Archaic England Part 37

Columba, and also as Ieithon, the Keltic G.o.ddess of speech or _prat_ing, after whom Anwyl considers the river Ieithon in Radnors.h.i.+re was named.

This Welsh river-name may be connoted with the river Ythan in Scotland, and the legend IDA, found upon the reverse of some of the Ikenian coins of England, may be connoted with the place-name Odestone, or Odstone, implying seemingly a stone of Od, or Odin.

At Oddendale in Westmorland are the remains of a Druidic circle and traces of old British settlements: with the Thanestone may be connoted the carved example ill.u.s.trated _ante_, page 381, from Dingwall, and also the decorated "Stone of the Fruitful Fairy," which exists in Ireland.[516]

The authorities think it possible that the river Idle--a tributary of the Trent--derived its name from being empty, vain, or useless; but it is more probable that this small stream was christened by the Idaeans, and that the resident Nymph or Fruitful Fairy was the idyll, or the idol, whom they idealised. It is not without significance that the starting point of the races at Uffington was Idles Bush: "As many as a dozen or more horses ran, and they started from Idle's Bush which wur a vine owld tharnin-tree in thay days--a very nice bush. They started from Idle's Bush as I tell 'ee sir, and raced up to the Rudge-way."[517]

Doubtless there were also many other "Idles Bush's," perhaps at some time one in every Ideian town or neighbourhood: there is seemingly one notable survival at Ilstrye or _Ideles_tree, now Elstree near St.

Albans.

That the Idaean ideal was Athene is implied by the adjective _ethnic_.

The word _ethic_ which means, "relating to morals," is connected by Skeat with _sitte_, the German for custom: there is, however, no seeming connection between German custom and the Idyllic.[518]

The early followers of Britomart are universally described as an industrious and peaceful people who made their conquests in arts and commerce: to them not only was ascribed the discovery of iron and the working of it, but the Cretan treatment of bronze proves that the Idaeans were consummate bronzesmiths. In Crete, according to Sir Arthur Evans, "new and refined crafts were developed, some of them like inlaid metal-work unsurpa.s.sed in any age or country".

That the Britons were expert blacksmiths is evident not merely from their chariot wheels, but also from the superb examples of bronze art-craft, found notably in the Thames. For the sum of one s.h.i.+lling the reader may obtain _A Guide to the Antiquities of the Iron Age_, published by the British Museum, in which invaluable volume two wonderful examples of prehistoric ironmongery are ill.u.s.trated in colour.

One of these, a bronze s.h.i.+eld discovered at Battersea, is rightly described by Romilly Allen, as "about the most beautiful surviving piece of late Celtic metal-work". The Celts, as this same authority observes, had already become expert workers in metal before the close of the Bronze Age; they could make beautiful hollow castings for the chapes of their sword sheaths; they could beat out bronze into thin plates and rivet them together sufficiently well to form water-tight cauldrons; they could ornament their circular bronze s.h.i.+elds and golden diadems with repousse patterns, consisting of corrugations and rows of raised bosses; and they were not unacquainted with the art of engraving on metal.[519]

Not only were the Britons expert in ordinary metal-work but they are believed to have _invented_ the art of enamelled-inlay. Writing in the third century of the present era, an oft-quoted Greek observed: "They say that the barbarians who live in Ocean pour colours on heated bronze and that they adhere, become as hard as stone, and preserve the designs that are made in them".

It is admitted that nowhere was greater success attained by this art of the early Iron Age than in Britain, and as Sir Hercules Read rightly maintains: "There are solid reasons for supposing this particular style to have been confined to this country".[520] The art of enamelling was of course practised elsewhere, particularly at Bibracte in Gaul, long before the Roman Conquest, but in the opinion of Dr. Anderson, the Bibracte enamels are the work of mere dabblers in the art compared with the British examples: the home of the art was Britain, and the style of the patterns, as well as the a.s.sociations in which the objects decorated with it were found, demonstrate with certainty that it had reached its highest stage of indigenous development before it came in contact with the Roman culture.[521] The evidence of the bronze spear-head points to the same remarkable conclusions as the evidence of enamelled bronze, and in the opinion of the latest and best authorities, from its first inception throughout the whole progress of its evolution the spear-head of the United Kingdom has a character of its own, one quite different from those found elsewhere. In no part of the world did the spear-head attain such perfection of form and fabric as it did in these islands, and the old-fas.h.i.+oned notion that bronze weapons were imported from abroad is now hopelessly discredited. "Why, then," ask the authors of _The Origin, Evolution, and Cla.s.sification of the Bronze Spear-Head_,[522] "may not a bronze culture have had its birth in our country where it ultimately attained a development scarcely equalled, certainly not surpa.s.sed, by that in any other part of the world?"

One of the distinctions of the British spear-head is a certain variety of tang, of which the only parallel has been found in one of the early settlements at Troy. Forms also, somewhat similar, have been discovered in the Islands of the aegean sea, and in the Terramara deposits of Northern Italy, but it is the considered opinion of Canon Greenwell and Parker Brewis, that whatever may be the true explanation of the history of the general development of a bronze culture in Great Britain and Ireland, "there can be no doubt whatever that the spear-head in its origin, progress, and final consummation was an indigenous product of those two countries, and was manufactured within their limits apart from any controlling influence from outside".[523]

The magnificent bronze s.h.i.+eld and _bric a brac_ found in London were thus presumably made there, and it is not improbable that the princ.i.p.al smitheries were situated either at Smithfield in the East, or Smithfield in the West in the ward of Farringdon or Farendone.

Stow in his _London_ uses the word _fereno_ to denote an ironmonger, in old French _feron_ meant a smith, and wherever the ancient ferenos or smiths were settled probably became known as _Farindones_ or _fereno towns_. Stow mentions several eminent goldsmiths named Farendone; from _feron_, the authorities derive the surname Fearon, which may be seen over a shop-front near Farringdon Street to-day.

Modern Farringdon Street leads from Smithfield or Smithy field[524] to Blackfriars, and it may be suggested that the original Black Friars were literally freres or brethren, who forged with industrious ferocity at their fires and furnaces. Without impropriety the early fearons might have adopted as their motto _Semper virens_: smiting in smithies is s.m.u.tty work, and all these terms are no doubt interrelated, but not, I think, in the sense which Skeat supposes them, _viz._: "Smite, _to fling_. The original sense was to smear or rub over. 'To rub over,'

seems to have been a sarcastic expression for 'to beat'; we find _well anoynted_--well beaten."

The word _bronze_ was derived, it is said, from Brundusinum or Brindisi, a town which was famous for its bronze workers. Brindisi is almost opposite Berat in Epirus; the smith or _faber_ is proverbially _burly_, _i.e._, _bur_ like or _brawny_, and it is curious that the terms _bra.s.s_, _brasier_, _burnish_, _bronze_, etc., should all similarly point to Bru or Brut. With St. Bride or St. Brigit, who in one of her three aspects was represented as a smith, may be connoted _bright_, and with Bress, the Consort of Brigit, may be connoted _bra.s.s_. And as Bride was alternatively known as Fraid, doubtless to this form of the name may be a.s.signed _fer_, _fire_, _fry_, _frizzle_, _furnace_, _forge_, _fierce_, _ferocious_, and _force_.

That the island of Bru or Barri in South Wales was a reputed home of the burly _faber_, _feuber_, or Fire Father, is to be inferred from the statement of Giraldus Cambrensis, that "in a rock near the entrance of the island there is a small cavity to which if the ear is applied a noise is heard like that of smiths at work, the blowing of the bellows, strokes of the hammers, grinding of tools and roaring of furnaces".[525] It is supposed that Barri island owes its name to a certain St. Baroc, the remains of whose chapel once stood there: that St. Baroc was Al Borak, the White Horse or _brok_, upon whom every good Mussalman hopes eventually to ride, is implied by the story that St.

Baroc borrowed a friend's horse and rode miraculously across the sea from Pembrokes.h.i.+re to Ireland.

On the coast between Pembroke and Tenby is Manor_beer_, known anciently as Maenor Pyrr, that is, says Giraldus, "the mansion of Pyrrus, who also possessed the island of Chaldey, which the Welsh call Inys Pyrr, or the island of Pyrrus". But the editor of Giraldus considers that a much more natural and congenial conjecture may be made in supposing Maenor Pyrr to be derived from _Maenor_ a _Manor_, and Pyrr, the plural of Por, a lord.

I have already suggested a possible connection between the numerous _pre_ stones and Pyrrha, the first lady who created mankind out of stones.

Near Fore Street, in the ward of Farringdon by Smithfield, will be found Whitecross Street, Redcross Street, and Cowcross Street: the last of these three cross streets by which was "Jews Garden," may be connoted with the Geecross of elsewhere. The district is mentioned by Stow as famous for its coachbuilders, and there is no more reason to a.s.sume that the word _coach_ (French _coche_) was derived from Kocsi, a town in Hungary, than to suppose that the first coach was a c.o.c.kney production and came from Chick Lane or from c.o.c.k Lane, both of which neighbour the Cowcross district in Smithfield. The supposition that the _gig_ or _coach_ (the words are radically the same) was primarily a vehicle used in the festivals to Gog the _High High_, or _Mighty Mighty_, is strengthened by the testimony of the solar chariot ill.u.s.trated _ante_, page 405.

Not only were the British famed from the dawn of history[526] for their car-driving but from the evidence of sepulchral chariots and sepulchral harness the authorities are of opinion that the fighting car was long retained by the Kelts, "and its presence in the Yorks.h.i.+re graves seems to show that it persisted in Britain longer than elsewhere".[527]

Somewhere in the Smithfield district originally existed what Stow mentions as Radwell, and this well of the Redcross, or Ruddy rood, may be connoted with the Rood Lane a mile or so more eastward. Between Rood Lane and Red Cross Street is Lothbury: the suffix _bury_ (as in Lothbury, and Aldermanbury) is held by Stow, and also by Camden, to mean a Court of Justice, and this definition accords precisely with the theory that the barrow was originally the seat of Justice. At Lothbury the noise or _bruit_ made by the burly fabers was so vexatious that Stow seriously defines the place-name _Loth_bury as indicating a _loath_some locality.[528] The supposition that Cowcross Street, Jews Garden, and the Redcross or Ruddy rood site were primarily in the occupation of men of Troy or Droia may possibly be strengthened by the fact that here was a _Tre_mill brook, and the seat of a Sir Drew Drury. The parish church of Blackfriars is St. Andrews, there is another St. Andrews within a bow-shot of Smithfield, and that the "drews" were a skilled family is obvious from the fact that the name Drew is defined as Teutonic _skilful_. Both Scandinavians and Germans possess the Trojan tradition; the All Father of Scandinavia was named _Borr_, Thor, the Hammer G.o.d, was a.s.signed to Troy, and in Teutonic mythology there figure two celestial Smith-brethren named Sindre and Brok.

The cradle of the Cretan Zeus is a.s.signed sometimes not to Mount Ida but to the neighbouring Mount Juktas which is described as an extraordinary "cone". When the Cretan script is deciphered it will probably transpire that Mount Juktas was a.s.sociated with Juk, Jock, or Jack, and the name may be connected with _jokul_, the generic term in Scandinavia for a snow-covered or white-crowned height. Jack is seemingly the same word as the Hebrew Isaac, which is defined as meaning _laughter_; Jack may thus probably be equated with _joke_ and _jokul_ with _chuckle_, all of which symptoms are the offspring of _joy_ or _gaiety_. To _kyg_, an obsolete adjective meaning _lively_--and thus evidently a variant of _agog_--are a.s.signed by our authorities the surnames Keach, Ketch, Kedge, and Gedge.

In connection with _kyg_ Prof. Weekley quotes the line--

_Kygge_ or joly, _jocundus_.

Among the gewgaws found in the sacred shrines of Juktas are numerous bijou gigs, or coaches, all no doubt once very _juju_, or sacred.

To appreciate the outlook of the "half-supernatural" Idaeans one may find a partial key in the words of Aratus: "Let us begin with _Zeus_, let us always call upon and laud his name; all the network of interwending roads and all the busy markets of mankind are full of _Zeus_, and all the paths and fair havens of the sea, and everwhere our hope is in _Zeus_ for we are also his children".[529]

Stow mentions the firmly-rooted tradition that the Cathedral of St. Paul stands upon the site of an ancient shrine to Jupiter. It may be merely coincidence that close to St. Paul's once stood an Ypres Hall:[530] in the immediate vicinity of Old St. Paul's used also to exist a so-called Pardon Churchyard, perhaps an implication that Ludgate Hill was once known as _Par dun_ or _Par Hill_. That "Pardon" was equivalent to "Pradon" is evident from the fact that modern Dumbarton was originally _Dun Brettan_, or the Briton's Fort. The slope leading from the Southern side of St. Paul's or Pardon Churchyard, is still named Peter's Hill, and in view of the Jupiter tradition it is not altogether unlikely that Peter's Hill was originally _eu Peter's_ Hill, synonymously _Pere dun_.

The surname Pardon may still be found in this G.o.dliman Street neighbourhood, where in Stow's time stood not only Burley House, but likewise Blacksmiths Hall. A funeral _pyre_ is a fire; a _phare_ is a lighthouse, and the intense purity of Bride's fire, phare, or pyre is implied by the fact that it was not suffered to be blown by human breath but by bellows only. From time immemorial the Fire of Bride was tended by nineteen holy maids, each of whom had the care of the Fire for one night in turn: on the twentieth night the nineteenth maid, having piled wood upon the fire, said: "Brigit, take charge of your own fire, for this night belongs to you". The tale ends that ever on the twentieth morning the fire had been miraculously preserved.[531]

The patron saint of engineers is Barbara or Varvara, the sacred pyre of Bride was maintained within a circle or periphery of stakes and brushwood, and close at hand were certain very beautiful meadows called St. Bridget's pastures, in which no plough was ever suffered to turn a furrow. The words _mead_ and _meadow_ are the same as _maid_ and _maida_, whence it seems to follow that all meadows were dedicated to Bride, the pretty Lady of the Kine. Homer's "fertile vale of Hyde," and the Londoner's Hyde Park, were alike probably idealised and sacred meadows corresponding to the Irish Mag-Ithe or Plains of Ith; it is not unlikely that all _heaths_ were dedicated to _Ith_. To the Scandinavian Ith or Ida Plains we find an ancient poet thus referring: "I behold Earth rise again with its evergreen forests out of the deep ... the Anses meet on Ida Plain, they talk of the mighty earth serpent, and remember the great decrees, and the ancient mysteries of the unknown G.o.d". After foretelling a time when "All sorrows shall be healed and Balder shall come back," the poet continues: "Then shall Hoeni choose the rods of divination aright, and the sons of the _Twin Brethren_ shall inhabit the wide world of the winds".[532]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 266.--Etruscan Bucket, Offida, Picenum. From _A Guide to the Antiquities of the Early Iron Age_, p.

17.]

In Fig. 266--an Etrurian bucket--two diminutive Twin Brethren are being held by the _Bona Dea_--a winged Ange or Anse--who is surmounted by the symbolic c.o.c.kle or coquille. The fact that this bucket was found at Offida renders it possible that the mother here represented was known to the craftsman who portrayed her as _Offi divine_, otherwise Hipha, Eve, or Good Iva. It will be noticed that the child on the right is white, that on the left black, and I have elsewhere drawn attention to many other emblems in which two A's, Alphas, Alifs, or Elves were similarly portrayed, the one as white, the other as black.[533] The intention of the artist seems to have been to express the current philosophy of a Prime or Supreme supervising both good and evil, light and dark, or day and night. Pliny says that British women used to attend certain religious festivals with their nude bodies painted black like Ethiopians, and there is probably some close connection between this obscure function, and the fact that Diana of the Ephesians, the many-breasted All-mother of Life, was portrayed at times as white, at times as black. There must be a further connection between this black and white _Bona Dea_, and the fact that in the Lady G.o.diva processions near Coventry, which took place at the opening of the Great May Fair festival, there were two G.o.divas, one of whom was the natural colour but the other was dyed black.[534]

The _Bona Dea_ of Egypt, like the figure on the Etrurian bucket, was represented holding in her arms two children, one white and one black; and the two circles at Avebury, lying within the larger Avereberie or periphery, were probably representative of Day and Night circled by all-embracing and eternal Time.

The Twin Brethren or Gemini are most popularly known as Castor and Pollux, and the propitious figures of these heavenly Twins were carved frequently upon the _prows_ of ancient s.h.i.+ps. The phosph.o.r.escent stars or Will-o-the-wisps, which during storms sometimes light upon the masts of s.h.i.+ps, used to be known as St. Elmo's Fires: St. Elmo is obviously St. Alma or St. All Mother, and the St. Helen with whom she is identified is seemingly St. Alone. It was believed that two stars were propitious, but that a solitary one boded bad luck; according to Pliny a single St. Elmo's fire was called Helen, "but the two they call Castor and Pollux, and invoke them as G.o.ds".

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 267.--From _Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism_ (Inman, C. W.)]

The appearance of the will-o-the-wisps, Castor and Pollux, was held to be an argument that the tempest was caused by "a sulphurous spirit rarefying and violently moving the clouds, for the cause of the fire is a sulphurous and bituminous matter driven downwards by the impetuous motion of the air and kindled by much agitation". I quote this pa.s.sage as justifying the suggestion that _sulphur_--the yellow and fiery--is radically _phur_, and that _brimstone_, or _brenstoon_, as Wyclif has it, may be the stone of Brim or Bren, which burns.

The identification of Castor and Pollux with stars or _asters_, enables us to equate Castor as the White G.o.d or Day G.o.d, for _dextra_, the Latin for right, is _de castra_, _i.e._, _good great astra_. The white child in Fig. 266 is that on the _right_ hand of the _Bona Dea_: that Pollux was the dark, _sinister_, _sinistra_, or left-hand power, is somewhat confirmed by the fact that the Celtic Pwll was the Pluto or deity of the underworld. Possibly the Latin _castra_, meaning a fort, originated from the idea that Castor was the heroic Invictus who has developed into St.

Michael and St. George. The _sin_ of _sinister_ may possibly be the Gaelic _sen_, meaning senile, and the implication follows that the dark twin was the old in contradistinction to the new G.o.d.

The French for nightmare is _cauche_mar, the French for left is _gauche_, and it is the left-hand mairy, or fairy, in Fig. 266 which is the shady one. Not only does _gauche_ mean _left_, but it also implies awkward, uncanny, and inept, whence it is to be feared that the Gooches, the Goodges, and their affiliated tribes were originally "Blackfriars,"

and followers of the Black G.o.d. I have already suggested that the Gogs were unpopular among the Greeks, and the intensity of their feeling is seemingly reflected by the Greek adjective _kakos_[535] (the English _gagga_?), which means evil, dirty, or unpleasant.

Castor and Pollux, or the Fires of St. Helen, were known along the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean as St. Telmo's Fires, the word Telmo being seemingly _t Elmo_ or Good Alma. By the Italians they are known as the Fires of St. Peter and St. Nicholas; Peter here corresponding probably to the _auburn_ Aubrey, and Nicholas to "Old Nick".

It was fabled that Castor and Pollux were alike immortal, that like day and night they periodically died, but that whenever one of the brothers expired the other was restored to life, thus sharing immortality between them. "There was," says Duncan, "an allusion to this tradition in the Roman horse-races, where a single rider galloped round the course mounted on one horse while he held another by the rein."[536] This ceremony becomes more interesting when we find that the cauchemar, the nightmare, or the blackmare used in England to be known as the "ephialtes".[537] That this ill-omened _hipha_, or hobby, was ill-boding Helena, seems somewhat to be confirmed by the custom in c.u.mberland of allotting to servants the years' allowance for horse-meat on St.

Helen's, Eline's, or Elyn's day.[538] It is believed that horse meat is now taboo in Britain, because the eating of horse was so persistently denounced by Christianity as a heathen rite.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 268.--British Altar. By kind permission of the authorities of the British Museum.

[_To face page 479._]

I have shown elsewhere some of the innumerable forms under which the fires of Elmo, or the heavenly Twain, were represented. In England it is evident that a pair of horses served as one form of expression, for among the treasures at the British Museum is an article which is thus described: "Bronze plate representing an altar decorated with blue, green, and red sunk enamels, and evidently unfinished, hence native work of the fourth or fifth century. Found in the river Thames, 1847". The princ.i.p.al decoration of this bijou altar--significantly 7 inches high--is two winged steeds supporting a demijohn, vase, or phial, the handles of which, in the form of [SS], are detached from the vase, but are emerging flame-like from the supporters' heads. The fact of these steeds appearing upon an "altar" is evidence of their sacred character, and one finds apparently the same two beasts delineated on a bucket, _vide_ Fig. 270. This so termed "barbaric production," discovered in an Aylesford gravel pit belonging to a gentleman curiously named Wagon, is attributed to the first century B.C., and has been compared unfavourably with the Etruscan bucket reproduced on page 474. The authorities of the British Museum comment upon it as follows: "The effect of barbaric imitation during two or three centuries may be appreciated by comparing the Etruscan _cista_ of the _fourth century_, with the Aylesford bucket of the _first century_ B.C. The first thing to be noticed is the absence from the latter of the heavy solid castings that form the feet and handle-attachments of the cla.s.sical specimen. Such work was beyond the range of the British artificer, who was never successful with the human or animal form, but there is an evident desire to reproduce the salient features of the prototype. The solid uppermost band of the Etruscan specimen is represented by a thin embossed strip at Aylesford, while the cla.s.sical motives are woefully caricatured. Minor a.n.a.logies are noticed later, but the degradation of the ornament may fitly be dwelt on here as showing the limitations, and at the same time the originality of the native craftsman."

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 269.--Bronze-mounted bucket, Aylesford. From _A Guide to Antiquities of the Early Iron Age_ (B.M.).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 270.--Embossed frieze of bucket, Aylesford. From _A Guide to Antiquities of the Early Iron Age_ (B.M.).]

I confess myself unable either to appreciate or dwell upon the alleged degradation of this design, or the woeful inadequacy of the craftmans.h.i.+p. The bold execution of the spirals proves that the British artist--had such been his intent--could without difficulty have delineated a copybook horse: what, however, he was seemingly aiming at was a facsimile of the heraldic and symbolic beasts which our coins prove were the cherished insignia of the country, and these "deplorable abortions" I am persuaded were no more barbarous or unsuccessful than the grotesque lions and other fantastics which figure in the Royal Arms to-day.

In all probability the Aylesford bucket was made in the neighbourhood where it was found, for at Aylesford used to stand a celebrated "White Horse Stone". The attendant local legend--that anyone who rode a beast of this description was killed on or about the spot[539]--is seemingly a folk-memory of the time when the severe penalty for riding a white mare was death.[540] The place-name Aylesbury is derived by the authorities from _bury_, a fortified place of, and _Aegil_, the Sun-archer of Teutonic mythology: the head-dress of the face const.i.tuting the hinge of the Aylesford bucket consists of two circles which correspond in idea with the two children in the arms of the Etruscan hinge. That the bucket was originally a sacerdotal and sacred vessel is implied not only by the word but by the ancient custom thus recorded: "First on a pillar was placed a perch on the sharp p.r.i.c.kled back whereof stood this idol ...

in his left hand he held up a wheel, and in his right he carried a pail of water wherein were flowers and fruits".[541] I have elsewhere reproduced several emblems of Jupiter and Athene each seated on a "sharp p.r.i.c.kled back," _i.e._, a _broccus_, saw, or zigzag, symbolic of the s.h.a.ggy solar rays.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 271 to 273.--British. From Akerman.]

There is nothing decadent or seriously wrong with the drawing of the steeds delineated in Figs. 271 and 272, although the "what-not"

proceeding from the mouth of the Geho is somewhat perplexing. This is seemingly a ribbon or a chain, and like the perfect chain surrounding our SOLIDO coins, and the chain which will be noted upon the Trojan spindle whorl ill.u.s.trated on page 583, was probably intended to portray what the ancients termed Jupiter's Chain: "All things," says Marcus Aurelius, "are connected together by a sacred chain, and there is not one link in it which is not allied with the whole chain, for all things have been so blended together as to form a perfect whole, on which the symmetry of the universe depends. There is but one world, and it comprehends everything; one G.o.d endued with ubiquity; one eternal matter; and one law, which is the Reason common to all intelligent creatures."