Archaic England Part 21

The legend of St. George and the dragon has had its local habitation fixed in many districts notably in Berks.h.i.+re at the vale of the White Horse. The famous George of Cappadocia is first heard of as "a purveyor of provisions for the Army of Constantinople," and he was subsequently a.s.sociated with a certain Dracontius (_i.e._, _dragon_), "Master of the Mint". The same legend is a.s.signed at Lambton in England not to George but to "_John_ that slew ye worm": in Turkey St. George is known as Oros, which is obviously Horus or Eros, the Lord of the Horae or hours, and the English dragon-slayer Conyers of _Sockburn_ is presumably King Yers, whose burn or brook was presumably named after Shock or Jock. In some parts of England a bogey dog is known under the t.i.tle of "Old Shock," and in connection with Conyers and John that slew ye worm may be noted near Conway the famous Llandudno headlands, Great and Little _Orme_ or _Worm_.

The St. George of Scandinavia is named Gest: that Gest was the great _Gust_ or Mighty Wind is probable, and it is more likely that Windsor, a world-famous seat of St. George, meant, not as is a.s.sumed _winding sh.o.r.e_, but _wind sire_. That St. George was the Ruler of the gusts or winds is implied by the fact that among the Finns, anyone brawling on St. George's Day was in danger of suffering from storms and tempests.

The murmuring of the wind in the oak groves of Dodona was held to be the voice of Zeus, and the will of the All Father was there further deduced by means of a three-chained whip hanging over a metal basin from the hand of the statue of a boy. From the movements of these chains, agitated by the wind and blown by the gusts till they tinkled against the bowl, the will of the _Ghost_ was guessed, and the word _guess_ seemingly implies that guessing was regarded as the operation of the good or bad _geis_ within. In Windsor Great Forest stood the famous Oak or Picktree, where Puck, _alias_ Herne the Hunter, appeared occasionally in the form of an antlered Buck. The supposition that St. George was the great _Gush_ or _geyser_ is strengthened by the fact that near the Cornish Padstow, Petrock-Stowe, or the stowe of the Great Pater, there is a well called St. George's Well. This well is described as a "mere spring which gushes from a rock," and the legend states that the water gushed forth immediately St. George had trodden on the spot and has ne'er since ceased to flow.

The Italian for blue--the colour of the deep water and of the high Heavens--is also _turchino_, and on 23rd April (French _Avril_), blue coats used to be worn in England in honour of the national saint whose red cross on a white ground has immemorially been our Naval Ensign.[290] St. George figured particularly in the Furry or Flora dance at Helston, and the month of _Avril_, a period when the earth is opening up its treasures, seemingly derives its name from Ver or Vera, the "daughter deare" of Flora. On 23rd April "the riding of the George"

was a princ.i.p.al solemnity in certain parts of England: on St. George's Day a White Horse used to stand harnessed at the end of St. George's Chapel in St. Martin's Church, Strand, and the Duncannon Street, which now runs along the south side of this church, argues the erstwhile existence either here or somewhere of a dun or down of cannon. A cannon is a gun, and our Dragoon guards are supposed to have derived their t.i.tle from the dragons or fire-arms with which they were armed. The inference is that the first inventors of the gun, cannon, or dragon, entertained the pleasing fancy that their weapon was the fire-spouting worm.[291] The dragon was the emblem of the _Cyn_bro or Kymry: a.s.sociated with the red cross of St. George it is the cognisance of London, and a fearsome dragon stands to-day at the boundary of the city on the site of Temple Bar.

In the reign of Elizabeth an injunction was issued that "there shall be neither George nor Margaret," an implication that Margaret was once the recognised Consort of St. George, and the expression "riding of the George," points to the probability that the White Horse, even if riderless, was known as "the George". The White Horse of Kent with its legend INVICTA implies--unless Heraldry is weak in its grammar--not a horse but a mare: George was Invictus or the Unconquerable, and, as will be seen, there are good reasons to suppose that the White Horse and White Mare were indigenous to Britain long before the times of the Saxon Hengist and Horsa. It is now generally accepted that Hengist, which meant _horse_, and Horsa, which meant _mare_, were mythical characters.

With the coming of the Saxons no doubt the wors.h.i.+p of the White Horse revived for it was an emblem of Hanover, and in Hanover cream-coloured horses were reserved for the use of royalty alone. With the notorious Hanoverian Georges may be connoted the fact that opposite St. George's Island at Looe (Cornwall) is a strand or market-place named Hannafore: at Hinover in Suss.e.x a white horse was carved into the hillside.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 108.--From _The Scouring of the White Horse_ (Hughes, T.).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 109.--British. From _A New Description of England_ (1724).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 110 to 113.--British No. 110 from Camden. No. 112 from Akerman. No. 113 from Evans.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 114.--Iberian. From Akerman.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 115 and 116.--British. From Akerman.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 117.--Iberian. From Akerman.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 118.--British. From Evans.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 119.--British. From Akerman.]

The White Horse--which subsequently became the Hobby Horse, or the Hob's Horse, of our popular revels--has been carved upon certain downs in England and Scotland for untold centuries. That these animals were designedly white is implied by an example on the brown heather hills of Mormond in Aberdeens.h.i.+re: here the subsoil is black and the required white has been obtained by filling in the figure with white felspar stones.[292] It will be noticed that the White Horse at Uffington as reproduced overleaf is beaked like a bird, and has a remarkable dot-and-circle eye: in Figs. 110 to 113 the animal is similarly beaked, and in Fig. 111 the object in the bill is seemingly an egg. The designer of Fig. 109 has introduced apparently a goose or swan's head, and also a sprig or branch. The word BODUOC may or may not have a relation to Boudicca or Boadicea of the Ikeni--whose territories are marked by the Ichnield Way of to-day--but in any case _Boudig_ in Welsh meant victory or Victorina, whence the "very peculiar horse" on this coin may be regarded as a prehistoric Invicta. The St. George of Persia there known as Mithras was similarly wors.h.i.+pped under the guise of a white horse, and Mithras was similarly "Invictus". The winged genius surmounting the horse on Fig. 114, a coin of the Tarragona, Tarchon, or _dragon_ district--is described as "Victory flying," and there is little doubt that the idea of White Horse or Invictus was far spread. At Edgehill there used to be a Red Horse carved into the soil, and the tenancy of the neighbouring Red Horse Farm was held on the condition that the tenant scoured the Red Horse annually _on Palm Sunday_: the palm is the emblem of Invictus, and it will be noticed how frequently the palm branch appears in conjunction with the horse on our British coinage.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 120.--Gaulish. From Akerman.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 121.]

The story of St. George treading on the Padstow Rock, and the subsequent gush of water, is immediately suggestive of the Pegasus legend. Pegasus, the winged steed of the Muses, which, with a stroke of its hoof, caused a fountain to gush forth, is supposed to have been thus named because he made his first appearance near the _sources_--Greek _pegai_--of Ocea.n.u.s.

It is obvious, however, from the coins of Britain, Spain, and Gaul, that Pegasus--occasionally astral-winged and hawk-headed--was very much at home in these regions, and it is not improbable that _pegasus_ was originally the Celtic _Peg Esus_. The G.o.d Esus of Western Europe--one of whose portraits is here given--was not only King Death, but he is identified by De Jubainville with Cuchulainn, the Achilles or Young Sun G.o.d of Ireland.[293] Esus, the counterpart of Isis, was probably the divinity wors.h.i.+pped at Uzes in Gaul, a coin of which town, representing a seven-rayed sprig springing from a brute, is here reproduced, and that King Esus or King Osis was the Lord of profound speculation, is somewhat implied by _gnosis_, the Greek word for knowledge. Tacitus mentions that the neighing of the sacred white horse of the Druids was regarded as oracular; the voice of a horse is termed its neigh, from which it would seem horses were regarded as super-intelligent animals which _knew_.[294] The inscription CUN or CUNO which occurs so frequently on the horse coins of Western Europe is seemingly akin to _ken_, the root of _know_, _knew_, _canny_, and _cunning_. In India the elephant _Ganesa_--seemingly a feminine form of _Genesis_ and _Gnosis_--was deemed to be the Lord of all knowledge.

In connection with Pegasus may be noted Buk_ephalus_, the famed steed of Alexander. The Inscriptions EPPILLUS and EPPI[295] occur on the Kentish coins, Figs. 122 and 123; _hipha_ or _hippa_ was the Phoenician for a mare; in Scotland the nightmare is known as _ephi_altus; a _hippo_drome is a horse course, whence, perhaps, Bukephalus may be translated Big Eppilus. The little elf or elve under a bent sprig is presumably Bog or Puck, and in connection with the _Eagle_-headed Pegasus of Fig. 164 may be noted the Puckstone by the megalithic _Aggle_ Stone at Pur_beck_, where is a St. Alban's Head.[296]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 122 and 123.--British. From Akerman.]

Whether or not Pegasus was Big Esus or Peg or Puck Esus is immaterial, but it is quite beyond controversy that the animals now under consideration are Elphin Steeds and that they are not the "deplorable abortions" which numismatists imagine. The recognised authorities are utterly contemptuous towards our coinage, to which they apply terms such as "very rude," "an attempt to represent a horse," "barbarous imitation," and so forth; but I am persuaded that the craftsmen who fabricated these archaic coins were quite competent to draw straightforward objects had such been their intent. Akerman is seriously indignant at the indefiniteness of the object which resembles a fishbone and "has been called a fern leaf," and he sums up his feelings by opining that this uncouth representation may be as much the result of incompetent workmans.h.i.+p as of successive fruitless attempts at imitation.[297]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 124 to 127.--Iberian. From Barthelemy.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 128 and 129.--Iberian. From Akerman.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 130.--Gaulish. From Akerman.]

Incompetent comprehension would condemn Figs. 124 to 129, particularly the draughtsmans.h.i.+p of the head: it is hardly credible, yet, says Akerman, the small winged elf in these coins "apparently escaped the observation of M. de Saulcy". They emanated from the Tarragonian town of Ana or Ona, and are somewhat suggestive of the mythic tale that Minerva sprang from the head of Jove: the horses on the Gaulish coin ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 130, which is attributed either to Verdun or Vermandois, are inscribed VERO IOVE and that Jou was the White Horse is, to some extent, implied by our elementary words _Gee_ and _Geho_. According to Hazlitt "the exclamation Geho! Geho! which carmen use to their horses is not peculiar to this country, as I have heard it used in France":[298] it is probable that the Jehu who drove furiously was a memory of the solar charioteer; it is further probable that the story of Io, the divinely fair daughter of Inachus, who was said to have been pursued over the world by a malignant gadfly, originated in the lumpish imagination of some one who had in front of him just such elfin emblems as the pixy horse now under consideration. That in reality the gadfly was a good _mouche_ is implied by the term gad: the inscription KIO on Fig. 74 (p.

253) reads Great Io or Great Eye, and in connection with the remarkable optic of the White Horse at Uffington may be connoted the place-name Horse Eye near _Bex_hill. The curious place-name Beckjay in Shrops.h.i.+re is suggestive of Big Jew or Joy: the blue-crested monarch of the woods we call a jay (Spanish, _gayo_, "of doubtful origin") was probably the bird of Jay or Joy--just as _picus_ or the crested woodp.e.c.k.e.r was admittedly Jupiter's bird--and the Jaye's Park in Surrey, which is in the immediate neighbourhood of G.o.dstone, Gadbrooke, and Kitlands, was seemingly a.s.sociated at some period with Good Jay or Joy.

We speak ironically to-day of our "Jehus," and the word _hack_ still survives: in Chaucer's time English carters encouraged their horses with the exclamation Heck![299] the Irish for _horse_ was _ech_, and the inscription beneath the effigy on Fig. 131, a Tarragonian coin, reads, according to Akerman, EKK. That the _hack_ was connected in idea with the oak is somewhat implied by a horse ornament in my possession, the eye or centre of which is represented by an oak corn or _ac_orn. In the North of England the elves seem to have been known as _hags_, for fairy rings are there known as _hag_ tracks. The word _hackney_ is identical with Boudicca's tribe the Ikeni, and it is believed that Caesar's reference to the Cenimagni or Cenomagni refers to the Ikeni: whence it is probable that the Ikeni, like the Cantii, were wors.h.i.+ppers of Invicta, the Great Hackney, the _Ceni Magna_ or Hackney Magna.

The water horse which figures overleaf may be connoted with the Scotch kelpie, which is radically _ek Elpi_ or _Elfi_: the kelpie or water horse of Scotch fairy lore is a ghastly spook, just as Alpa in Scandinavia is a ghoul and _Ephialtes_ in Albany or Scotland is a nightmare: but there must almost certainly have been a White Kelpie, for the Greeks held a national horse race which they termed the Calpe, and Calpe is the name of the mountain which forms the European side of the Pillars of Hercules. From the surnames Killbye and Gilbey one may perhaps deduce a tribe who were followers of _'K Alpe_ the _Great All Feeder_: that the kelpie was regarded as the fourfold feeder is obvious from the four most unnatural teats depicted on the Pixtil coin of Fig.

133.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 131.--Iberian. From Akerman.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 132.--British. From Akerman.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 133.--Channel Islands. From Barthelemy.]

The Welsh form of Alphin is Elphin, and the Cornish height known as G.o.dolphin--whence the family name G.o.dolphin--implies, like Robin Goodfellow, _Good Elphin_. With Elphin, Alban, and Hobany may be connected the Celtic G.o.ddess Epona, "the tutelar deity of horses and probably originally a horse totem". To Epona may safely be a.s.signed the word _pony_; Irish _poni_; Scotch _powney_, all of which the authorities connect with _pullus_, the Latin for _foal_: it is quite true there is a _p_ in both. We have already traced a connection between neighing, knowing, kenning, and cunning, and there is seemingly a further connection between Epona, the G.o.ddess of Horses, and _opine_, for according to Plato the horse signified "reason and _opinion_ coursing about through natural things".[300]

British horses used to be known familiarly as Joan, and the term _jennet_ presumably meant _Little Joan_: the Italian for a _hackney_ is _chinea_. At Hackney, which now forms part of London, there is an Abney Park which was once, it may be, a.s.sociated with Hobany or Epona: the main street of Hackney or Haconey (which originally contained the Manor of Hoxton) is Mare Street; and this _mare_ was seemingly the Ken_mure_ whose traces are perpetuated in Kenmure Road, Hackney. At the corner of Seven Sisters Road is the church of St. Olave, and the neighbouring Alvington Street suggests that this Kingsland Road district was once a town or down of Alvin the Elphin King. G.o.dolphin Hill in Cornwall was alternatively known as G.o.dolcan, and there is every reason to suppose that Elphin was the good old king, the good all-king, and the good holy king.

Hackney was seemingly once one of the many congregating "Londons," and we may recognise Elen or Ollan in London Fields, London Lane, Lyne Grove, Olinda (or Good Olin) Road, Londesborough Road, Ellingfort (or Strong Ellin) Road, Lenthall (or Tall Elen) Road. In Linscott Street there stood probably at one time a Cot, Cromlech, or "Kit's Coty," and at the neighbouring Dalston[301] was very possibly a Tallstone, equivalent to the Cornish _tal carn_ or _high rock_.

The adjective _long_ or _lanky_ is probably of h.e.l.lenic origin, and the giants or long men sometimes carved in hill-sides (as at Cerne Abbas) were like all Longstones once perhaps representations of Helen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 134.--"Metal ornaments found on horse trappings (North Lincolns.h.i.+re, 1907). Nos. 1-8 represent forms of the crescent amulet; Nos. 8-11, the horseshoe. No.

12 is a well-known mystic symbol. No. 15 shows the cross potencee, and No. 16 the cross patee: these seem to denote Christian influence. Nos. 13 and 14 indicate the decay of folk memory concerning amulets, though _the heart pattern was originally talismanic_. Nos. 7 and 8 form bridle 'plumes,' No. 6 is a hook for a bearing-rein; the remainder are either forehead medallions or breeching decorations. The patterns 1-4, 9, 11, 13, 14, and 16, are fairly common in London."

From _Folk Memory_ (Johnson, W.). ]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 135.--Iberian. From Akerman.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 136.--British. From Evans.]

The Town Hall at Hackney stands on a plot of ground known as Hackney Grove, and the neighbouring Mildmay Park and Mildmay Grove suggest a grove or sanctuary of the Mild May or Mary. That Pegasus was known familiarly in this district is implied by the White Horse Inn on Hackney Marshes and by its neighbour "The Flying Horse": Hackney neighbours Homerton, and that the national Hackney or _mare_ was Homer or Amour is obvious from Fig. 135, where a heart, the universal emblem of _amour_, is represented at its Hub, navel, or bogel. According to Sir John Evans the "princ.i.p.al characteristic" of Fig. 136 is "the heart-shaped figure between the forelegs of the horse, the meaning of which I am at a loss to discover":[302] but any yokel could have told Sir John the meaning of the heart or hearts which are still carved into tree trunks, and were rarely anything else than the emblems of Amor. The observant Londoner will not fail to notice particularly on May Day--the Mary or Mother Day--when our c.o.c.kney horses parade in much of their immemorial finery and pomp--that golden hearts, stringed in long sequences over the harness, are conspicuous among the half-moons, stars, and other prehistoric emblems of the Bona dea or pre-Christian Mary.

Hackney includes the churches of St. Mary, St. Michael, and St. Jude: Jude is the same word as _good_, and the St. Jude of Scripture who was surnamed Thadee, and was said to be the son of Alpheus, is apparently Good Tadi or Daddy, _alias_ St. Alban the All Good, the Kaadman. St.

Jude is also St. Chad, and there was a celebrated Chadwell[303] at the end of the Marylebone Road now known as St. Pancras or King's Cross: at King's Cross there is a locality still known as Alpha Place.

At Hackney is a Gayhurst Road, which may imply an erstwhile hurst or wood of Gay or Jay, and "at the south end of Springfield Road there is a curious and interesting little hamlet lying on the water's edge. The streets are very steep, and some of them extremely narrow--mere pa.s.sages like the wynds in Edinburgh."[304] This little hamlet is "encircled" by Mount Pleasant Lane, whence one may a.s.sume that the eminence itself was known at some time or other as Mount Pleasant.

The "Mount Pleasant" at Hackney may be connoted with the more famous "Mount Pleasant" at Dun Ainy, Knock Ainy, or the Hill of Aine in Limerick. The "_pleasant_ hills" of Ireland were defined as "_ceremonial_ hills," and it was particularly on the night of All Hallows that the immemorial ceremonies were there observed. To this day Aine or Ana, a beautiful and gracious water-spirit, "the best-natured of women," is reverenced at Knockainy, and the legend persists that "Aine promised to save bloodshed if the hill were given to her till the end of the world".[305] That Mount Pleasant at Hackney or Hackoney was similarly dedicated to High Aine or Ana is an inference to which the facts seem clearly to point.

It would also be permissible to interpret Hackney as Oaken Island, in which light it may be connoted with Glas...o...b..ry, the word _glaston_ being generally supposed to be _glasten_, the British for oak.

Glas...o...b..ry, the celebrated Avalon, Apple Island, Apollo Island, or Isle of Rest, was a world-famous "Mount Pleasant," and on its most elevated height there stands St. Michael's Tower. Glas...o...b..ry itself,[306] "its two streets forming a perfect cross," is almost engirdled by a little river named the _Brue_. The French town _Bray_ is in the so-called Santerre or Holy-land district: the remains of a megalithic _santerre_, _saintuarie_ or sanctuary are still standing at Abury or Aubury in Wilts.h.i.+re, and we may equate this place-name with _abri_, a generic term in French, "origin unknown," for _sanctuary_ or refuge.

Near Bray, Santerre, is Auber's Ridge, which may be connoted with Aubrey Walk, the highest spot in Kensington, and it would seem that _Abury's_, _abris_, or "Mount Pleasants" were once plentiful in the bundle of communities, towns.h.i.+ps, parishes, and lords.h.i.+ps which have now merged into the Greater London: Ebury Square in the South-West may mark one, and Highbury in the North, with its neighbouring "Mount Pleasant,"

another.

The immortal Mount Pleasant of the Muses was named Helicon, and from here sprang the celebrated fountains Aganippe and Hippocrene. At Holywell in Wales there is a village called Halkin lying at the foot of a hill named Helygen: there is a Heligan Hill in Cornwall, and a river Olcan in Hereford: there is an Alconbury in Hunts, and an Elkington (Domesday Alchinton) at Louth. An Elk is a gigantic buck whose radiating antlers are so fern-like that a genus has appropriately been designated the Elk fern. Ilkley in Yorks.h.i.+re is thought to be the Olicana of Ptolemy, and there is standing to-day at Ramsgate a Holy Cone or Helicon modernised into "Hallicondane". The _dane_ here probably implies a _dun_ or hill-fort, and the _Hallicon_ itself consists of a peak crossed by four roads.[307] This Ramsgate Hallicondane, which stands by Allington Park, may have been a _dun_ of the Elle or Elf King: in France h.e.l.lequin is a.s.sociated with Columbine, and the little figure labelled CUIN (_infra_, p. 397 Fig. 336), may be identified with this virgin. The Alcantara district to which this Cuin coin has been attributed was, it may safely be a.s.sumed, a _tara_, _tre_, or _troy_ of Alcan.

On the top of Tory Hill in Kilkenny, _i.e._, _Kenny's Church_, stood a pagan altar: the more famous Tara or Temair is a.s.sociated primarily with a "son of Ollcain"; it is said next to have pa.s.sed into the possession of a certain Cain, and to have been known as _Druim Cain_ or "Cain's Ridge".[308]

Halcyon days mean blissful, pleasant, radiant, ideal, days, and of the Holy King or All King the blue jewelled King-fisher or Halcyon seems to have been a symbol. Whether there be any connection between Elgin and the Irish Hooligans, or whether these trace their origin to the "son of Ollcain," I do not know. From the colossal Kinia and Acongagua down to the humblest _peg_, every _peak_ seems to have been similarly named. The pimple is a diminutive hill or _pock_, and the _pykes_ of c.u.mberland are the _peaks_ of Derbys.h.i.+re. At the summit of the Peak District stands Buxton, claiming to be the highest market-town in England: around Buxton, formerly written "Bawkestanes," still stand cromlechs and other Poukelays or Buk stones: Backhouse is a surname in the Buxton district, and the original Backhouses may well have wors.h.i.+pped either Bacchus, _i.e._, St. Baccho, or the gentle Baucis who merged into a Linden tree.