Archaic England Part 10

John. This was, as Stow says, known as the Papey;[145] "for in some language priests are called papes".

In the Hebrides the place-names Papa Stour, Papa Westray, and so forth are officially recognised as the seats of prehistoric padres, patricks, or papas. Skeat imagines that the words _pap_ meaning food, and _pap_ meaning teat or breast, are alike "of infantine origin due to the repet.i.tion of _pa pa_ in calling for food". They may be so, but to understand the childhood of the world one must stoop to infantile levels.

In Celtic _alp_ or _ailpe_ meant _high_, and also _rock_. Among the ancients rock was a generally recognised symbol of the undecaying immutable High Father, and in seemingly every tongue will be found puns such as _pierre_ and _pere_, Peter the pater, and Petra the Rock. The papacy of Peter is founded traditionally upon St. Petra, the Rock of Ages, "Upon this Rock will I found my Church," and the St. Rock of this country, whose festival was celebrated upon Rock Monday, was a.s.sumedly a survival of pagan pre-Christian symbolism.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 20.--From _a.n.a.lysis of Ancient Mythology_ (Bryant, J.).]

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 21.--Christ and His Apostles, under the form of Lambs or of Sheep. (Latin sculpture; first centuries of the Church.) From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]

It is a.s.serted by one of the cla.s.sical authors that stones were considered superior in two respects, first in being not subject to death, and second in not being harmful. That _Albion_ was harmless and beneficent is implied by the adjectives _bien_, _bonny_, _benevolent_, _bounteous_, and _benignant_. That St. Alban was similarly conceived is implied by the statement that this Lord's son of the City of Verulam was "a well disposed and seemly young man," who "always loved to do hospitality _granting meat and drink_ wherever necessary". That St.

Alban was not only _Alpa_, the All Feeder, but that he was also _Alpe_, the High One and the Rock whence gushed a "living water," is clear from the statement: "Then at the last they came to the hill where this holy Alban should finish and end his life, in which place lay a great mult.i.tude of people nigh dead for heat of the sun, and for thirst. And then anon the wind blew afresh, cool, and also at the feet of this holy man Alban sprang up a fair well whereof all the people marvelled to see the cold water spring up in the hot sandy ground, and so high on the top of an hill, which water flowed all about and in large streams running down the hill. And then the people ran to the water and drank so that they were well refreshed, and then by the merits of St. Alban their thirst was clean quenched. But yet for all the great goodness that was showed they thirsted strongly for the blood of this holy man."[146]

From this and other miraculous incidents in the life of St. Alban it would appear that the original compilers had in front of them some cartoons, cameos, or symbolic pictures of "The Kaadman," which had probably been recovered from the ruins of the ancient city. The authenticity of St. Alban's "life" is further implied by the frequency with which allusions are made to the blazing heat of the sun, a suns.h.i.+ne so great, so conspicuous, that it burnt and scalded the feet of the sightseers. The Latin for yellow, which is the colour of the golden sun, is _galbinus_, a word which like Kalbion resolves into _'g albinus_, the high or mighty Alba.n.u.s. From _galbinus_ the French authorities derive their word _jaune_, but _jaune_ is simply _Joan_, _Jeanne_, _s.h.i.+ne_, _shone_, or _sheen_.

In Hebrew _Albanah_ or _Lebanah_ properly signifies the moon, and _albon_ means _strength_ and _power_, but more radically these terms may be connoted with our English surname Alibone and understood as either _holy good_, _wholly good_, or _all good_.

Yellow is not only the colour of the golden sun, but it is similarly that of the moon, and at the festivals of the _yellow_ Lights of Heaven our ancestors most a.s.suredly _halloe'd_, _yelled_, _yawled_, and _yowled_. The Cornish for the sun is _houl_, the Breton is _heol_, the Welsh is _hayl_, and until recently in English churches the congregation used at Yule Tide to _hail_ the day with shouts or _yells_ of Yole, Yole, Yole! or Ule, Ule, Ule! The festival of Yule is a reunion, a coming together in amity of the All, and as in Welsh _y_ meant _the_, the words _whole_, and _Yule_ were perhaps originally _ye all_ or _the all_. An _alloy_ is a mixture or medley, anything _allowed_ is according to _law_, and _hallow_ is the same word as _holy_.

The word Alban is p.r.o.nounced Olbun, and in Welsh _Ol_, meant not only _all_, but also the Supreme Being. The Dictionaries translate the Semitic _El_ as having meant _G.o.d_ or _Power_, and it is so rendered when found amid names such as Beth_el_, Uri_el_, _El_eazar,[147] etc.

But among the Semitic races the deity El was subdivided into a number of Baalim or secondary divinities emanating from El, and it would thus seem that although the Phoenicians may have forgotten the fact, _El_ meant among them what _All_ does amongst us. According to Anderson, El was primarily Israel's G.o.d and only later did He come to be regarded as the G.o.d of the Universe--"Rising in dignity as the national idea was enlarged, El became more just and righteous, more and more superior to all the other G.o.ds, till at last He was defined to be the Supreme Ruler of Nature, the One and only Lord".[148]

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

One is _all alone_, And ever doth remain so.

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

The Greek philosophers entertained a maxim that Jove, Pluto, Phoebus, Bacchus, all were one and they accepted as a formula the phrase "All is one". In India Brahma was ent.i.tled "The Eternal All" and in the _Bhagavad Gita_ the Soul of the world is thus adored:--

O infinite Lord of G.o.ds! the world's abode, Thou undivided art, o'er all supreme, Thou art the first of G.o.ds, the ancient Sire, The treasure-house supreme of all the worlds.

The Knowing and the Known, the highest seat.

From Thee the All has sprung, O Boundless Form!

Varuna, Vazu, Agni, Yama thou, The Moon; the Sire and Grandsire too of men.

The infinite in power, of boundless force, The All thou dost embrace; the "Thou art All".

Near Stonehenge there is a tumulus known nowadays as El barrow, and Salisbury Plain itself was once named Ellendune or Ellen Down. The Greeks or h.e.l.lenes claimed to be descendants of the Dodonian Ellan or h.e.l.lan, a personage whom they esteemed as the "Father of the First-born Woman". Ellan or h.e.l.lan was alternatively ent.i.tled h.e.l.las, and in Greek the word _allos_ meant "the one".

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 22.--From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).

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

Mercury with a circular nimbus. (Roman sculpture.)

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

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

B being invariably interchangeable with P, the Ban of Alban is the same as the Greek Pan.[151] From Pan comes the adjective _pan_ meaning _all_, _universal_, so that Alban may perhaps be equated with Holy Pan.

_Hale_ also means healthy, and the circular _halo_ symbolising the glorious sun was used by the pagans long before it was adopted by Christianity. By the Cabalists--who were indistinguishable from the Gnostics--Ell was understood to mean "the Most Luminous," Il "the Omnipotent," Elo "the Sovereign, the Excelsus," and Eloi "the Illuminator, the Most Effulgent". Among the Greeks _ele_ meant refulgent, and Helios was a t.i.tle of Apollo or the Sun.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 23.--The statue of Diana of the Ephesians wors.h.i.+pped at Ma.s.silia.

From _Stonehenge_ (Barclay, E.).]

The Peruvians named their Bona Dea Mama Allpa, whom they represented, like Ephesian Diana, as having numerous b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and they regarded Mama Allpa as the dispenser of all human nourishment. In Egypt _pa_ meant _ancestor_, _beginning_, _origin_, and the Peruvian many-breasted Mama Allpa seemingly meant just as it does in English, _i.e._, mother, _All pa_ or _All-feeder_.

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

The Sabeans wors.h.i.+pped the many-breasted Artemis under the name Almaquah, which is radically _alma_, and the Greeks used the word _alma_ as an adjective meaning _nouris.h.i.+ng_. The river Almo near Rome was seemingly named after the All Mother, for in this stream the Romans used ceremoniously to bathe and purify the statue of Ma, the World Mother, whose consort was known as Pappas. Pappas is the Greek equivalent to Papa, and Ma or Mama meaning _mother_ is so used practically all the world over. Skeat is contemptuous towards _mama_, describing it as "a mere repet.i.tion of _ma_ an infantile syllable; many other languages have something like it". Not only all over Asia Minor but also in Burmah and Hindustan _ma_ meant mother; in China _mother_ is _mi_ or _mu_, and in South America as in Chaldea and all over Europe _mama_ meant mother; Mammal is of course traceable to the same root, and it is evident that even were _ma_ merely an infantile syllable it obviously carried far more than a contemptible or negligible meaning.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MA.

FIG. 24.--The Egyptian Ma or "Truth".]

In Europe, Alma and Ilma are proper names which are defined as having meant either Celtic _all good_, Latin _kindly_, or Jewish _maiden_. In Finnish mythology the Creatrix of the Universe, or Virgin Daughter of the Air is named Ilmatar, which is evidently the _All Mater_ or _All Mother_. Alma was no doubt the almoner of aliment, and her symbol was the _almond_. In Scotland where there is a river Almond, _ben_ means mountain or head, and _ben_ varies almost invariably into _pen_, from the Apennines to the Pennine Range.

It is said that Pan was wors.h.i.+pped in South America, and that his name was commemorated in the place-name Mayapan. Among the Mandan Indians, _pan_ meant _head_, and also _pertaining to that which is above_; in China, _pan_ meant mountain or hill, and in Phoenician, _pennah_ had the same meaning. As, however, I have dealt somewhat fully elsewhere with Pan the President of the Mountains, I shall for the sake of brevity translate his name into _universal_ or _good_.

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

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

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

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

At _Ban_croft, in the neighbourhood of St. Albans, the festivities of May-day included "_first_" a personage with "a large artificial hump on his back,"[154] and we may recognise the Kaadman of St. Albans in the Cadi of Welsh pageantry. In Wales all the arrangements of May-day were made by the so-called Cadi, who was always the most active person in the company and sustained the joint role of marshal, orator, buffoon, and money collector. The whole party being a.s.sembled they marched in pairs headed by the Cadi, who was gaudily bedecked with gauds and wore a bis.e.xual, half-male, half-female costume. With gaud and gaudy, which are the same words as _good_ and _cadi_, may be connoted _gaudeo_ the Latin for _I rejoice_.

Punch is always represented with an ample _paunch_, and this conspicuous characteristic of bonhomie is similarly a feature of Chinese and j.a.panese bonifaces or Bounty G.o.ds. The skirt worn by the androgynous British Cadi may be connoted with the kilt in which the Etrurians figured their Hercules, and that in Etruria the All Father was occasionally depicted like Punch, is clear from the following pa.s.sage from _The Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria_: "Hercules and Minerva were the most generally honoured of the Etruscan divinities, the one representing the most valuable qualities of a man's body and the other of his soul.

They were the excellencies of flesh and spirit, and according to Etruscan mythology they were man and wife. Minerva has usually a very fine face with that straight line of feature which we call Grecian, but which, from the sepulchral paintings and the votive offerings, would appear also to have been native. Hercules has a prominent and peaky chin, and something altogether remarkably sharp in his features, which, from the evidence of vases and scarabaei together, would appear to have been the conventional form of depicting a warrior. It is probably given to signify vigilance and energy. A friend of mine used to call it, not inaptly, 'the ratcatcher style'. Neptune bears the trident, Jove the thunderbolt or sceptre, and these attributes are sometimes appended to the most grotesque figures when the Etruscans have been representing either some Greek fable, or some native version of the same story. This may be seen on one vase where Jove is entering a window, accompanied by Mercury, to visit Alcmena. Jove has just taken his foot off the ladder, and in my ignorance I looked at the clumsy but extraordinary vase, thinking that the figures represented Punch; and though I give the learned and received version of the story, I am at this moment not convinced that I was wrong, for I do not believe the professor who pointed it out to me, notwithstanding all his learning, extensive and profound as it was, knew that Punch was an Etruscan amus.e.m.e.nt. Supposing it, however, to have been Punch, which I think was my own very just discovery, the piece acted was certainly Giove and Alcmena."

It is very obvious that the term _holy_ has changed considerably in its meaning. To the ancients "holidays" were joy-days, pandemoniums, and the pre-eminent emblem of joviality was the holly tree. The reason for the symbolic eminence of the holy tree was its evergreen horned leaves which caused it to be dedicated to Saturn the horned All Father, now degraded into Old Nick. But "Old Nick" is simply St. Nicholas, or Santa Claus, and the name Claus is Nicholas minus the adjective _'n_ or _ancient_.

Ja.n.u.s, the Latinised form of Joun, was essentially the G.o.d of _gen_iality and _jov_iality, otherwise Father Christmas and he is the same as Saturn, whose golden era was commemorated by the Saturnalia. The Hebrew name for the planet Saturn was Chiun, and this Chiun or Joun (?) was seemingly the same as the Gian Ben Gian, or Divine Being, who according to Arabian tradition ruled over the whole world during the legendary Golden Age.

On the first of January, a month which takes its name from Ja.n.u.s as being the "G.o.d of the Beginning," all quarrelling and disturbances were shunned, mutual good-wishes were exchanged, and people gave sweets to one another as an omen that the New Year might bring nothing but what was sweet and pleasant in its train.

This "execrable practice," a "mere relique of paganism and idolatry,"

was, like the decorative use of holly, sternly opposed by the mediaeval Church. In 1632 Prynne wrote: "The whole Catholicke Church (as Alchuvinus and others write), appointed a solemn publike faste upon this our New Yeare's Day (which fast it seems is now forgotten), to bewail these heathenish enterludes, sports, and lewd idolatrous practices which had been used on it: prohibiting all Christians, under pain of excommunication, from observing the Calends, or first of January (which we now call New Yeare's Day) as holy, and from sending abroad New Yeare's Gifts upon it (a custom now too frequent), it being a mere relique of paganisme and idolatry, derived from the heathen Romans'

feast of two-faced Ja.n.u.s, and a practice so execrable unto Christians that not only the whole Catholicke Church, but even four famous Councils" [and an enormous quant.i.ty of other authorities which it is useless to quote], "have positively prohibited the solemnisation of New Yeare's Day, and the sending abroad of New Yeare's Gifts, under an anathema and excommunication."

There is little doubt that the "Saint" Concord--an alleged subdeacon in a desert--who figures in the Roman Martyrology on January 1st, was invented to account for the Holy Concord to which that day was dedicated. Ja.n.u.s of January 1st, who was ranked by the Latins even above Jupiter, was termed "The _good_ Creator," the "Oldest of the G.o.ds," the "Beginning of all Things," and the "G.o.d of G.o.ds". From him sprang all rivers, wells, and streams, and his name is radically the same as Ocea.n.u.s.

Before the earth was known to be a ball, Ocea.n.u.s, the Father of all the river-G.o.ds and water-nymphs, was conceived to be a river flowing perpetually round the flat circle of the world, and out of, and into this river the sun and stars were thought to rise and set. Our word _ocean_ is a.s.sumed to be from the Greek form _okea.n.u.s_, and the official surmise as to the origin of the word is--"perhaps from _okis_--swift".

But what "swiftness" there is about the unperturbable and mighty sea, I am at a loss to recognise. In the Highlands the islanders of St. Kilda used to pour out libations to a sea-G.o.d, known as Shony, and in this British Shony we have probably the truer origin of _ocean_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 25.--Personification of River.

From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]