Archaic England Part 57

"Brecilicn etait une de ces forets sacrees qu'habitaient les pretresses du druidisme dans le Gaule; son nom et celui de sa vallee l'attesteraient a defaut d'autre temoignage; les noms de lieux sont les plus surs garans des evenemens pa.s.ses."--_Cf._ Notes on _The Mabinogion_ (Everyman's Library), p. 383-90.

[783] Mitton, G. E., _Hampstead and Marylebone_.

[784] Probably the Glamorgans.h.i.+re "Tabernae Amnis," now Bont y Von.

[785] Fearbal or sometimes Fibal. The "Merry Devil" a.s.sociated in popular tradition with Edmonton beyond Islington was known by the name of Peter Fabell: I think he was originally "the Angel," and that the names Fearbal or Fabell meant _Fairy or Fay Beautiful_.

[786] "Morien," _Light of Britannia_, p. 61.

[787] I am inclined to think that the _eena deena dina dux_ of childrens' games may be a similarly ancient survival.

[788] There was also an Aballo, now Avalon, in France: there is also near Dodona in Albania an Avlona or Valona. A correspondent of _The Westminster Gazette_ points out that: "Valona is but a derivative of the Greek (both ancient and modern) _Balanos_. This is clearer still if you realise that the Greek _b_ is (and no doubt in ancient days also was) p.r.o.nounced like an English _v_: thus, _valanos_."

[789] _Travels in the East_, p. 152.

[790] According to Malory: "Merlin made the Round Table in tokening of roundness of the world, for by the Round Table is the world signified by right, for all the world, Christian and heathen, repair unto the Round Table; and when they are chosen to be of the fellows.h.i.+p of the Round Table they think them more blessed and more in wors.h.i.+p than if they had gotten half the world; and ye have seen that they have lost their fathers and their mothers, and all their kin, and their wives and their children, for to be of your fellows.h.i.+p."--_Morte D'Arthur_, Book xiv. 11.

[791] Fenner, W., _Pasquils Palinodia_, 1619.

[792] _Faiths and Folklore_, ii., 401.

[793] _Ibid._, 402.

[794] Aneurin's _G.o.dodin_.

[795] _Cf._ "Laganiensis," _Irish Folklore_, p. 35.

[796] _Cf._ _New Light on Renaissance_, p. 169.

[797] Birdwood, Sir G., preface to _Symbolism of East and West_, p.

xvi.

[798] Hazlitt, W. Carew, _Faiths and Folklore_, ii., 402.

[799] _Cf._ _Auca.s.sin and Nicolette_, Everyman's Library.

[800] Fraser, J. B., _Persia_, p. 129.

[801] At Looe in Cornwall the site of what was apparently the ancient forum or Fore street, is now known as "Hannafore".

Opposite is St. George's Islet. The connection between George and Hanover suggests that St. George was probably the patron saint of Hanover.

[802] Hardwick, C., _Traditions, Superst.i.tions, and Folklore_, p.

159.

[803] The _lungs_ are the organs of _haleine_.

[804] Courtney, Miss M. E., _Cornish Feasts_, p. 3.

[805] Johnson, W., _Folk Memory_, p. 212.

[806] _Cf._ _ibid._, p. 211.

[807] The authorities are perplexed by this place-name. "O. E.

_Llynn_ means usually a torrent running over a rock which does not exist here. Its later meaning, a pool, is not recorded until 1577".

[808] The Elsdale Street at Hackney which is found in close contact with Paradise Pa.s.sage, Well Street, and Paragon Road may mark an original Elves or Ellie's Dale. Leading to "The Grove" is _Pigwell_ Pa.s.sage.

[809] _Ante_, p. 323.

[810] _Cf._ Hardwick, C., _Trad. Super. and Folklore_, p. 159.

[811] This word means evidently much more than, as supposed, _bridge builder_.

[812] The Rev. Baring-Gould quotes portions of this epistle in his _Curious Myths of the Middle Ages_, but its contents are evidently distasteful to him as he breaks off: "I may be spared further extracts from this extraordinary letter which proceeds to describe the church in which Prester John wors.h.i.+ps, by enumerating the precious stones of which it is constructed, and their special virtues": as a matter of fact, the account is an agreeable fairy-tale or fable which is no more extravagant than the account of the four-square, cubical, golden-streeted New Jerusalem attributed to the Revelations of St. John.

[813] Chambers' _Encyclopaedia_, viii., 398.

[814] Guest, Dr., _Origines Celtica_, ii., 182.

[815] _Cf._ Schliemann, _Troy_.

[816] _Cornish Feasts_, p. 76.

[817] _Cf. ante_, p. 345, Fig. 183, No. 10.

[818] Aynsley, Mrs. Murray, _Symbolism of the East and West_, p.

60.

[819] _The Word in the Pattern_.

CHAPTER XIII.

ENGLISH EDENS

At bottom, a man is what his thinking is, thoughts being the artists who give colour to our days. Optimists and pessimists live in the same world, walk under the same sky, and observe the same facts. Sceptics and believers look up at the same great stars--the stars that shone in Eden, and will flash again in Paradise.--Dr. J.

FORT NEWTON.

The name under which Jupiter was wors.h.i.+pped in Crete is not yet deciphered, but as we are told that the favourite abode of King Jou at Gnossus was on Mount Olympus where in its delightful recesses he held his court, and administered patriarchal justice; and as we are further told by Julius Firmicus that: "vainly the Cretans to this day adore the tumulus of Jou," it is fairly obvious that, however many historic King Jou's there may have been, the archetypal Jou was a lord of the tumulus or dun.

The ancient Irish were accustomed to call _any_ hill or artificial mound under which lay vaults, a _shee_, which also is the generic term for fairy: similarly we have noted a connection between the term _rath_--or dun--and _wraith_. Although fairies were partial to banks, braes, purling brooks, brakes, and bracken, they particularly loved to congregate in duns or raths, and their rapid motions to and fro these headquarters were believed to create a noise "somewhat resembling the loud humming of bees when swarming from a hive". I have little doubt that all hills, _bryns_, or barrows were regarded not only as _bruen_, or b.r.e.a.s.t.s, but as ethereal beehives, and the superst.i.tions still a.s.sociated with bees are evidence that bees themselves were once deemed sacred. There are upwards of a thousand localities in Ireland alone where the word _rath_, _raw_, _rah_, _ray_, or _ra_ marks the site of a fairy rath,[820] and without going so far as to a.s.sert that every British -_dun_ or -_ton_ was a fairy _dun_ or _doun_ further investigation will probably establish an unsuspected mult.i.tude of Dunhills or Edens.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 444.--Birs Nimroud.]

We have seen that in Ireland _fern_ meant anciently _anything good_, and also in all probability _fer en_ the Fires or Fairies: at the romantic hill of Cnock-Firinn or the _Hill of firinn_ was supposed to dwell a fairy chief named Donn Firineach, _i.e._, Donn the Truthful or the Truthteller;[821] evidently, therefore, this Don was a counterpart and consort of Queen Vera, and as he is reputed to have come from Spain his name may be connoted with the Spanish _don_ which, like the Phoenician _adon_, is a generic term meaning _the lord_. With "Generous Donn the King of Faery" may be connoted the Jewish Adonai, a plural form of _Adon_ "lord" combined with the p.r.o.noun of the first person: when reading the Scriptures aloud the Jews rather than utter the super-sacred word Jhuh, subst.i.tute Adonai, and in Jewry Adonai is thus a t.i.tle of the Supreme Being. Among the Phoenicians Adon or _the lord_ was specially applied to the King of Heaven or the Sun and that sacred Nineveh was essentially a dunhill is evidenced by Fig. 444