Archaic England Part 19

The word _chen_ in Cornish meant _cause_, and there is no doubt a connection between this term and _kyn_, the Cornish for _prince_; the connection, however, is princ.i.p.ally in the second syllable, and I see no reason to doubt my previous conclusions formulated elsewhere, that _kyn_ or _king_ originally meant _great one_, or _high one_, whereas _chun_, _jani_, _gyne_, etc., meant _aged_ one.

One of the first kings of the Isle of Man was Hacon or Hakon, a name which the dictionaries define as having meant _high kin_. In this etymology _ha_ is evidently equated with _high_ and _con_ or _kon_ with _kin_, but it is equally likely that Hakon or Haakon meant originally _uch on_ the _high one_. In Cornish the adjective _ughan_ or _aughan_ meant _supreme_: the Icelandic for queen is _kona_, and there is no more radical distinction between _king_ and the disyllabic _kween_, than there is between the Christian names _Ion_, _Ian_, and the monosyllabic _Han_.

_Janaka_, the Sanscrit for _father_, is seemingly allied to the English adjective _jannock_ or _jonnack_, which may be equated more or less with _canny_. _Un_canny means something unwholesome, unpleasant, disagreeable; in Cornish _cun_ meant _sweet_ or affable, and we still speak of sweets as _candies_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 51.--From _The Sepulchres of Etruria_ (Gray, Mrs. Hamilton).]

In Gaelic _cenn_ or _ken_ meant _head_, the highest peak in the Himalayas is Mount Kun; one of the supreme summits of Africa is Mount Kenia, and in _Genesis_ (14-19) the Hebrew word _Konah_ is translated into English as "the Most High G.o.d". Of this Supreme Sprite the _cone_ or pyramid was a symbol, and the reverence in which this form was held at Albano in Etruria may be estimated from the monument here depicted.[262] In times gone by khans, _cuns_, or kings were not only deemed to be moral and intellectual G.o.ds, but in some localities bigness of person was cultivated. The Maoris of New Zealand, whose tattooings are identical in certain respects with the complicated spirals found on megaliths in Brittany and Ireland, and who in all their wide wanderings have carried with them a totemic dove, used to believe bigness to be a royal essence. "Every means were used to acquire this dignity; a large person was thought to be of the highest importance; to acquire this extra size, the child of a chief was generally provided with many nurses, each contributing to his support by robbing their own offspring of their natural sustenance; thus, whilst they were half-starved, miserable-looking little creatures, the chief's child was the contrary, and early became remarkable by its good appearance."[263]

The British adjective _big_ is of unknown origin and has no Anglo-Saxon equivalent. In Norway _bugge_ means a strong man, but in Germany _bigge_ denoted a little child--as also a pig. The site of Troy--the famous Troy--is marked on modern maps _Bigha_, the Basque for _eye_ is _beguia_; _bega_ is Celtic for _life_. A fabulous St. Bega is the patron-saint of c.u.mberland; there is a Baggy Point near Barnstaple, and a Bigbury near Totnes--the alleged landing place of the Trojans. Close to Canterbury are some highlands also known as Bigbury, and it is probable that all these sites were named after _beguia_, the _Big Eye_, or _Buggaboo_, the _Big Father_.

At Canterbury paleolithic implements have been found which supply proof of human occupation at a time when the British Islands formed part of the Continent, and, according to a scholarly but anonymous chronology exhibited in a Canterbury Hotel, "Neolithic, bronze, and iron ages show continuous occupation during the whole prehistoric period. The configuration of the city boundaries and the still existing traces of the ancient road in connection with the stronghold at Bigbury indicate that a populous community was settled on the site of the present Canterbury at least as early as the Iron Age."

The branching antlers of the _buck_ were regarded as the rays of the uprising sun or _Big Eye_, and a sacred procession, headed by the antlers of a buck raised upon a pole, was continued by the clergy of St.

Paul's Cathedral as late as the seventeenth century.[264] A scandalised observer of this ceremony in 1726 describes "the whole company blowing hunters' horns in a sort of hideous manner, and with this rude pomp they go up to the High Altar and offer it there. You would think them all the mad votaries of Diana!" On this occasion, evidently in accordance with immemorial wont, the Dean and Chapter wore special vestments, the one embroidered with bucks, the other with does. The buck was seemingly a.s.sociated with Puck, for it was popularly supposed that a spectre appeared periodically in Herne's Oak at Windsor headed with the horns of a buck. So too was Father Christmas or St. Nicholas represented as riding Diana-like in a chariot drawn by bucks.

The Greek for buck or stag is _elaphos_, which is radically _elaf_, and it is a singular coincidence that among the Cretan paleolithic folk in the Fourth Glacial Period "Certain signs carved on a fragment of reindeer horn are specially interesting from the primitive antic.i.p.ation that they present of the Phoenician letter _alef_".[265]

Peg or Peggy is the same word as _pig_, and it is generally supposed that the pig was regarded as an incarnation of the "Man in the Oak,"

_i.e._, Puck or Buck, because the _bacco_ or _bacon_ lived on acorns.

There is little doubt that the Saint Baccho of the Church Calendar is connected with the wors.h.i.+p of the earlier Bacchus, for the date of St.

Baccho's festival coincides with the vintage festival of Bacchus. The symbolism of the pig or bacco will be discussed in a subsequent chapter, meanwhile one may here note that _hog_ is the same as _oak_, and _swine_ is identical with _swan_. So also _Meg_ is connected with _muc_ or _moch_ which were the Celtic terms for _hog_. Among the appellations of ancient Ireland was Muc Inis,[266] or Hog Island and Moccus, or the pig, was one of the Celtic sobriquets for Mercury. The Druids termed themselves "_Swine of Mon_,"[267] the Phoenician priests were also self-styled _Swine_, and there is a Welsh poem in which the bard's opening advice to his disciples is--"Give ear little pigs".

The pig figures so frequently upon Gaulish coins that M. de la Saussaye supposed it with great reason to have been a national symbol. That the hog was also a venerated British emblem is evident from the coins here ill.u.s.trated, and that CUNO was the Spook King is obvious from Figs. 52 and 57, where the features face fore and aft like those of Ja.n.u.s. The word Cun.o.beline, Cunbelin, or Cymbeline, described by the dictionaries as a Cornish name meaning "lord of the Sun," is composed seemingly of _King Belin_. Belin, a t.i.tle of the Sun G.o.d, is found also in Gaul, notably on the coinage of the Belindi: Belin is featured as in Fig. 58, and that the sacred Horse of Belin was a.s.sociated with the _ded_ pillar is evident from Fig. 59.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 52 to 57.--British. From _Ancient Coins_ (Akerman, J. Y.).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 58 to 59.--Gaulish. From _ibid_.]

Commenting upon Fig. 52 a numismatist has observed: "This seems made for two young women's faces," but whether Cun.o.belin's wives, sisters, or children, he knows not. In Britain doubtless there were many kings who a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of Cun.o.belin, just as in Egypt there were many Pharoahs; but it is no more rational to suppose that the designs on ancient coins are the portraits of historic kings, their wives, their sisters, their cousins, or their aunts, than it would be for an archaeologist to imagine that the dragon incident on our modern sovereigns was an episode in the career of his present Majesty King George.

We shall subsequently connect George, whose name means _ploughman_, with the Blue or Celestial Boar, which, because it ploughed with its snout along the earth, was termed _boar, i.e., boer_ or farmer. With _bacco_ or _bacon_ may be connoted _boukolos_, the Greek for cowherd, whence _bucolic_. The cattle of Apollo, or the Sun, are a familiar feature of Greek mythology.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 60.--Gaulish. From Akerman.]

The female bacon, which _inter alia_ was the symbol of fecundity, was credited with a mystic thirty teats. The sow figures prominently in British mythology as an emblem of Ked, and was seemingly venerated as a symbol of the Universal Feeder. The little pig in Fig. 60, a coin of the Santones, whose capital is marked by the modern town of Saintes, is a.s.sociated with a fleur-de-lis, the emblem of purity. The word _lily_ is _all holy_; the porker was a.s.sociated with the notoriously pure St.

Antony as well as with Ked or Kate, the immaculate Magna Mater, and although beyond these indications I have no evidence for the suggestion, I strongly suspect that the scavenging habits of the _moch_ caused it, like the fly or _mouche_, to be reverenced as a symbol of Ked, Cadi, Katy, or Katerina, whose name means the Pure one or the All Pure. The connection between _hog_ and _c.o.c.k_ is apparent in the French _coche_ or _cochon_ (origin unknown). _Cochon_ is allied to _cigne_, the French for swan, Latin, _cygnus_, Greek, _kuknos_; the voice of the goose or swan is said to be its _cackle_, and the Egyptians gave to their All Father Goose a sobriquet which the authorities translate into "The Great Cackler".

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 61.--Swan with Two Necks. (Bank's Collection, 1785).

From _The History of Signboards_ (Larwood & Hotten).]

Among the meanings a.s.signed to the Hebrew _og_ is "long necked," and it is not improbable that the mysterious Inn sign of the "Swan with two necks" was originally an emblem of Mother and Father Goose. In Fig. 61 the _geis_ or swan is facing fore and aft, like Cuno, which is radically the same _Great Uno_ as Juno or Megale, to whom the goose was sacred.

_Geyser_, a gush or spring, is the same word as _geeser_, and there was a famous swan with two necks at Goswell Road, where the word Goswell implies an erstwhile well of Gos, Goose, or the Gush.[268] A Wayz_goose_ is a jovial holiday or festival, _gust_ or _gusto_ means enjoyment, and the Greengoose Fair, which used to be held at Stratford, may be connoted with the "Goose-Intentos," a festival which was customarily held on the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost. Pentecost, the time when the Holy Ghost descended in the form of "cloven tongues," resolves into _Universal Good Ghost_.

The Santones, whose emblem was the Pig and Fleur-de-lis, were neighbours of the Pictones. Our British Picts, the first British tribe known by name to history, are generally supposed to have derived their t.i.tle because they de_pict_ed pictures on their bodies. In West Cornwall there are rude stone huts known locally as Picts' Houses, but whether these are attributed to the Picts or the Pixies it is difficult to say. In Scotland the "Pechs" were obviously elves, for they are supposed to have been short, wee men with long arms, and such huge feet that on rainy days they stood upside down and used their feet as umbrellas. That the Picts' Houses of Cornwall were attributed to the Pechs is probable from the Scottish belief, "Oh, ay, they were great builders the Pechs; they built a' the auld castles in the country. They stood a' in a row from the quarry to the building stance, and elka ane handed forward the stanes to his neighbour till the hale was bigget."

That the pig and the bogie were intimately a.s.sociated is evidenced by a Welsh saying quoted by Sir John Rhys:--

A cutty black sow on every style Spinning and carding each November eve.

In Ireland Pooka was essentially a November spirit, and elsewhere November was pre-eminently the time of All Hallows or All Angels.

_Hallow_ is the same word as _elle_ the Scandinavian for _elf_ or _fairy_, and at Michaelmas or Hallowe'en, pixies, spooks, and bogies were notoriously all-abroad:--

On November eve A Bogie on every stile.

The time of All Hallows, or Michaelmas used to be known as Hoketide, a festival which in England was more particularly held upon St. Blaze's Day; and at that cheerless period the people used to light bonfires or make blazes for the purpose of "lighting souls out of Purgatory". In Wales a huge fire was lighted by each household and into the ashes of this _bon_fire, this _alban_ or _elphin_ fire,[269] every member of the family threw a _white_ or "Alban," or an _elphin_ stone, kneeling in prayer around the dying fire.[270] In the Isle of Man Hallowtide was known as Hollantide,[271] which again permits the equation of St. h.e.l.len or Elen and her train with Long Meg and her daughters. On the occasion of the Hallow or Ellie-time saffron or yellow cakes, said to be emblematical of the fires of purgatory, used to be eaten. To run _amok_ in the East means a _fiery fury_--the words are the same; and that _bake_ (or _beeak_ as in Yorks.h.i.+re dialect) meant fire is obvious from the synonymous _cook_. _Coch_ is Welsh for red, and the flaming red poppy or corn_c.o.c.k_le, French--_coquelicot_, was no doubt the symbol of the solar poppy, pope, or pap. The Irish for pap or breast is _cich_, and in Welsh _cycho_ means a hive, or anything of concave or hivelike shape. Possibly here we have the origin of _quick_ in its sense of living or alive.

One of the features of Michaelmas in Scotland was the concoction and cooking of a giant _cake_, bun, or bannock. According to Martin this was "enormously large, and compounded of different ingredients. This cake belonged to the Archangel, and had its name from him. Every one in each family, whether strangers or domestics, had his portion of this kind of shew-bread, and had of course some t.i.the to the friends.h.i.+p and protection of Michael."[272] In Hertfords.h.i.+re during a corresponding period of "joy, plenty, and universal benevolence," the young men a.s.sembled in the fields choosing a very active leader who then led them a Puck-like chase through bush and through briar, for the sake of diversion selecting a route through ponds, ditches, and places of difficult pa.s.sage.[273] The term _Ganging_ Day applied to this festival may be connoted with the Singin 'een of the Scotch Hogmanay, and with the leader of St. Micah's rout may be connoted _demagog_. This word, meaning popular leader, is attributed to _demos_, people, and _agogos_, leading, but more seemingly it is _Dame Gog_ or _Good Mother Gog_.

In Durham is a Pickburn or Pigburn; _beck_ is a generic term for a small stream; in Devon is a river Becky, and in Monmouths.h.i.+re a river Beeg. In Kent is Bekesbourne, and Pegwell Bay near St. Margarets in Kent, may be connoted with Backwell or Bachwell in Somerset. In Herefords.h.i.+re is a British earthwork, known as Bach Camp, and on Bucton Moor in Northumberland there are two earth circles. In Devons.h.i.+re is Buckland-Egg, or Egg-Buckland, and with the various Boxmoors, Boxgroves, Boxdales, and Boxleys may be connoted the Box river which pa.s.ses Keynton and crosses Akeman Street. A Christmas _box_ is a boon or a gift, a box or receptacle is the same word as _pyx_; and that the evergreen undying box-tree was esteemed sacred, is evident from the words of Isaiah: "I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine tree, and the box tree together".[274]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 62 to 64.--Iberian. From Akerman.]

_Bacon_, radically _bac_, in neighbouring tongues varies into _baco_, _bakke_, _bak_, and _bache_. Bacon is a family name immortally a.s.sociated with St. Albans, and it is probable that Trebiggan--a vast man with arms so long that he could take men out of the s.h.i.+ps pa.s.sing by Land's End, and place them on the Long s.h.i.+ps--was the Eternal Biggan or Beginning. In British Romance there figures a mystic Lady Tryamour, whose name is obviously _Tri_ or _Three Love_, and it is probable that Giant Trebiggan was the pagan Trinity, or Triton, whose emblem was the three-spiked trident. Triton _alias_ Neptune was the reputed Father of Giant Albion, and the sh.e.l.l-haired deity represented on Figs. 62 to 64 is probably Albon, for the inscription in Iberian characters reads BLBAN. In the East Bel was a generic term meaning _lord_: in the West it seemingly meant, just as it does to-day, _fine_ or _beautiful_. The city of BLBAN or _beautiful Ban_ is now Bilbao, and the three fish on this coin are a.n.a.logous to the trident, and to numberless other emblems of the Triune.

The radiating fan of the c.o.c.kle sh.e.l.l connects it with the Corn-c.o.c.kle as the Dawn, standing jocund on the misty mountain tops, is related to the flaming midday Sun. All _conchas_, particularly the _echinea_ or "St. Cuthbert's Bead," were symbols of St. Katherine or Cuddy, and in Art St. Jacques or St. Jack was always represented with a sh.e.l.l.

_Coquille_, the French for sh.e.l.l, is the same word as _goggle_, and in England the _c.o.c.kle_ was popularly connected with a strange custom known as Hot c.o.c.kles or c.o.c.kle Bread. Full particulars of this practice are given by Hazlitt, who observes: "I entertain a conviction that with respect to these hot c.o.c.kles, and likewise to leap-candle, we are merely on the threshhold of the enquiry ... the question stands at present much as if one had picked up by accident the husk of some lost substance....

Speaking conjecturally, but with certain sidelights to encourage, this seems a case of the insensible degradation of rite into custom."[275]

Sh.e.l.ls are one of the most common deposits in prehistoric graves, and at Boston in Lincolns.h.i.+re stone coffins have been found completely filled with c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.ls. There would thus seem to be some connection between Ickanhoe, the ancient name for Boston, a town of the Iceni, situated on the Ichenield Way, and the _echinea_ or _concha_. As the c.o.c.kle was particularly the symbol of Birth, the presence of these sh.e.l.ls in coffins may be attributed to a hope of New Birth and a belief that Death was the _yoni_ or Gate of Life.

The word _inimical_ implies _un-amicable_, or unfriendly, whence Michael was seemingly the Friend of Man. _Maculate_ means spotted, and the coins here ill.u.s.trated, believed to have been minted at St. Albans, obviously feature no physical King but rather the Kaadman or Good Man of St.

Albans in his dual aspect of age and youth. The starry, spotted, or maculate effigy is apparently an attempt to depict the astral or spiritual King, for it was an ancient idea that the spirit-body and the spirit-world were made of a so-called stellar-matter--a notion which has recently been revived by the Theosophists who speak of the astral body and the astral plane. Our modern _breath_, old English _breeth_, is evidently the Welsh _brith_ which means spotted, and it is to this root that Sir John Rhys attributes the term Brython or Britain, finding in it a reference to that painting or tattooing of the body which distinguished the Picts.[276] The word _tattoo_, Maori _tatau_, is the Celtic _tata_ meaning father, and the implication seems to follow that the custom of _tattooing_ arose from picking, dotting, or maculating the tribal totem or caste-mark.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 65 and 66.--British. From Akerman.]

In the Old English representation here ill.u.s.trated either St. Peter or G.o.d the Father is conspicuously tattooed or spotted; Pan was always a.s.signed a _pan_ther's skin, or spotted cloak.

A _speck_ is a minute spot, and among the ancients a speck or dot within a circle was the symbol of the central Spook or Spectre. This, like all other emblems, was understood in a personal and a cosmic sense, the little speck and circle representing the soul surrounded by its round of influence and duties; the Cosmic speck, the Supreme Spirit, and the circle the entire Universe. In many instances the dot and ring seems to have stood for the pupil in the iris of the eye. In addition it is evident that [circled dot] was an emblem of the Breast, and hieroglyphed the speck in the centre of the zone or sein, for the Greek letter _theta_ written--[circled dot] is identical with _teta, teat, tada, dot_ or _dad_. The dotted effigy on the coins supposedly minted at St. Albans may be connoted with the curious fact that in Welsh the word _alban_ meant _a primary point_.[277]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 67.--Christ's Ascent from h.e.l.l. From _Ancient Mysteries_ (Hone, W.).]

_Speck_ is the root of _speculum_, a mirror, and it might be suggested by the materialist that the first reflection in a metal mirror was a.s.sumed to be a spook. The mirror is an attribute of nearly every ancient Deity, and the British Druids seem to have had some system of flas.h.i.+ng the sunlight on to the crowd by means of what was termed by the Bards, the Speculum of the Pervading Glance. _Specula_ means a watch-tower, and _spectrum_ means vision. _Speech, speak_, and _spoke_, point to the probability that speech was deemed to be the voice of the indwelling spook or spectre, which etymology is at any rate preferable to the official surmise "all, perhaps, from Teutonic base _sprek_--to make a noise".

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 68.--The Mirror of Thoth. From _The Correspondences of Egypt_ (Odhner, C.T.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 69.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 70 to 72.--British. From _English Coins and Tokens_ (Jewitt & Head).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 73.--From _The Correspondences of Egypt_ (Odhner, C. T.).]

The Egyptian hieroglyph here ill.u.s.trated depicts the speculum of Thoth, a deity whom the Phoenicians rendered Taut, and to whom they attributed the invention of the alphabet and all other arts. The whole land of Egypt was known among other designations as "the land of the Eye," and by the Egyptians as also by the Etrurians, the symbolic blue Eye of Horus was carried constantly as an amulet against bad luck. Fig. 69 is an Egyptian die-stamp, and Figs. 70 to 72 are British coins of which the intricate symbolism will be considered in due course. The arms of Fig.

73 are extended into the act of benediction, and _utat_, the Egyptian word for this symbol, resolves into the soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious Tat. That the _utat_ or eye was familiar in Europe is evidenced by the Kio coin here ill.u.s.trated.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 74.--From _Numismatique Ancienne_ (Barthelemy, J. B. A. A.).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 75.--From _Symbolism of the East and West_ (Aynsley, Mrs. Murray).]