chester, or Deva, there has been found an inscription to the “Nymph-Goddess Brig,” and at Berrens in Scotland has been found an altar to the Goddess of Brigantia, which exhibits a winged deity holding a spear in one hand, and a globe in the other.

In the British Museum is a coin letteredCynethryth Regina: this lady, who is described as the widow of Offa, is portrayed “in long curls, behind head long cross”: assuredly there were numerous Queen Cynethryths, but the original Cynethryth was equally probably Queen Truth, and in view of the fact that the motto of Bardic Druidism was “the Truth against the world,” we may perhaps assume that the Druid was a follower of Truth or Troth.

In the opinion of the learned Borlase the sculpture illustrated on page 485 represents the six progressive orders of Druidism contemplating Truth, the younger men on the right viewing the Maiden draped in the garb of convention, the older ones on the left beholding her nude in her symbolic aspect as the feeder of two serpents: it is not improbable that Quendred, the miraculous light-bearing Mother of St. Dunstan, was a variant of the name Cynethryth, at times Queen Dread, at times Queen Truth.

Fig.461.—Britannia,A.D.1919.By permission of the Proprietors of “Punch”.

The frequent discovery of coins—Roman and otherwise—within cromlechs such as Kit’s Coty and other sacredsites appears to me to prove nothing in respect of age, but rather a survival of the ancient superstition that the fairies possessed from time immemorial certain fields which could not be taken away or appropriated without gratifying the pixy proprietors by a piece of money:[902]the land-grabber is no novelty, nor seemingly is conscience money. That important battles occurred at such sites as Moytura and Braavalla is no argument that those fantastic Troy Towns or Drewsteigntons were, as Fergusson laboriously maintained, monuments to commemorate slaughter. According to Homer—

Before the city stands a lofty mound,In the mid plain, by open space enclos’d;Men call it Batiaea; but the GodsThe tomb of swift Myrinna; muster’dthereThe Trojans and Allies their troops array’d.[903]

Before the city stands a lofty mound,

In the mid plain, by open space enclos’d;

Men call it Batiaea; but the Gods

The tomb of swift Myrinna; muster’dthere

The Trojans and Allies their troops array’d.[903]

Nothing is more certain than that with the exception of a negligible number of conscientious objectors, a chivalrous people would defend its Eyedun to the death, and that the last array against invaders would almost invariably occur in or around the local Sanctuarie or Perry dun.

It is a wholly unheard of thing for the British to think or speak of Britain as “the Fatherland”: the Cretans, according to Plutarch, spoke of Crete as their Motherland, and not as the Fatherland: “At first,” says Mackenzie, “the Cretan Earth Mother was theculture deitywho instructed mankind ... in Crete she was well developed before the earliest island settlers began to carve her images on gems and seals or depict them in frescoes. She symbolised the island and its social life and organisation.”[904]

FOOTNOTES:[820]Irish Folklore, p. 32.[821]Irish Folklore, p.78[822]Heath, F. R. and S.,Dorchester, p. 40.[823]Dorchester stands on the “Econ Way”[824]Irish Folklore, p. 79.[825]InCrete the Forerunner of Greece, Mr. and Mrs. Hawes remark that Browning’s great monologue corresponds perfectly with all we know of the Minoan goddess—I shed in Hell o’er my pale people peaceOn earth, I caring for the creatures guardEach pregnant yellow wolf and fox-bitch sleek,And every feathered mother’s callow brood,And all that love green haunts and loneliness.[826]Iliad, xv., 175.[827]London, p. 59.[828]Irish Folklore, p. 34.[829]Gomme, Sir L.,The Topography of London, ii., 215.[830]See Cynethrythpost, p. 761.[831]Golden Legend, iii., 188.[832]Hunt, R.,Popular Romances of the West of England, p. 73.[833]Cf. Numbers xiii. 33.[834]Adjacent to Perry Mount, Perrivale, Sydenham, are Adamsrill road, Inglemere road,Allenby road, andExbury road.[835]This Tanfield Court supposedly takes its name from an individual named Tanfield. Wherever the original Tanfield was it was doubtless the scene of many a bonfire or Beltan similar to the joyous “Tan Tads,” or “Fire Fathers” of Brittany.[836]Cf. Forster, Rev. C.,The One Primeval Language, 1851.[837]Rude Stone Monuments, p. 131.[838]“His feathers were all ruffled for he had been grossly handled by a glove not of silk, but of wool, so he preened and plumed himself carefully with his beak.”[839]Folklore, xxix., No. 3, p. 195.[840]P. 165.[841]At Bickley in Kent there is aShawfield Park, which may be connoted with the Bagshaw’s Cavern at Buxton.[842]By Chee Tor is MonsalDale, and we may reasonably connotesaland “salt” with Silbury and Sol: into the waters of the Solway Firth flows the river Eden or Ituna, and doubtless the Edinburgh by Salisbury Crags is older than any Saxon Edwin or Scandinavian Odin. (Since writing I find it was originally named Dunedin,cf.Morris Jones, Sir G.,Taliesin.)[843]Odyssey, Book I., 67.[844]Chapter I.[845]From an article by Dr. Paul Carus inThe Open Court.[846]The fine megalith now standing half a mile distant at “The Den” was transported from Devonshire about a century ago—no doubt with the idea of tripping some unwary archæologist.[847]Odyssey, Book I., 67.[848]Cours d’Hieroglyphique Chretienne, inL’Universite Catholique, vol. vi., p. 266.[849]Cf.Hazlitt, W. C.,Faiths and Folklore, i., 222.[850]Hunt, p. 328.[851]Deer, near Aberdeen, is said to have derived its name fromdeur, the Gaelic fortear, because St. Drostan shed tears there. The monkish authority in the Book of Deer says: “Drostan’s tears came on parting with Columcille”. Said Columcille, “Let Dear be its name henceforward”.[852]Fergusson, p. 273.[853]The Tuttle family may similarly be assigned to one or other of the innumerable Toothills.[854]Irish Folklore, p. 31.[855]Wentz, W. Y. Evans, p. 404.[856]In Irishainemeanscircle.[857]Westropp, T. J.,Proc. of Royal Irish Academy.[858]Cf. Folklore, xxix., No. 2, p. 159.[859]Quoted from Besant’sWestminster.[860]Besant supposes that Tothill Street took its name from watermen touting there for fares.[861]Ps. lii. 7.[862]In Persia the Shamrakh was held sacred as being emblematical of the Persian triads.[863]Odyssey, xiv., 12.[864]Skeat comments upon the wordhagas “perhaps connected with Anglo-Saxonhaga, a hedge enclosure, but this is uncertain”: this authority’s definition of aha-hais as follows: “Ha-ha, Haw-haw, a sunk fence (F.). From F.hahaan interjection of laughter, hence a surprise in the form of an unexpected obstacle (that laughs at one). The French word also means an old woman of surprising ugliness, a ‘caution’.”The Celts were conspicuously chivalrous towards women, and I question whether they burst into haw-haws whensoever they met an ill-favoured old dame. As to the ha-has, or “unexpected obstacles,” Cæsar has recorded that “the bank also was defended by sharp stakes fixed in front, and stakes of the same kind fixed under the water were covered by the river”: if, then, the amiable victim who unexpectedly stumbled upon this obstacle chuckled ha-ha! or haw-haw! as he nursed his wounded limbs, the ancient Britons must have possessed a far finer sense of humour than has usually been assigned to them.[865]Stockdale, F. W. L.,Excursions Through Cornwall, 1824, p. 116.[866]Gomme, Sir L.,The Topography of London, ii., 222.[867]Ibid., ii., 216.[868]Besant, W.,Westminster, p. 20.[869]Rydberg,Teutonic Mythology, p. 118.[870]In the Kentish neighbourhood of Preston, Perry-court, Perry-wood, Holly Hill, Brenley House, and Oversland is anOld Wives Lees, and Britton Court Farm.[871]A London cockney refers to his sweetheart as hisdonah.[872]See “Archæologia” (fromThe Gentleman’s Magazine), i., 286.[873]The English moot hills are sometimes referred to asmudesormuds, Johnson, W.,Byways, p. 67.[874]Quoted from Donnelly, I.,Ragnarok.[875]Moody, S.,What is Your Name?p. 266.[876]Anon,Secret Societies of the Middle Ages: History of the Assassins.[877]Fergusson, J.,Rude Stone Monuments, p. 231.[878]Fergusson, p. 523.[879]Ibid., p. 390.[880]Almost immediately above the cromlech is Dan’s Hill, and in close neighbourhood are Burham, Borough Court, Preston Hall, Pratling Street, and Bredhurst,i.e., Bred’s Wood. That Bred wasSan Odis possibly implied by the adjacentSnodhurst andSnodland. At Sinodun Hill in Berkshire, Skeat thinksSynodsmay have once been held. The Snodland neighbourhood in Kent abounds in prehistoric remains.[881]The authorities assume that thecatis here cath, the Gaelic forwar. It might equally well becad, the Gaelic forholy: in the East ajehadis a Holy War.[882]Lang, A.,Myth, Ritual, and Religion, i., 72.[883]A New Description of England, 1724.[884]Sharon Turner informs us, on the authority of Cæsar, Strabo, and Diodorus Siculus, that the Britons “cleared a space in the wood, on which they built their huts and folded their cattle; and they fenced the avenues by ditches and barriers of trees. Such a collection of houses formed one of their towns.”Dinis the root ofdinas, the Welsh word in actual use for atown.[885]Westropp, T. J.,Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy, p. 165.[886]WithEdda, a general term for the rules and materials for verse-making, may be connoted ourode.[887]According to the original Irish of the story-teller, translated and published for the first time in 1855, Conn, the Consort of Eda, “was a puissant warrior, and no individual was found able to compete with him either on land or sea, or question his right to his conquest. The great King of the West held uncontrolled sway from the island of Rathlin to the mouth of the Shannon by sea, and as far as the glittering length by land. The ancient King of the West, whose name was Conn, was good as well as great, and passionately loved by his people. His Queen (Eda) was a Breaton (British) princess, and was equally beloved and esteemed, because she was the great counterpart of the King in every respect; for whatever good qualification was wanting in the one, the other was certain to indemnify the omission. It was plainly manifest that heaven approved of the career in life of the virtuous couple; for during their reign the earth produced exuberant crops, the trees fruit ninefold commensurate with their usual bearing, the rivers, lakes and surrounding sea teemed with abundance of choice fish, while herds and flocks were unusually prolific, and kine and sheep yielded such abundance of rich milk that they shed it in torrents upon the pastures; and furrows and cavities were filled with the pure lacteal produce of the dairy. All these were blessings heaped by heaven upon the western districts of Innes Fodhla, over which the benignant and just Conn swayed his sceptre, in approbation of the course of government he had marked out for his own guidance. It is needless to state that the people who owned the authority of this great and good sovereign were the happiest on the face of the wide expanse of earth. It was during his reign, and that of his son and successor, that Ireland acquired the title of the ‘happy Isle of the West’ among foreign nations. Con Mor and his good Queen Eda reigned in great glory during many years.”[888]Wood, E. J.,Giants and Dwarfs, p. 11. According to Maundeville in Egypt “they find there also the apple-tree of Adam which has a bite on one side”.[889]There is a conspicuously interesting group of names around the river Eden in Sussex. At Edenbridge is Dencross, and in close neighbourhood Ide Hill, Dane Hill, Paxhill Park, Brown Knoll, St. Piers Farm, Hammerwood, Pippenford Park, Allen Court, Lindfield, Londonderry, and Cinder Hill. With Broadstone Warren and Pippinford Park it is noteworthy that opposite St. Bride’s Church, Ludgate Hill, is Poppins Court and Shoe Lane: immediately adjacent is a Punch Tavern, whence I think that Poppins was Punch andShoewas Judy. The gaudypopinjay, at which our ancestors used to shoot, may well have stood in Poppins Court: a representation of this brilliant parrot or parrakeet is carved into one of the modern buildings now occupying the site.[890]Moody, S.,What is Your Name? p. 257.[891]Knight, R. Payne,The Symbolic Language of Ancient Art and Mythology, p. 128.[892]“Archæologia” (fromThe Gentleman’s Magazine), p. 270.[893]“Archæologia” (fromThe Gentleman’s Magazine), p. 270.[894]“When I was a child I would no more have thought of going out on Easter morning without a real Easter egg than I would have thought of leaving my stocking unsuspended from the foot of my bed on Christmas Eve. A few days before Easter I used to go out to the park, where there were a great many whin bushes, and gather whinblossoms, which I carried home to my mother, who put two eggs in a tin, one for me and one for my sister, and added the whinblossoms and water to them, and set them to boil together until the eggs were hard and the shells were stained a pretty brown hue.“On Easter Monday my sister and I would carry our eggs to a mound in the park called ‘The Dummy’s Hill,’ and would trundle them down the slope. All the boys and girls we knew used to trundle their eggs on Easter Monday. We called it ‘trundling’. The egg-shell generally cracked during the operation of ‘trundling,’ and then the owner of it solemnly sat down and ate the hard-boiled egg, which, of course, tasted very much better than an egg eaten in the ordinary way. ‘The Dummy’s Hill’ was sadly soiled with egg-shells at the end of Easter Monday morning.“My uncle, who was a learned man, said that this custom of ‘trundling’ eggs was a survival of an old Druidical rite. It seems to me to be queer that we in the North of Ireland should still be practising that ancient ceremony when English children should have completely forgotten it, and should think of an Easter egg, not as a real thing laid by hens and related to the ancient religion of these islands, but as a piece of confectionery turned out by machinery and having no ancient significance whatever.”—Ervine, St. John,The Daily Chronicle, 4th April, 1919.[895]Fergusson, J.,Rude Stone Monuments, p. 191.[896]The surname Honeywell found at Kingston implies either there or somewhere a Honeywell. There are several St. Euny Wells in Cornwall.[897]It measures 36 feet x 18 feet 9 inches, seeante, p. 9.[898]At Margate are Paradise Hill, Dane Park, Addington Street leading to Dane Hill, and Fort Paragon: at Ramsgate is also a Fort Paragon, and a four-crossed dun called Hallicondane. There used to be a Paradise near Beachy (Bougie, or Biga Head (?)): by Broadstairs or Bridestowe which contains a shrine to St. Mary to which all passing vessels used to doff their sails, is Bromstone, and a Dane Court by Fairfield, all of which are in St. Peter’s Parish. By the Sister Towers of Reculver are Eddington, Love Street, Hawthorn Corner, and Honey Hill: in Thanet, Paramour is a common surname. By Minster is Mount Pleasant and Eden Farm: by Richborough is Hoaden House and Paramore Street. To Reculver as to Broadstairs passing mariners used customarily to doff their sails:—Great gods, whom Earth and Sea and Storms obey,Breathe fair, and waft us smoothly o’er the main.Fresh blows the breeze, and broader grows the bay,And on the cliffs is seen Minerva’s fane.We furl the sails, and shoreward row amainEastward the harbour arches, scarce descried,Two jutting rocks, by billows lashed in vain,Stretch out their arms the narrow mouth to hide.Far back the temple stands and seems to shun the tide.—Æneid, Bk. III., lxviii.[899]A New Description of England and Wales, 1724, p. 84.[900]The English Language, p. 141.[901]Mr. and Mrs. Hawes,Crete the Forerunner of Greece, p. 123.[902]Hazlitt, W. Carew,Faiths and Folklore, i., 222.[903]Iliad, ii., 940.[904]Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe, pp. 70, 190. The italics are mine.

[820]Irish Folklore, p. 32.

[821]Irish Folklore, p.78

[822]Heath, F. R. and S.,Dorchester, p. 40.

[823]Dorchester stands on the “Econ Way”

[824]Irish Folklore, p. 79.

[825]InCrete the Forerunner of Greece, Mr. and Mrs. Hawes remark that Browning’s great monologue corresponds perfectly with all we know of the Minoan goddess—I shed in Hell o’er my pale people peaceOn earth, I caring for the creatures guardEach pregnant yellow wolf and fox-bitch sleek,And every feathered mother’s callow brood,And all that love green haunts and loneliness.

[825]InCrete the Forerunner of Greece, Mr. and Mrs. Hawes remark that Browning’s great monologue corresponds perfectly with all we know of the Minoan goddess—

I shed in Hell o’er my pale people peaceOn earth, I caring for the creatures guardEach pregnant yellow wolf and fox-bitch sleek,And every feathered mother’s callow brood,And all that love green haunts and loneliness.

I shed in Hell o’er my pale people peace

On earth, I caring for the creatures guard

Each pregnant yellow wolf and fox-bitch sleek,

And every feathered mother’s callow brood,

And all that love green haunts and loneliness.

[826]Iliad, xv., 175.

[827]London, p. 59.

[828]Irish Folklore, p. 34.

[829]Gomme, Sir L.,The Topography of London, ii., 215.

[830]See Cynethrythpost, p. 761.

[831]Golden Legend, iii., 188.

[832]Hunt, R.,Popular Romances of the West of England, p. 73.

[833]Cf. Numbers xiii. 33.

[834]Adjacent to Perry Mount, Perrivale, Sydenham, are Adamsrill road, Inglemere road,Allenby road, andExbury road.

[835]This Tanfield Court supposedly takes its name from an individual named Tanfield. Wherever the original Tanfield was it was doubtless the scene of many a bonfire or Beltan similar to the joyous “Tan Tads,” or “Fire Fathers” of Brittany.

[836]Cf. Forster, Rev. C.,The One Primeval Language, 1851.

[837]Rude Stone Monuments, p. 131.

[838]“His feathers were all ruffled for he had been grossly handled by a glove not of silk, but of wool, so he preened and plumed himself carefully with his beak.”

[839]Folklore, xxix., No. 3, p. 195.

[840]P. 165.

[841]At Bickley in Kent there is aShawfield Park, which may be connoted with the Bagshaw’s Cavern at Buxton.

[842]By Chee Tor is MonsalDale, and we may reasonably connotesaland “salt” with Silbury and Sol: into the waters of the Solway Firth flows the river Eden or Ituna, and doubtless the Edinburgh by Salisbury Crags is older than any Saxon Edwin or Scandinavian Odin. (Since writing I find it was originally named Dunedin,cf.Morris Jones, Sir G.,Taliesin.)

[843]Odyssey, Book I., 67.

[844]Chapter I.

[845]From an article by Dr. Paul Carus inThe Open Court.

[846]The fine megalith now standing half a mile distant at “The Den” was transported from Devonshire about a century ago—no doubt with the idea of tripping some unwary archæologist.

[847]Odyssey, Book I., 67.

[848]Cours d’Hieroglyphique Chretienne, inL’Universite Catholique, vol. vi., p. 266.

[849]Cf.Hazlitt, W. C.,Faiths and Folklore, i., 222.

[850]Hunt, p. 328.

[851]Deer, near Aberdeen, is said to have derived its name fromdeur, the Gaelic fortear, because St. Drostan shed tears there. The monkish authority in the Book of Deer says: “Drostan’s tears came on parting with Columcille”. Said Columcille, “Let Dear be its name henceforward”.

[852]Fergusson, p. 273.

[853]The Tuttle family may similarly be assigned to one or other of the innumerable Toothills.

[854]Irish Folklore, p. 31.

[855]Wentz, W. Y. Evans, p. 404.

[856]In Irishainemeanscircle.

[857]Westropp, T. J.,Proc. of Royal Irish Academy.

[858]Cf. Folklore, xxix., No. 2, p. 159.

[859]Quoted from Besant’sWestminster.

[860]Besant supposes that Tothill Street took its name from watermen touting there for fares.

[861]Ps. lii. 7.

[862]In Persia the Shamrakh was held sacred as being emblematical of the Persian triads.

[863]Odyssey, xiv., 12.

[864]Skeat comments upon the wordhagas “perhaps connected with Anglo-Saxonhaga, a hedge enclosure, but this is uncertain”: this authority’s definition of aha-hais as follows: “Ha-ha, Haw-haw, a sunk fence (F.). From F.hahaan interjection of laughter, hence a surprise in the form of an unexpected obstacle (that laughs at one). The French word also means an old woman of surprising ugliness, a ‘caution’.”The Celts were conspicuously chivalrous towards women, and I question whether they burst into haw-haws whensoever they met an ill-favoured old dame. As to the ha-has, or “unexpected obstacles,” Cæsar has recorded that “the bank also was defended by sharp stakes fixed in front, and stakes of the same kind fixed under the water were covered by the river”: if, then, the amiable victim who unexpectedly stumbled upon this obstacle chuckled ha-ha! or haw-haw! as he nursed his wounded limbs, the ancient Britons must have possessed a far finer sense of humour than has usually been assigned to them.

The Celts were conspicuously chivalrous towards women, and I question whether they burst into haw-haws whensoever they met an ill-favoured old dame. As to the ha-has, or “unexpected obstacles,” Cæsar has recorded that “the bank also was defended by sharp stakes fixed in front, and stakes of the same kind fixed under the water were covered by the river”: if, then, the amiable victim who unexpectedly stumbled upon this obstacle chuckled ha-ha! or haw-haw! as he nursed his wounded limbs, the ancient Britons must have possessed a far finer sense of humour than has usually been assigned to them.

[865]Stockdale, F. W. L.,Excursions Through Cornwall, 1824, p. 116.

[866]Gomme, Sir L.,The Topography of London, ii., 222.

[867]Ibid., ii., 216.

[868]Besant, W.,Westminster, p. 20.

[869]Rydberg,Teutonic Mythology, p. 118.

[870]In the Kentish neighbourhood of Preston, Perry-court, Perry-wood, Holly Hill, Brenley House, and Oversland is anOld Wives Lees, and Britton Court Farm.

[871]A London cockney refers to his sweetheart as hisdonah.

[872]See “Archæologia” (fromThe Gentleman’s Magazine), i., 286.

[873]The English moot hills are sometimes referred to asmudesormuds, Johnson, W.,Byways, p. 67.

[874]Quoted from Donnelly, I.,Ragnarok.

[875]Moody, S.,What is Your Name?p. 266.

[876]Anon,Secret Societies of the Middle Ages: History of the Assassins.

[877]Fergusson, J.,Rude Stone Monuments, p. 231.

[878]Fergusson, p. 523.

[879]Ibid., p. 390.

[880]Almost immediately above the cromlech is Dan’s Hill, and in close neighbourhood are Burham, Borough Court, Preston Hall, Pratling Street, and Bredhurst,i.e., Bred’s Wood. That Bred wasSan Odis possibly implied by the adjacentSnodhurst andSnodland. At Sinodun Hill in Berkshire, Skeat thinksSynodsmay have once been held. The Snodland neighbourhood in Kent abounds in prehistoric remains.

[881]The authorities assume that thecatis here cath, the Gaelic forwar. It might equally well becad, the Gaelic forholy: in the East ajehadis a Holy War.

[882]Lang, A.,Myth, Ritual, and Religion, i., 72.

[883]A New Description of England, 1724.

[884]Sharon Turner informs us, on the authority of Cæsar, Strabo, and Diodorus Siculus, that the Britons “cleared a space in the wood, on which they built their huts and folded their cattle; and they fenced the avenues by ditches and barriers of trees. Such a collection of houses formed one of their towns.”Dinis the root ofdinas, the Welsh word in actual use for atown.

[885]Westropp, T. J.,Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy, p. 165.

[886]WithEdda, a general term for the rules and materials for verse-making, may be connoted ourode.

[887]According to the original Irish of the story-teller, translated and published for the first time in 1855, Conn, the Consort of Eda, “was a puissant warrior, and no individual was found able to compete with him either on land or sea, or question his right to his conquest. The great King of the West held uncontrolled sway from the island of Rathlin to the mouth of the Shannon by sea, and as far as the glittering length by land. The ancient King of the West, whose name was Conn, was good as well as great, and passionately loved by his people. His Queen (Eda) was a Breaton (British) princess, and was equally beloved and esteemed, because she was the great counterpart of the King in every respect; for whatever good qualification was wanting in the one, the other was certain to indemnify the omission. It was plainly manifest that heaven approved of the career in life of the virtuous couple; for during their reign the earth produced exuberant crops, the trees fruit ninefold commensurate with their usual bearing, the rivers, lakes and surrounding sea teemed with abundance of choice fish, while herds and flocks were unusually prolific, and kine and sheep yielded such abundance of rich milk that they shed it in torrents upon the pastures; and furrows and cavities were filled with the pure lacteal produce of the dairy. All these were blessings heaped by heaven upon the western districts of Innes Fodhla, over which the benignant and just Conn swayed his sceptre, in approbation of the course of government he had marked out for his own guidance. It is needless to state that the people who owned the authority of this great and good sovereign were the happiest on the face of the wide expanse of earth. It was during his reign, and that of his son and successor, that Ireland acquired the title of the ‘happy Isle of the West’ among foreign nations. Con Mor and his good Queen Eda reigned in great glory during many years.”

[888]Wood, E. J.,Giants and Dwarfs, p. 11. According to Maundeville in Egypt “they find there also the apple-tree of Adam which has a bite on one side”.

[889]There is a conspicuously interesting group of names around the river Eden in Sussex. At Edenbridge is Dencross, and in close neighbourhood Ide Hill, Dane Hill, Paxhill Park, Brown Knoll, St. Piers Farm, Hammerwood, Pippenford Park, Allen Court, Lindfield, Londonderry, and Cinder Hill. With Broadstone Warren and Pippinford Park it is noteworthy that opposite St. Bride’s Church, Ludgate Hill, is Poppins Court and Shoe Lane: immediately adjacent is a Punch Tavern, whence I think that Poppins was Punch andShoewas Judy. The gaudypopinjay, at which our ancestors used to shoot, may well have stood in Poppins Court: a representation of this brilliant parrot or parrakeet is carved into one of the modern buildings now occupying the site.

[890]Moody, S.,What is Your Name? p. 257.

[891]Knight, R. Payne,The Symbolic Language of Ancient Art and Mythology, p. 128.

[892]“Archæologia” (fromThe Gentleman’s Magazine), p. 270.

[893]“Archæologia” (fromThe Gentleman’s Magazine), p. 270.

[894]“When I was a child I would no more have thought of going out on Easter morning without a real Easter egg than I would have thought of leaving my stocking unsuspended from the foot of my bed on Christmas Eve. A few days before Easter I used to go out to the park, where there were a great many whin bushes, and gather whinblossoms, which I carried home to my mother, who put two eggs in a tin, one for me and one for my sister, and added the whinblossoms and water to them, and set them to boil together until the eggs were hard and the shells were stained a pretty brown hue.“On Easter Monday my sister and I would carry our eggs to a mound in the park called ‘The Dummy’s Hill,’ and would trundle them down the slope. All the boys and girls we knew used to trundle their eggs on Easter Monday. We called it ‘trundling’. The egg-shell generally cracked during the operation of ‘trundling,’ and then the owner of it solemnly sat down and ate the hard-boiled egg, which, of course, tasted very much better than an egg eaten in the ordinary way. ‘The Dummy’s Hill’ was sadly soiled with egg-shells at the end of Easter Monday morning.“My uncle, who was a learned man, said that this custom of ‘trundling’ eggs was a survival of an old Druidical rite. It seems to me to be queer that we in the North of Ireland should still be practising that ancient ceremony when English children should have completely forgotten it, and should think of an Easter egg, not as a real thing laid by hens and related to the ancient religion of these islands, but as a piece of confectionery turned out by machinery and having no ancient significance whatever.”—Ervine, St. John,The Daily Chronicle, 4th April, 1919.

“On Easter Monday my sister and I would carry our eggs to a mound in the park called ‘The Dummy’s Hill,’ and would trundle them down the slope. All the boys and girls we knew used to trundle their eggs on Easter Monday. We called it ‘trundling’. The egg-shell generally cracked during the operation of ‘trundling,’ and then the owner of it solemnly sat down and ate the hard-boiled egg, which, of course, tasted very much better than an egg eaten in the ordinary way. ‘The Dummy’s Hill’ was sadly soiled with egg-shells at the end of Easter Monday morning.

“My uncle, who was a learned man, said that this custom of ‘trundling’ eggs was a survival of an old Druidical rite. It seems to me to be queer that we in the North of Ireland should still be practising that ancient ceremony when English children should have completely forgotten it, and should think of an Easter egg, not as a real thing laid by hens and related to the ancient religion of these islands, but as a piece of confectionery turned out by machinery and having no ancient significance whatever.”—Ervine, St. John,The Daily Chronicle, 4th April, 1919.

[895]Fergusson, J.,Rude Stone Monuments, p. 191.

[896]The surname Honeywell found at Kingston implies either there or somewhere a Honeywell. There are several St. Euny Wells in Cornwall.

[897]It measures 36 feet x 18 feet 9 inches, seeante, p. 9.

[898]At Margate are Paradise Hill, Dane Park, Addington Street leading to Dane Hill, and Fort Paragon: at Ramsgate is also a Fort Paragon, and a four-crossed dun called Hallicondane. There used to be a Paradise near Beachy (Bougie, or Biga Head (?)): by Broadstairs or Bridestowe which contains a shrine to St. Mary to which all passing vessels used to doff their sails, is Bromstone, and a Dane Court by Fairfield, all of which are in St. Peter’s Parish. By the Sister Towers of Reculver are Eddington, Love Street, Hawthorn Corner, and Honey Hill: in Thanet, Paramour is a common surname. By Minster is Mount Pleasant and Eden Farm: by Richborough is Hoaden House and Paramore Street. To Reculver as to Broadstairs passing mariners used customarily to doff their sails:—Great gods, whom Earth and Sea and Storms obey,Breathe fair, and waft us smoothly o’er the main.Fresh blows the breeze, and broader grows the bay,And on the cliffs is seen Minerva’s fane.We furl the sails, and shoreward row amainEastward the harbour arches, scarce descried,Two jutting rocks, by billows lashed in vain,Stretch out their arms the narrow mouth to hide.Far back the temple stands and seems to shun the tide.—Æneid, Bk. III., lxviii.

Great gods, whom Earth and Sea and Storms obey,Breathe fair, and waft us smoothly o’er the main.Fresh blows the breeze, and broader grows the bay,And on the cliffs is seen Minerva’s fane.We furl the sails, and shoreward row amainEastward the harbour arches, scarce descried,Two jutting rocks, by billows lashed in vain,Stretch out their arms the narrow mouth to hide.Far back the temple stands and seems to shun the tide.—Æneid, Bk. III., lxviii.

Great gods, whom Earth and Sea and Storms obey,

Breathe fair, and waft us smoothly o’er the main.

Fresh blows the breeze, and broader grows the bay,

And on the cliffs is seen Minerva’s fane.

We furl the sails, and shoreward row amain

Eastward the harbour arches, scarce descried,

Two jutting rocks, by billows lashed in vain,

Stretch out their arms the narrow mouth to hide.

Far back the temple stands and seems to shun the tide.

—Æneid, Bk. III., lxviii.

[899]A New Description of England and Wales, 1724, p. 84.

[900]The English Language, p. 141.

[901]Mr. and Mrs. Hawes,Crete the Forerunner of Greece, p. 123.

[902]Hazlitt, W. Carew,Faiths and Folklore, i., 222.

[903]Iliad, ii., 940.

[904]Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe, pp. 70, 190. The italics are mine.

“It is our duty to begin research even if we have to penetrate many a labyrinth leading to nowhere and to lament the loss of many a plausible system. A false theory negatived is a positive result.”—Thos. J. Westropp.

In the year 1585 a curious occurrence happened at the small hamlet of Mottingham in Kent: betimes in the morning of 4th August the ground began to sink, so much so that three great elm trees in a certain field were swallowed up into a pit of about 80 yards in circumference and by ten o’clock no part of them could be seen. This cavity then filled with water of such depth that a sounding line of 50 fathoms could hardly find or feel any bottom: still more alarming grew the situation when in an adjacent field another piece of ground sunk in like manner near the highway and “so nigh a dwelling house that the inhabitants were greatly terrified therewith”.[905]

To account for a subsidence much deeper than an elm tree one must postulate a correspondingly loftysoutterrain: the precise spot at Mottingham where these subsidences are recorded was known as Fairy Hill, and I have little doubt that like many other Dunhills this particular Fairy Hill was honeycombed or hollowed. Almost every Mottingham[906]or Maiden’s Home consisted not only of thecharacteristic surface features noted in the preceding chapter, but in addition the thoroughly ideal Maiden’s Home went down deep into the earth: in Ireland the children of Don were popularly reputed to dwell in palacesunderground; similarly in Crete the Great Mother—the Earth Mother associated with circles and caves, the goddess of birth and death, of fertility and fate, the ancestress of all mankind—was assumed to gather the ghosts of her progeny to her abode in the Underworld.[907]

Caves and caverns play a prime and elementary part in the mythologies of the world: their role is literally vital, for it was believed that the Life of the World, in the form of the Young Sun, was born yearly anew on 25th December, always in a cave: thus caves were invariably sacred to the Dawn or God of Light, and only secondarily to the engulfing powers of Darkness; from the simple cell,kille, or little church gradually evolved the labyrinthine catacomb and the stupendous rock-temple.

The County of Kent is curiously rich in caves which range in importance from the mysterious singleDeneHole to the amazing honeycomb of caverns which underlie Chislehurst and Blackheath: a network of caves exists beneath Trinity Church, Margate; moreover, in Margate is a serpentine grotto decorated with a wonderful mosaic of shell-work which, so far as I am able to ascertain, is unique and unparalleled. The grotto at Margate is situated in the Dene or Valley underneath an eminence now termedDaneHill: one of the best known of the Cornish so-calledGiant’s Holts is that situated in the grounds of the Manor House of Pendeen, not in a dene or valley, but on the high ground at Pendeen Point. In Cornishpenmeant head or point, whence Pendeen meansDeen Headland, and one again encounters the worddenein the mysterious Dene holes or Dane holes found so plentifully in Kent: these are supposed to have been places of refuge from the Danes, but they certainly never were built for that purpose, for the discovery within them of flint, bone, and bronze relics proves them to be of neolithic antiquity.

There must be some close connection in idea between the serpentine grotto in TheDane, Margate, the subterranean chamber at Pendeen, Cornwall, the KentishDeneHoles and the mysterious tunnellings in the neighbourhood of CountyDown, Ireland: these last were described by Borlase as follows: “All this part of Ireland abounds with Caves not only under mounts, forts, and castles, but under plain fields, some winding into little hills and risings like a volute or ram’s horn, others run in zigzag like a serpent; others again right forward connecting cell with cell. The common Irish think they are skulking holes of the Danes after they had lost their superiority in that Island.”[908]They may conceivably have served this purpose, but it is more probable that these mysterious tunnellings were the supposed habitations of the subterranean Tuatha te Danaan,i.e., the Children ofDonorDanu.

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