Archaic England Part 1

Archaic England.

by Harold Bayley.

"Of all the many thousands of earthworks of various kinds to be found in England, those about which anything is known are very few, those of which there remains nothing more to be known scarcely exist. Each individual example is in itself a new problem in history, chronology, ethnology, and anthropology; within every one lie the hidden possibilities of a revolution in knowledge. We are proud of a history of nearly twenty centuries: we have the materials for a history which goes back beyond that time to centuries as yet undated. The testimony of records carries the tale back to a certain point: beyond that point is only the testimony of archaeology, and of all the manifold branches of archaeology none is so practicable, so promising, yet so little explored, as that which is concerned with earthworks. Within them lie hidden all the secrets of time before history begins, and by their means only can that history be put into writing: they are the back numbers of the island's story, as yet unread, much less indexed."--A. HADRIAN ALLCROFT.

"It is a gain to science that it has at last been recognised that we cannot penetrate far back into man's history without appealing to more than one element in that history. Some day it will be recognised that we must appeal to _all_ elements in that history."--GOMME.

"History bears and requires Authors of all sorts."--CAMDEN.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."--H. D. Th.o.r.eAU.

This book is an application of the jigsaw system to certain archaeological problems which under the ordinary detached methods of the Specialist have proved insoluble. My fragments of evidence are drawn as occasion warrants from History, Fairy-tale, Philosophy, Legend, Folklore--in fact from any quarter whence the required piece unmistakably fulfils the missing s.p.a.ce. It is thus a mental medley with all the defects, and some, I trust, of the attractions, of a mosaic.

Ten years ago I published a study on Mediaeval Symbolism, and subsequent investigation of cognate subjects has since put me in possession of some curious and uncommon information, which lies off the mainroads of conventional Thought.

The consensus of opinion upon _A New Light on the Renaissance_,[1] was to the effect that my theories were decidedly ingenious and up to a point tenable, yet nevertheless at present they could only be regarded as non-proven. In 1912[2] I therefore endeavoured to substantiate my earlier propositions, pus.h.i.+ng them much further to the point of suggesting an innate connection between Symbolism and certain words--such, for example, as _psyche_, which means a b.u.t.terfly, and _psyche_ the _anima_ or _soul_ which was symbolised or represented by a b.u.t.terfly. Of course I knew only too well the tricky character of the ground I was exploring and how open many of my propositions would be to attack, yet it seemed preferable rather to risk the Finger of Scorn than by a superfluity of caution ignore clues, which under more competent hands might yield some very interesting and perhaps valuable discoveries.

In the present volume I piece together a mosaic of visible and tangible evidence which is supplementary to that already brought forward, and the results--at any rate in many instances--cannot by any possibility be written off as due merely to coincidence or chance. That they will be adequate to satisfy the exacting requirements of modern criticism is, however, not to be supposed. Referring to _The Lost Language_, one of my reviewers cheerfully but disconcertingly observed: "He must deal as others of his school have done with all the possible readings of the history of the races of men".[3] To sweeping and magnanimous advice of this character one can only counter the untoward experiences of the hapless "Charles Templeton," as recounted by Mr. Stephen McKenna: "At the age of three-and-twenty Charles Templeton, my old tutor at Oxford, set himself to write a history of the Third French Republic. When I made his acquaintance, some thirty years later, he had satisfactorily concluded his introductory chapter on the origin of Kings.h.i.+p. At his death, three months ago, I understand that his notes on the precursors of Charlemagne were almost as complete as he desired. 'It is so difficult to know where to start, Mr. Oakleigh,' he used to say, as I picked my steps through the litter of notebooks that c.u.mbered his tables, chairs, and floor."[4]

But Mr. Templeton's embarra.s.sments were trifling in comparison with mine. Templeton was obviously a man of some leisure, whereas my literary hobbies have necessarily to be indulged more or less furtively in restaurants, railway trains, and during such hours and half-hours of opportunity as I can s.n.a.t.c.h from more pressing obligations. Moreover, Mr. Templeton could concentrate on one subject--History--whereas the scope of my studies compels me to keep on as good terms as may be with the exacting Muses of History, Mythology, Archaeology, Philosophy, Religion, Romance, Symbolism, Numismatics, Folklore, and Etymology. I mention this not to extenuate any muzziness of thought, or sloppiness of diction, but to disarm by confession the charge that my work has been done hurriedly and here and there superficially.

With the facilities at my disposal I have endeavoured to the best of my abilities to concentrate a dozen rays on to one subject, and to mould into an harmonious and coherent whole the pith of a thousand and one items culled during the past seven years from day to day and noted from hour to hour. Differing as I do in some respects from the accepted conclusions of the best authorities, it is a further handicap to find myself in the position of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah, who was constrained by force of circ.u.mstance to build with a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other.

To the heretic and the wayfarer it is, however, a comfortable reflection that what Authority maintains to-day it generally contradicts to-morrow.[5] Less than a century ago contemporary scholars.h.i.+p knew the age of the earth with such exquisite precision that it p.r.o.nounced it to a year, declaring an exact total of 6000 years, and a few odd days.

When the discoveries in Kent's Cavern were laid before the scientific world, the authorities flatly denied their possibility, and the proofs that Man in Britain was contemporary with the mammoth, the lion, the bear, and the rhinoceros[6] were received with rudeness and inattention.

Similarly the discovery of prehistoric implements in the gravel-beds at Abbeville was treated with inconsequence and insult, and it was upwards of twenty years before it was reluctantly conceded that: "While we have been straining our eyes to the East, and eagerly watching excavations in Egypt and a.s.syria, suddenly a new light has arisen in the midst of us; and the oldest relics of man yet discovered have occurred, not among the ruins of Nineveh or Heliopolis, not on the sandy plains of the Nile or the Euphrates, but _in the pleasant valleys of England and France_, along the banks of the Seine and the Somme, the Thames and the Waveney."[7]

The fact is now generally accepted as proven by both anthropologists and archaeologists, that the most ancient records of the human race exist not in Asia, but in Europe. The oldest doc.u.ments are not the hieroglyphics of Egypt, but the hunting-scenes scratched on bone and ivory by the European cave-dwelling contemporaries of the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros. Human implements found on the chalk plateaus of Kent have been a.s.signed to a period prior to the glacial epoch, which is surmised to have endured for 160,000 years, from, roughly speaking, 240,000 to 80,000 years ago.

It is now also an axiom that the races of Europe are not colonists from somewhere in Asia, but that, speaking generally, they have inhabited their present districts more or less continuously from the time when they crept back gradually in the wake of the retreating ice.

"Written history and popular tradition," says Sir E. Ray Lankester, "tell us something in regard to the derivation and history of existing 'peoples,' but we soon come to a period--a few thousand years back--concerning which both written statement and tradition are dumb.

And yet we know that this part of the world--Europe--was inhabited by an abundant population in those remote times. We know that for at least 500,000 years human populations occupied portions of this territory, and that various races with distinguis.h.i.+ng peculiarities of feature and frame, and each possessed of arts and crafts distinct from those characteristic of others, came and went in succession in those incredibly remote days in Europe. We know this from the implements, carvings, and paintings left by these successive populations, and we know it also by the discovery of their bones."

Anthropology, however, while admitting this unmeasurable antiquity for mankind, takes no count of the possibility of an amiable or cultured race in these islands prior to the coming of the Roman legions. It traces with equanimity the modern Briton evolving in unbroken sequence from the primitive cave-dweller, and it points with self-complacency to the fact that even as late as the Battle of Hastings some of Harold's followers were armed with _stone_ axes. There has, however, recently been unearthed near Maidstone the skull of a late palaeolithic or early neolithic man, whose brain capacity was rather above the average of the modern Londoner. The forehead of this 15,000 year-old skull is well formed, there are no traces of a simian or overhanging brow, and the individual himself might well, in view of all physical evidence, have been a primeval sage rather than a primeval savage.

The high estimation in which the philosophy of prehistoric Briton was regarded abroad may be estimated from the testimony of Caesar who states: "It is believed that this inst.i.tution (Druidism) was founded in Britannia, and thence transplanted into Gaul. Even nowadays those who wish to become more intimately acquainted with the inst.i.tution generally go to Britannia for instruction's sake."

It has been claimed for the Welsh that they possess the oldest literature in the oldest language in Europe. Giraldus Cambrensis, speaking of the Welsh Bards, mentions their possession of certain ancient and authentic books, but whether or not the traditionary poems which were first committed to writing in the twelfth century retain any traces of the prehistoric Faith is a matter of divided opinion. To those who are not experts in archaisms and are not enamoured of ink-spilling, the sanest position would appear to be that of Matthew Arnold, who observes in _Celtic Literature_: "There is evidently mixed here, with the newer legend, a _detritus_, as the geologists would say, of something far older; and the secret of Wales and its genius is not truly reached until this _detritus_, instead of being called recent because it is found in contact with what is recent, is disengaged, and is made to tell its own story."[8]

The word "founded," as used by Caesar, implies an antiquity for British inst.i.tutions which is materially confirmed by the existence of such monuments as Stonehenge, and the more ancient Avebury. Whether these supposed "appendages to Bronze age burials" were merely sepulchral monuments, or whether they ever possessed any intellectual significance, does not affect the fact that Great Britain, and notably England, is richer in this cla.s.s of monument than any other part of the world.[9]

Circles being essentially and pre-eminently English it is disappointing to find the most modern handbook on Stonehenge stating: "In all matters of archaeology it is constantly found that certain questions are better left in abeyance or bequeathed to a coming generation for solution".[10]

Every one sympathises with that weary feeling, but nevertheless the present generation now possesses quite sufficient data to enable it to shoulder its own responsibilities and to pa.s.s beyond the stereotyped and hackneyed formula "sepulchral monument". I hold no brief on behalf of the Druids--indeed one must agree that the Celtic Druids were much more modern than the monuments a.s.sociated with their name--nevertheless the theory that these far-famed philosophers were mere wise men or witch doctors, with perhaps a spice of the conjuror, is a modern misapprehension with which I am nowise in sympathy. Valerius Maximus (_c._ A.D. 20) was much better informed and therefore more cautious in his testimony: "I should be tempted to call these breeches-wearing gentry fools, were not their doctrine the same as that of the mantle-clad Pythagoras".

Druids or no Druids there must at some period in our past have been interesting and enterprising people in these islands. At Avebury, near Marlborough, is Silbury Hill, an earth mound, which is admittedly the vastest artificial hill in Europe. Avebury itself is said to const.i.tute the greatest megalithic monument in Europe, and nowhere in the world are tumuli more plentiful than in Great Britain. On the banks of the Boyne is a pyramid of stones which, had it been situated on the banks of the Nile, would probably have been p.r.o.nounced the oldest and most venerable of the pyramids. In the Orkneys at Hoy is almost the counterpart to an Egyptian marvel which, according to Herodotus, was an edifice 21 cubits in length, 14 in breadth, and 8 in height, the whole consisting only of one single stone, brought thither by sea from a place about 20 days'

sailing from Sais. The Hoy relic is an obelisk 36 feet long by 18 feet broad, by 9 feet deep. "No other stones are near it. 'Tis all hollowed within or scooped by human art and industry, having a door at the east end 2 feet square with a stone of the same dimension lying about 2 feet from it, which was intended no doubt to close the entrance. Within, there is at the south end of it, cut out, the form of a bed and pillow capable to hold two persons."[11]

Sir John Morris-Jones has noted remarkable ident.i.ties between the syntax of Welsh and that of early Egyptian: Gerald Ma.s.sey, in his _Book of the Beginnings_, gives a list of 3000 close similarities between English and Egyptian words; and the astronomical inquiries of Sir Norman Lockyer have driven him to conclude: "The people who honoured us with their presence here in Britain some 4000 years ago, had evidently, some way or other, had communicated to them a very complete Egyptian culture, and they determined their time of night just in the same way that the Egyptians did".

It used to be customary to attribute all the mysterious edifices of these islands, including stones inscribed with lettering in an unknown script, to hypothetical wanderers from the East. Nothing could have been more peremptory than the manner in which this theory was enunciated by its supporters, among whom were included all or nearly all the great names of the period. To-day there is a complete _volte face_ upon this subject, and the latest opinion is that "not a particle of evidence has been adduced in favour of any migration from the East".[12] When one remembers that only a year or two ago practically the whole of the academic world gave an exuberant and unqualified adherence to the theory of Asiatic immigration it is difficult to conceive a more chastening commentary upon the value of _ex cathedra_ teaching.

Happily it was an Englishman[13] who, seeing through the futility of the Asiatic theory, first pointed out the now generally accepted fact that the cradle of Aryan civilisation, if anywhere at all, was inferentially _in Europe_. The a.s.sumption of an Asiatic origin was, however, so firmly established and upheld by the dignity of such imposing names that the arguments of Dr. Latham were not thought worthy of reply, and for sixteen years his work lay unheeded before the world. Even twenty years after publication, when the new view was winning many adherents, it was alluded to by one of the most learned Germans as follows: "And so it came to pa.s.s that in England, the native land of fads, there chanced to enter into the head of an eccentric individual the notion of placing the cradle of the Aryan race in Europe".

The whirligig of Time has now once again s.h.i.+fted the focus of archaeological interest at the moment from Scandinavia to Crete, where recent excavations have revealed an Eldorado of prehistoric art. It is now considered that the civilisation of h.e.l.las was a mere offshoot from that of Crete, and that Crete was veritably the fabulous Island of Atlantis, a culture-centre which leavened all the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean.

According to Sir Arthur Evans: "The high early culture, the equal rival of that of Egypt and Babylon, which began to take its rise in Crete in the fourth millennium before our era, flourished for some 2000 years, eventually dominating the aegean and a large part of the Mediterranean basin. The many-storeyed palaces of the Minoan Priest-Kings in their great days, by their ingenious planning, their successful combination of the useful with the beautiful and stately, and last but not least, by their scientific sanitary arrangements, far outdid the similar works, on however vast a scale, of Egyptian or Babylonian builders."

The sensational discoveries at Crete provide a wholly new standpoint whence to survey prehistoric civilisation, and they place the evolution of human art and appliances in the last Quaternary Period on a higher level than had ever previously been suspected.

Not only have the findings in Crete revolutionised all previously current ideas upon Art, but they have also condemned to the melting-pot the cardinal article of belief that the alphabet reached us from Phoenicia. Prof. Flinders Petrie has now clearly demonstrated that even in this respect, "Beside the great historic perspective of the long use of signs in Egypt, other discoveries in Europe have opened entirely new ground. These signs are largely found used for writing in Crete, as a geometrical signary; and the discovery of the Karian alphabet, and its striking relation to the Spanish alphabet, has likewise compelled an entire reconsideration of the subject. Thus on all sides--Egyptian, Greek, and Barbarian--material appears which is far older and far more widespread than the Graeco-Phoenician world; a fresh study of the whole material is imperatively needed, now that the old conclusions are seen to be quite inadequate."

The striking connection between the Karian and the Spanish alphabet may be connoted with the fact that Strabo, mentioning the t.u.r.detani whom he describes as the most learned tribe of all Spain, says they had reduced their language to grammatical rules, and that for 6000 years they had possessed metrical poems and even laws. Commenting upon this piece of precious information, Lardner ironically observed that although the Spaniards eagerly seized it as a proof of their ancient civilisation, they are sadly puzzled how to reconcile these 6000 years with the Mosaic chronology. He adds that discarding fable, we find nothing in their habits and manners to distinguish them from other branches of that great race, except, perhaps, a superior number of Druidical remains.[14]

This "_except_" is noteworthy in view of the fact that the Celtiberian alphabet of Spain is extremely similar to the Bardic or Druidic alphabet of Britain, and also to the hitherto illegible alphabet of Ancient Crete.

Caesar has recorded that the Druids thought it an unhallowed thing to commit their lore to writing, though in the other public and private affairs of life they frequently made use of the Greek alphabet. That the Celts of Gaul possessed the art of writing cannot be questioned, and that Britain also practised some method of communication seems a probability. There are still extant in Scotland inscriptions on stones which are in characters now totally unknown. In Ireland, letters were cut on the bark of trees prepared for that purpose and called poet's tables. The letters of the most ancient Irish alphabet are named after individual trees, and there are numerous references in Welsh poetry to a certain secret of the twigs which lead to the strong inference that "written" communication was first accomplished by the transmission of tree-sprigs.

The alphabets ill.u.s.trated on pages 14 and 15 have every appearance of being representations of sprigs, and it is a curious fact that not only in Ireland, but also in Arabia, alphabets of which every letter was named after trees[15] were once current.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRITISH ALPHABET.

FIG. 1.--From _Celtic Researches_ (Davies, E.).]

In _The Myths of Crete and Pre-h.e.l.lenic Europe_, Dr. Mackenzie inquires: "By whom were Egyptian beads carried to Britain, between 1500 B.C. and 1400 B.C.? Certainly not the Phoenicians. The sea traders of the Mediterranean were at the time the Cretans. Whether or not their merchants visited England we have no means of knowing."[16]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CELTIBERIAN ALPHABET, SHEWING THE DESCRIPTION OF CHARACTERS FOUND ON THE COINS OF TARRACONENSIS AND BaeTICA.

FIG. 2.--From _Ancient Coins_ (Akerman, J. Y.).]

The material which I shall produce establishes a probability that the Cretans systematically visited Britain, and further that the tradition of the peopling of this island by men of Trojan race are well founded.

According to the immemorial records of the Welsh Bards: "There were three names imposed on the Isle of Britain from the beginning. Before it was inhabited its denomination was Sea-Girt Green-s.p.a.ce; after being inhabited it was called the Honey Island, and after it was formed into a Commonwealth by Prydain, the Son of Aedd Mawr, it was called the Isle of Prydain. And none have any t.i.tle therein but the nation of the Kymry.

For they first settled upon it, and before that time no men lived therein, but it was full of bears, wolves, beavers, and bisons."[17]

In the course of these essays I shall discuss the Kymry, and venture a few suggestions as to their cradle and community of memories and hopes.

But behind the Kymry, as likewise admittedly behind the Cretans, are the traces of an even more primitive and archaic race. The earliest folk which reached Crete are described as having come with a form of culture which had been developed elsewhere, and among these neolithic settlers have been found traces of a race 6 feet in height and with skulls ma.s.sive and shapely. Moreover Cretan beliefs and the myths which are based upon them are admittedly older than even the civilisation of the Tigro-Euphrates valley: and they belong, it would appear, to a stock of common inheritance from an uncertain culture centre of immense antiquity.[18]

The problem of Crete is indissolubly connected with that of Etruria, which was flouris.h.i.+ng in Art and civilisation at a period when Rome was but a coterie of shepherds' huts. Here again are found Cyclopean walls and the traces of some most ancient people who had sway in Italy at a period even more remote than the national existence of Etruria.[19]

We are told that the first-comers in Crete ground their meal in stone mortars, and that one of the peculiarities of the island was the herring-bone design of their wall buildings. In West Cornwall the stone walls or Giants' Hedges are Cyclopean; farther north, in the Boscastle district, herring-bone walls are common, and in the neighbourhood of St.