Archaic England Part 3

At Brandon is Broomhill; the words _bran_ and _broom_ will be subsequently shown to be radically the same, and I shall suggest reasons why this term, even possibly in Old Stone times, meant _hill_.

During recent years the study of place-names has been pa.s.sing through a period of spade-work, and every available doc.u.ment from Doomsday Book to a Rent Roll has been scrupulously raked. The inquirer now therefore has available a remarkably interesting record of the various forms which our place-names have pa.s.sed through, and he can eliminate the essential features from the non-essential. Although the subject has thus considerably been elucidated, the additional information obtained has, however, done nothing to solve the original riddle and in some cases has rendered it more complex.

The new system which is popularly supposed to have eliminated all guesswork has in reality done nothing of the kind. In place of the older method, which, in the words of Prof. Skeat, "exalted impudent a.s.sertions far above positive evidence," it has boldly subst.i.tuted a new form of guesswork which is just as reckless and in many respects is no less impudent than the old. The present fas.h.i.+on is to suppose that the river _x_ or the town of _y_ _may_ have been the property of, or founded by, some purely hypothetical Anglo-Saxon. For example: the river Hagbourne of Berks.h.i.+re is guessed to have been _Hacca's burn or brook_, which possibly it was, but there is not a scintilla of real evidence one way or the other.

If one is going to postulate "Hacca's" here and there, there is obviously a s.p.a.ce waiting for a member of the family on the great main road ent.i.tled Akeman Street. As this ancient thoroughfare traverses Bath we are, however, told that it "received in Saxon times the significant name of Akeman Street from the condition of the gouty sufferers who travelled along it".[44] One would prefer even a phantom Hacca to this _aching man_, nor does the alternatively suggested _aqua_, water, bring us any nearer a solution.

There sometimes appears to be no bottom to the vacuity of modern guesswork. It is seriously and not _pour rire_ suggested that Horselydown was where horses could lie down; that Honeybrook was so designated because of its honey-sweet water, and that the name Isle of Dogs was "possibly because so many dogs were drowned in the Thames here".[45] In what respect do these and kindred definitions, which I shall cite from standard authors of to-day, differ from the "egregious"

speculations, the "wild guesses," and the "impudent a.s.sertions" of earlier scholars?

There is in Bucks a small town now known as Kimball, anciently as Cunebal. Tradition a.s.sociates this site with the British King Cymbeline or Cun.o.belin, and as the place further contains an eminence known as Belinsbury or Belinus Castle, the authorities can hardly avoid accepting the connection and the etymology. But for Kimbolton, which stands on a river named the Kym, the authorities--notwithstanding the river Kym--provide the purely supposit.i.tious etymology "Town of Cynebald".

There were, doubtless, thousands of Saxons whose name was Cynebald, but why Kimbolton should be a.s.signed to any one of these hypothetical persons instead of to Cymbeline is not in any way apparent. The river name Kym is sufficient to discredit Cynebald, and the greater probability is that not only the Kym but also all our river and mountain names are pre-Saxon.

It will be seen hereafter that the name Cun.o.belin or Cymbeline, which the dictionaries define as meaning _splendid sun_, was probably adopted as a dynastic t.i.tle of British chiefs, and that the effigies of Cymbeline on British coins have no more relation to any particular king than the mounted figure on our modern sovereign has to his Majesty King George V. The prefix _Cym_ or _Cuno_ will subsequently be seen to be the forerunner of the modern _Konig_ or _King_. Hence like Kimball or Cunebal, Kimbolton on the Kym was probably a seat of a Cymbeline, and the imaginary Saxon Cynebald may be dismissed as a usurper.

Kim_bolton_ used at one time to be known as Kinne_bantum_, whence it is evident that the essential part of the word is Kinne or Kim, and as another instance of the perplexing variations which are sometimes found in place-names the spot now known as Iffley may be cited. This name occurs at various periods as follows: Gifetelea, Sifetelea, Zyfteleye, Yestley, Iveclay and Iftel. This is a typical instance of the extraordinary variations which have perplexed the authorities, and is still causing them to cast vainly around for some formula or law of sound-change, which shall account satisfactorily for the problem. "We are at present," says Prof. Wyld, "quite unable to formulate the laws of the interchange of stress in place-names, or of the effects of these in retaining, modifying, or eliminating syllables.... Until these laws are properly formulated, it cannot be said that we have a scientific account of the development of place-names. The whole thing is often little better than a conjuring trick."[46]

No amount of brainwork has conjured any sense from Iffley, and the etymology has been placed on the shelf as "unknown". I shall venture to suggest that the initial G, S, Z, or Y, of this name, and of many others being adjectival, the radical Ive or Iff, as being the essential, has alone survived. It will be seen that Iffley was in all probability a lea or meadow dedicated to "The Ivy Girl" or May Queen, and that quite likely it was one of the many sites where, in the language of an old poet--

Holly and his Merry men they dawnsin and they sing, _Ivy and her maydons_ they wepen and they wryng.

I shall connote with Ivy and her maidens, not only Mother Eve, but also the clearly fabulous St. Ive. We shall see that the Lady G.o.diva of Coventry fame was known as G.o.d_gifu_, just as Iffley was once _Gife_telea, and we shall see that St. Ives in Cornwall appears in the registers alternatively as St. Yesses, just as Iffley was alternatively Yestley. Finally we shall trace the connection between Eve, the Mother of all living, and _Ave_bury, the greatest of all megalithic monuments.

If it be objected that my method is too meticulous, and that it is impossible for mere farm- and field-names to possess any prehistoric significance, I may refer for support to the Sixth Report of the Royal Commission appointed to inventory the ancient monuments of Wales and Monmouths.h.i.+re.[47] In the course of this doc.u.ment the Commissioners write as follows:--

"The t.i.the Schedules, unsatisfactory and disappointing though many of them are, contain such a collection of place-names, princ.i.p.ally those of fields, that the Commissioners at the outset of their inquiry determined upon a careful investigation of them. The undertaking involved in the first place the examination of hundreds of doc.u.ments, many of them containing several thousands of place-names; secondly, in the case of those names which were noted for further inquiry, the necessity of discovering the position of the field or site upon the t.i.the map; and, thirdly, the location of the field or site on the modern six-inch ordnance sheet. This prolonged task called for much patience and care, as well as ingenuity in comparing the boundaries of eighty years ago with those of the present time.

"Of the value of this work there can be no doubt. We do not venture to express any opinion on the question whether, or to what extent, farm and field names are of service to the English archaeologist; but with regard to their importance to the Welsh archaeologist there can be no two opinions. The fact that the Welsh place-names are being rapidly replaced by English names, so that the local lore which is often enshrined in the former is in danger of being lost, was in itself a sufficient reason for the undertaking. The results have more than justified our decision.

There is hardly a parish, certainly not one of the ancient parishes, of the princ.i.p.ality, where the schedule of field names has not yielded some valuable results. Scores of small but in some cases important antiquities would have pa.s.sed unrecorded, had it not been for the clue to their presence given by the place-name which was to be found only in the schedule to the t.i.the Survey."

In Cornwall almost every parish is named after some saintly apostle, and many of these saints are alleged to have travelled far and wide in the world founding towns and villages. It is almost a physical impossibility that this was literally true, and it becomes manifestly incredible on consideration of the miracles recorded in the lives of the travellers.

As already suggested the greater probability is that the lives of the saints enshrine almost intact the traditions of pre-Christian divinities. Of the popular and most familiar St. Patrick, Borlase (W.

C.), writes: "Of the reality of the existence of this Patrick, son of Calp.o.r.n, we feel not the shadow of a doubt. But he was not _the only_ Patrick, and as time went on traditions of one other Patrick at least came to be commingled with his own. We have before us the names of ten other contemporary Patricks, all ecclesiastics, and spread over Wales, Ireland, France, Spain, and Italy. The name appears to be that of a grade or order in the Church rather than a proper name in the usual sense. Thus Palladius is called also Patrick in the 'Book of Armagh' and _the_ Patrick (whichever he may have been) is represented as styling Declan 'the Patrick of the Desii,' and Ailbhe 'the Patrick of Munster'.

When Patrick sojourned in a cave in an island in the Tyrrhene Sea he found three other Patricks there." Precisely: and there is little doubt that our London Battersea or Patrixeye was originally an _ea_ or island where the patricks or padres of St. Peter's at Westminster once congregated.

The arguments applied to St. Patrick apply equally to, say, St. Columba, or the Holy Dove, and similarly to St. Colman, a name also meaning _Dove_. In Ireland alone there are 200 dedications to St. Colman, and evidence will be brought forward that the archetype of all the St.

Colmans and all the St. Columbas and all the Patricks was Peter the _Pater_, who was symbolised by _petra_, the stone or rock.

The so-called Ossianic poems of Gaeldom, although of "a remarkably heathenish character," preserve the manners of and opinions of what the authorities describe as "a semi-barbarous people who were endowed with strong imagination, high courage, childlike tenderness, and gentle chivalry for women,"[48] and that the ancients were tinctured through and through with mysticism and imagination, finding tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything, is a fact which can be denied. When our words were framed and our ancient places, hills, and rivers named, I am persuaded that the world was in its imaginative childhood, and hence that traces of that state of mind may reasonably be antic.i.p.ated. It is remarkable that the skulls found in the first or oldest Troy exhibit the most intellectual characteristics,[49] and in many quarters seemingly the remoter the times the purer was the theology whether in Phrygia, Egypt, India, Persia, or Great Britain. Among the Cretans "religion entered at every turn" of their social system; in Egypt even the very games and dances had a religious significance, and the evidence of folklore testifies to the same effect in Britain. It was one among the many grievances of the pessimistic Gildas that the British were "slaves to the shadows of things to come," and this usually overlooked aspect of their character must, I think, be recognised in relation to their place-names. To a large degree the mystical element still persists in Brittany, where even to-day, in the words of Baring-Gould:--At a Pardon one sees and marvels at the wondrous faces of this remarkable people: the pure, sweet, and modest countenances of the girls, and those not less striking of the old folk. "It is," says Durtal, "the soul which is everything in these people, and their physiognomy is modelled by it. There are holy brightnesses in their eyes, on their lips, those doors to the borders of which the soul alone can come, from which it looks forth and all but shows itself. Goodness, kindness, as well as a cloistral spirituality, stream from their faces."[50]

What is still true of Brittany was once equally true of Britain, and although the individuality of the Gael has now largely been submerged by prosaic Anglo-Saxondom, the poetic temperament of the chivalrous and dreamy Celt was essentially a frame of mind that cared only for the heroic, the romantic, and the beautiful.

The science of etymology as practised to-day is unfortunately blind to this poetic element which was, and to some extent still is, an innate characteristic of "uncivilised" and unsophisticated peoples. Archbishop Trench, one of the original planners and promoters of _The New English Dictionary_, was not overstating when he wrote: "Let us then acknowledge man a born poet.... Despite his utmost efforts, were he mad enough to employ them, he could not succeed in exhausting his language of the poetical element which is inherent in it, in stripping it of blossom, flower, and fruit, and leaving it nothing but a bare and naked stem. He may fancy for a moment that he has succeeded in doing this, but it will only need for him to become a little better philologer to go a little deeper into the study of the words which he is using, and he will discover that he is as remote from this consummation as ever."

Nevertheless, current etymology _has_ achieved this inanity, and has so completely dismissed the animate or poetic element from its considerations that one may seek vainly the columns of Skeat and Murray for any hint or suggestion that language and imagination ever had anything in common. According to modern teaching language is a mere cl.u.s.ter of barbaric yawps: "No mystic bond linked word and thought together; utility and convenience alone joined them".[51]

Words, nevertheless, were originally born not from grammarians but amid the common people, and _pace_ Mr. Clodd they enshrine in many instances the mysticism and the superst.i.tions of the peasantry. How can one account, for instance, for the Greek word _psyche_, meaning _b.u.t.terfly_, and also _soul_, except by the knowledge that b.u.t.terflies were regarded by the ancients as creatures into which the soul was metamorphosised?

According to Grimm, the German name for stork means literally _child-_, or _soul-bringer_; hence the belief that the advent of infants was presided over by this bird. But why "_hence_"? and why put the cart before the horse? If one may judge from innumerable parallels of word-equivocation the legends arose not from the accident of similar words, nor from "misprision of terms," or from any other "disease of language," but the creatures were named _because of_ the attendant legend. It is common knowledge that in Egypt the animal sacred to a divinity was often designated by the name of that deity; similarly in Europe the bee, a symbol of the G.o.ddess _Mylitta_, was called a _mylitta_, and a bull, the symbol of the G.o.d _Thor_, was named a _thor_.

We speak to-day of an _Adonis_, because Adonis was a fabulously lovely youth, and parallel examples may be found on almost every hand. Irish mythology tells of a certain golden-haired hero named Bress, which means _beautiful_, whence we are further told that every beautiful thing in Ireland whether plain, fortress, or ale, or torch, or woman, or man, was compared with him, so that men said of them "That is a Bress". Elsewhere and herein I have endeavoured to prove that this principle was of worldwide application, and that it is an etymological key which will open the meaning of many words still in common use. It is a correlative fact that the names of specific deities such as Horus, Hathor, Nina, Bel, etc., developed in course of time into generic terms for any _Lord_ or _G.o.d_.

Very much the same principles are at work with us to-day, whence _a_ dreadnought from the prime "Dreadnought," and the etymologer of the future, who tries by strictly scientific methods to unravel the meaning of such words as _mackintosh_, _brougham_, _Sam Browne_, _gladstone_, _boycott_, etc., will find it necessary to investigate the legends attendant on those names rather than practice a formal permutation of vowels and consonants.

By common consent the quintessence of the last fifty years' philological progress is being distilled into Sir James Murray's _New English Dictionary_, and in a conciser form the same data may be found in Prof.

Skeat's _Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language_. Both these indispensable works are high watermarks of English scholars.h.i.+p, and whatever absurdities they contain are shortcomings not of their compilers but of the Teutonic school of philology which they exemplify.

If these two standard dictionaries were able to answer even the elementary questions that are put to them it would be both idle and presumptuous to cavil, but one has only to refer to their pages to realise the ignorance which prevails as to the origin and the meaning of the most simple and everyday words.

It is unfortunately true that "in philology as in all branches of knowledge it is the specialist who most strongly opposes any attempt to widen the field of his knowledge".[52] Hence, as was only to be expected, one of the reviewers of my _Lost Language of Symbolism_ deemed it quite insufferable that I should throw to the winds the laborious work on the science of phonetics built up by generations of careful research.

But in point of fact I discarded none of the sound work of my predecessors; I only tried to supplement it and fished deeper. My soundings do not begin until I am well beyond the limits of modern etymology, and they are no more affected by the cross-currents of historic languages than the activities of a deep-water fisherman are interrupted or affected by the tide eddies on the sh.o.r.e. The defect of official philology is that it offers no explanation for radicals. It does not, for example, attempt to explain why the word _ap_ was the Sanscrit for water, why _pri_ was the Sanscrit for love, or why _pat_ was the Sanscrit for fly. It refers the word oak to the Anglo-Saxon _ac_, Dr. Murray merely describing it as "a consonantal stem, ulterior meaning obscure". Etymology to-day is in fact very much in the situation of an insolvent bank which, unable to satisfy its creditors with cash on demand, blandly endeavours to satisfy them with corresponding cheques of equally uncashable face value. Words can never properly be interpreted merely by parallel words: originally they must have expressed ideas, and it is these underlying ideas that I am in search of. My previous work was a pioneer, and in many respects bungling attempt to pick up the threads where at present philology is content to lose them. Using the same keys as. .h.i.therto, I shall attempt to explore further the darkness which is at present the only achieved goal of the much trumpeted Science of Language.

In a moment of noteworthy frankness Prof. Skeat has admitted that "Scientific etymology is usually clumsy and frequently wrong".

Similarly, Prof. Sayce issues the warning: "Comparative philology has suffered as much from its friends as from its opponents; and now that it has at last won its way to general recognition and respect, there is a danger that its popularity may lead to the cessation of sound and honest work, and to an acquiescence in theories which, however plausible, are not yet placed upon a footing of scientific certainty. It is much easier for the ordinary man to fill in by patient elaboration what has already been sketched for him in outline, than to venture upon a new line of discovery, in which the sole clue must be the combinative powers of his own imagination and comprehensive learning. And yet, now as much as ever, comparative philology has need at once of bold and wide-reaching conceptions, of cautious verification, and of a mastery of facts. It is true the science is no longer struggling for mere life, and the time is gone by for proving the possibility of its existence. But it is still young, scarcely, indeed, out of its nursery; a small portion only of its province has. .h.i.therto been investigated, and much that is at present accepted without hesitation will have to be subjected to a searching inquiry, and possibly be found baseless after all."[53]

The value of any system must be measured by its results, and the fruits of philology as formulated only a year or so ago were unquestionably false. Where now are the "successes" of the Max Muller school which were advertised in such shrill and penetrating tones? Sanscrit is deposed from its pride of place, it being now recognised that primitive sounds are preserved more faithfully in Europe than elsewhere. Who to-day admits there is any basis for the Disease of Language theory, or that all fairy-tales and myths are resolvable into the Sun chasing the Dawn?[54] What anthropologist accepts the theory of Aryan overland immigration from somewhere in Asia? The archaeologists of the last generation were, in the light of modern findings, quite justified when, contrary to the then stereotyped idea, they maintained that skulls were harder things than consonants. In short, large sections of the card-castle of German philology have more or less crumbled, and in the cruel words of a modern authority on Crete: "Happily, archaeology has emerged from the slough into which the philologists had led her".

For the causes of this fiasco it is unnecessary to seek further than the fundamental fallacy upon which the "Science of Language" has been erected. According to Max Muller, "etymology is indeed a science in which ident.i.ty, or even similarity, whether of sound or meaning, is of no importance whatever. Sound etymology has nothing to do with sound. We know words to be of the same origin which have not a single letter in common, and which differ in meaning as much as black and white."

To maintain that "_sound etymology has nothing to do with sound_," is tantamount to the contention that language is not sound, which is obviously absurd. In the saner view of Dr. Latham: "language begins with voice, language ends with voice". The Germans, Poles, and Russians had no acquaintance with letters until the ninth century, and speech, which certainly existed for unnumbered centuries before either writing or spelling was evolved, must, primarily and essentially, have been a system of pure and simple phonetics, spreading, as a mother teaches her child, syllable by syllable, word upon word, and line upon line. To rule sound out of language, is, indeed, far more fatal than to purge Hamlet out of _Hamlet_. One may prove by super-ingenious logic and an elaborate code of cross references that black is white and white black, yet common sense knows all the time that it is not so. There are, I am aware, certain races who are unable to vocalise certain sounds and accordingly modify them. The obscure causes governing these phonetic changes must be taken into account, and as far as possible formulated into "laws," but the pages of Skeat and Murray demonstrate beyond refutation two very simple but very certain fundamental, universal facts, to which hitherto wholly insufficient attention has been given.

These elementary and seemingly never-varying facts are: (1) That originally vowel sounds were of no importance whatever, for in the same word they vary to the utmost limits, not only in different areas and in different eras, but contemporaneously in different grades of society; (2) that heavy and light consonants such as _b_ and _p_, _d_ and _t_, _f_ and _v_, _g_ and _k_, etc., are always interchangeable. Whether in place-names, words, or proper names, the changes are found _always_ to occur, and they are precisely those variations which common sense would suggest must occur in every case where words travel _viva voce_ and not via script or print. A man suffering from what Shakespeare would term "a wh.o.r.eson rheum," says, for instance, _did vor dad_ instead of _t.i.t for tat_, and there is, so far as I can discover, not a single word or a solitary place-name in which a similar variation of thin and thick consonants is not traceable.

The formidable Grimm's Law, any violation of which involves summary and immediate condemnation, is merely a statement of certain phonetic facts which happen invariably--unless they are interfered with by other facts.

The permutations of sound codified by Grimm are as follows:--

Greek _p_ Gothic _f_ Old High German _b_(_v_) " _b_ " _p_ " _f_ " _ph_ " _b_ " _p_ " _t_ " _th_ " _d_ " _d_ " _t_ " _z_ " _th_ " _d_ " _t_ " _k_ " (_h_) " _g_(_h_) " _g_ " _k_ " _ch_ " _kh_ " _g_ " _k_

It is said that the causes which brought about the changes formulated in Grimm's Law are "obscure" (they may have been due to nothing more obscure than a prevalence to colds in the head), and that they were probably due to the settlement of Low German conquerors in Central and Southern Germany. The changes above formulated all fall, however, within the wider theory I am now suggesting, with the exception of _d_ and _t_ becoming in High German _z_. This particular syllabic change was, I suggest, due to _z_ at one time being synonymous with _d_ or _t_, and not to any inability of certain tribes to vocalise the sound _t_.

Max Muller observes that "at first sight the English word _fir_ does not look very like the Latin word _quercus_, yet it is the same word". _Fir_ certainly does not look like _quercus_, nor, of course, is it any more the "same word" than _six_ is the same word as _half a dozen_. There are a thousand ways of proving _six_ to be radically and identically the same as _half a dozen_, and the ingenious system of permutations by which philologists identify _fir_ with _quercus_, and _alphana_ with _equus_,[55] are parallel to some of the methods by which common sense, by cold gradation and well-balanced form, would quite correctly equate _six_ with _half a dozen_.

The term "_word_" I understand not in the loose sense used by Max Muller, but as the dictionary defines it--"an oral or written sign expressing an idea or notion". Thus I treat John as the same word as _Jane_ or _Jean_, and it is radically the same word as _giant_, old English _jeyantt_, French _geante_, Cornish _geon_. Jean is also the same word as _chien_, a dog, Irish _choin_; Welsh _chin_ or _cyn_, and all these terms by reason of their radical _an_ are cognate with the Greek _kuon_, a dog, whence _cyn_ical. The Gaelic for _John_ is _Jain_, the Gaelic for _Jean_ or _Jane_ is _Sine_, with which I equate _s.h.i.+ne_, _shone_, and _sheen_, all of which have respect to the _sun_, as also had the Arabic _jinn_, _genii_, and "_Gian Ben Gian_," a t.i.tle of the fabulous world-ruler of the Golden Age. Among the Basques _Jaun_ means Lord or Master, and the Basque term for G.o.d, _Jainko_, _Jeinko_, or _Jinko_, is believed to have meant "Lord or Master on High". The Irish Church attributes its origin to disciples of St. _John_--Irish _Shaun_, and one may detect the pre-Christian _Sinjohn_ in the British divinity Shony, and evolving from the primeval _Shen_ at Shenstone near Litchfield. Here, a little distance from the church, was a well, now called _St. John's_ Well, after the saint in whose honour the parish church is dedicated. In all probability the present-day church of St.

John was built on the actual site of the original _Shen stone_ or rock; and that John stones were once plentiful in Scotland is probably implied by the common surname Johnstone. Near the Shannon in Ireland, and in close proximity to the church and village of Shanagolden, is "castle"

_Shenet_ or Shanid, attached to which is a rath or earthwork of which the ground-plan, from Mr. Westropp's survey, is here reproduced. As it is a matter of common knowledge that the worldwide wheel cross was an emblem of the sun, I should therefore have no scruples in connoting Castle Shenet with the primeval _jeyantt_ or the Golden _s.h.i.+ne_; and suggesting that it was a sanctuary originally constructed by the Ganganoi, a people mentioned by Ptolemy as dwelling in the neighbourhood of the Shannon. The eponymous hero of the Ganganoi was a certain Sengann,[56] who is probably the original St. Jean or Sinjohn to whom the fires of St. Jean and St. John have been diverted.

We shall see that _Giant_ Christopher was symbolically represented as _chien_ headed, that he was a personification of the _s.h.i.+ne_ or _Sheen_ of the _Sun_, and that he was wors.h.i.+pped as the solar dog at the holy city of Cynopolis or _dog-town_. We have already noted English "_chien_"

or _cyn_ coins inscribed _cun_, which is seemingly one of the innumerable puns which confront philology.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 6.--From _Proc. of the Royal Irish Acad._, x.x.xiii., C., No. 2.]

Years ago Bryant maintained that "the fable of the horse certainly arose from a misprision of terms, though the mistake be as old as Homer".

There was nothing therefore new in the theories of the Max Muller school that all mythologies originated from a "disease of language". Dr.

Wilder, alluding to symbolism, speaks of the punning so common in those days, often making us uncertain whether the accident of similar name or sound led to adoption as a symbol or was merely a blunder. It was, I think, neither, and many instances will be adduced in favour of the supposition, that words originated from symbolic ideas, and not _vice versa_. That symbolism existed before writing is evident from the innumerable symbols unearthed at Mykenae, Troy, and elsewhere, where few traces of script or inscriptions have been found. By symbolism, primitive man unquestionably communicated ideas, and, as has already been pointed out, the roots of language bear traces of the rudimentary symbolism by which our savage forefathers named the objects around them as well as the conceptions of their primitive religion.[57] Faced by the "curiosity" that the Greek and Latin words for _archaic_, _arch_, _ark_, _arc_, are all apparently connected in an intricate symbolism in which there is more than a suspicion that there is an etymological as well as a mystical interconnection, a writer in _The Open Court_ concludes: "it would seem as though the roots of such words derived their meaning from the Mysteries rather than that their mystical meaning was the result of coincidence".[58]

That the Mysteries--or in other words dramatised mythology--Symbolism, and Etymology, are all closely connected with each other is a cert.i.tude beyond question. The theory, so pertinaciously put forward by Max Muller, was that myths originated from a subsequent misunderstanding of words. Using the same data as Max Muller, I suggest that words originated from the mysteries and not myths from the words.

In _The Holy Wells of Cornwall_, Mr. T. Quiller Couch observes that Dr.

Borlase, learned, diligent, and excellent antiquary as he was, to whom we are all indebted in an iconoclastic age for having copied for us fair things which time had blurred, seems to have had little sympathy with the faiths of the simple, silly, country folk (I use these adjectives in their older meaning), and to have pa.s.sed them with something like contempt. At present the oral traditions of a people, their seeming follies even, have become of value as indicating kins.h.i.+p between nations shunted off by circ.u.mstances, to use the most modern term, in divergent ways.

Dr. Johnson would not admit _fun_ into his Dictionary as he deemed it a "low word": I turn up my nose at nothing, being convinced that it is to low origins that the great lexicographers will eventually have to stoop.

In truth, the innate strength of the English language, which is becoming more and more the Master Tongue of the world, lies in its homely, trivial, and democratic origin.[59] This origin, as I have elsewhere endeavoured to show, is due largely to symbolism, which is merely another term for metaphor. We used to be taught that every language was a dictionary of faded metaphor, and such an origin is undoubtedly more true than the current theory of barbaric yawps. The essence of symbolism is its simplicity. Who, for instance, does not understand that the Lion is the symbol of High Courage, and the Bull-dog of Tenacity, or holding on? At the present day the badge of one of His Majesty's wars.h.i.+ps is the picture of a b.u.t.ting goat, accompanied by the words "b.u.t.t in". This, as the authorities rightly describe it, is "pure symbolism," but to a symbolist the legend "b.u.t.t in" is superfluous, as the mere b.u.t.ting goat adequately carries the idea. As Prof. Petrie has well said: "To understand the position and movement of thought in a primitive age, it must be approached on a far simpler plane than that of our present familiarity with writing. To reach the working of the childhood of our races we should look to the minds of children. If the child pa.s.ses through ancestral changes in its bodily formation, so certainly it pa.s.ses through such stages in the growth and capacity of its brain."[60] I shall push the childish and extremely simple theory of symbolism to its logical conclusions, and shall show, for instance, that the Boar, because it burrowed with its plough-like snout, was the emblem of the ploughman, and that thus, _boar_ and _boer_ are the same word.