Archaic England Part 63

The Royston Cave is said to be an exact counterpart to certain caves in Palestine,[919] which are described as "tall domes or bell-shaped apartments ranging in height from 20 to 30 feet, and in diameter from 10 to 12 to 20 or 30 feet, or more. The top of these domes usually terminates in a small circular opening for the admission of light and air. These dome-shaped caverns are mostly in cl.u.s.ters three or four together. They are all hewn regularly. Some of them are ornamented either near the bottom or high up, or both with rows of small holes or niches like pigeon holes extending quite round."[920] It was customary to sell pigeons in the Temple at Jerusalem: there is a prehistoric cave in Dordogne on the river Dronne which _vide_, Fig. 468 is distinguished by pigeon holes. This sacred cave is still used as a pigeonry, and in view of the ma.s.s of evidence connecting doves with prehistoric caves and Diana wors.h.i.+p, I should not be surprised if the pigeons which congregate to-day around St. Paul's are the direct descendants of the Diana's Doves of the prehistoric _domus columbae_.[921] At _Chadwell_ in Ess.e.x are ordinary dene holes, and at Tilbury there were "several s.p.a.cious caverns in a chalky cliff built artificially of stone to the height of 10 fathoms and somewhat straight at the top": I derive this information, as also the ill.u.s.trations here reproduced, from the anonymous _New Description of England and Wales_, published in 1724.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 469 and 470.--From _A New Description of England_ (Anon, 1724).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 471.--Sculpturings from the interior of Royston Cave.

[_To face page 784._]

Both St. Kit and St. Kate figure on the walls of the bell-shaped cave situated beneath Mercat House at the cross roads at Royston; and thus the name Mercat may here well have meant Big Kit or Kate: close by was an ancient inn known as the Catherine Wheel. We shall probably be safe not only in a.s.signing Kit's Coty to Kate or Ked "the most generous and most beauteous of ladies," but also in a.s.signing to her the Kyd brook, on the right bank of which the Chislehurst caves are situated: "It is somewhat remarkable," says Mr. Nichols, "that the archaeological discoveries. .h.i.therto made have been for the most part on the line of this stream". The Kyd brook rises in what is now known as the Hawkwood, which was perhaps once equivalent to the Og from whom the King of Edrei took his t.i.tle.

Following the course of the Kyd brook--in the neighbourhood of which the Ordnance Map records a "Cadlands"--there exists to this day within Elmstead Woods a sunken road, a third of a mile in length, now covered with venerable oaks: three miles southward are the great earthworks at Keston, the supposed site of the Roman station of Noviomagus, "with its temple tombs and ma.s.sive foundations of flint buildings scattered through the fields and woodland in the valley below".[922]

The name Noviomagus meant seemingly New Magus; that Keston was a seat of the Magi is implied by the fact that the ruins in question are situated in Holwood Park: whether this meant Holywood Park, or whether it was so known because there were holes in it, is not of essential importance; it is sufficiently interesting to note that there are legends at Keston that two subterranean pa.s.sages once ran from the ruins, the one to Coney Hall Hill adjoining Hayes Common, the other towards Castle Hill at Addington.[923] These burrows have not been explored within living memory, but at Addington itself near the remains of a monastery which stand upon an eminence "a subterranean pa.s.sage communicates which even now is penetrable for a considerable distance".[924] At Addington are not only numerous tumuli, but it is a tradition among the inhabitants that the place was formerly of much greater extent than at present, and we are told that timbers and other material of ruined buildings are occasionally turned up by the plough: here also is an oak of which the trunk measures nearly 36 feet in girth, and in the churchyard is a yew which from the great circ.u.mference of its trunk must be of very great antiquity; that Addington was once a seat of the Aeddons or Magi, is an inference of high probability.

Addington is situated in what is now Surrey, and is in close proximity to a place named Sanderstead: the Sander whose stead or enclosure here stood may be connoted with the French Santerre, which district abounds with _souterrains_: in the valley of the Somme alone there are at least thirty "singular excavations" which _communicate with parish churches_:[925] these Santerre and Sanderstead similarities may be connoted with the fact that on the coast of _Dur_ham are caverns hewn in the limestone and known as Dane's holes.

In the forest of Tournehem near St. Omer are some curious square and circular _fosses_ known locally as Fosses, Sarrasines, or Fosses des Inglais:[926] saracens is the name under which the Jews or Phoenicians are still known in Cornwall, and in view of the Tyrians love of burrowing or making trous, Tournehem may here perhaps be identified with Tyre, or the Tyrrhenians of Etruria. The Inglais can hardly be the modern English, but are more probably the prehistoric Ingles whose marvellous monument stands to-day at Mount Ingleborough in Yorks.h.i.+re, or ancient Deira: this must have been a perfect Angel borough, or Eden, for not only is it a majestic hill crowned by a tower called the Hospice, and with other relics previously noted, but it also contains one of the most magnificent caverns in the kingdom. This is entered by a low wide arch and consists for the first 600 feet, or thereabouts, of a mere tunnel which varies in height from 5 to 15 feet: one then enters "a s.p.a.cious chamber with surface all elaborated in a manner resembling the work of a Gothic cathedral in limestone formations of endless variety of form and size, and proceeds thence into a series of chambers, corridors, first made accessible in 1838, said to have an aggregate extent of about 2000 feet, and displaying a marvellous and most beautiful variety of stalact.i.tes and stalagmites. A streamlet runs through the whole, and helps to give purity to the air."[927] This description is curiously reminiscent of the famous and gigantic Han Grotto near Dinant: with the Han Grotto, through which run the rivers Lesse and Tamise, may be connoted the Blue John Cavern in Derbys.h.i.+re, and I have little doubt that Han or Blue John, or Tarchon was the Giant originally wors.h.i.+pped by the Chouans or Jacks, who inhabited the terrible recesses of La Vendee.

The name Joynson which occurs in the Kentish dene hole district implies possibly the son of a Giant, or a son of Sinjohn: it is not unlikely that the "Hangman's" Wood, in which the group of dene holes here planned occur, was originally the Han, Hun, giant, or Hahnemann's Wood. At Tilbury the s.p.a.cious caverns were adjacent to _Shen_field, in the neighbourhood of Downs Farm: at Dunstable is a little St. John's Wood, a Kensworth, and a Mount Pleasant; this district is dotted with "wells,"

and the adjacent Caddington is interpreted as having meant "the hill meadow of Cedd or Ceadda".

Dinant or Deonant is generally supposed to derive its name from Diana, and we are told that the town originally possessed "_onze_ eglises paroissales". Whether these eleven parishes were due to chance or whether they were originally sacred to an elphin eleven must remain a matter of conjecture: at the entry to the Grotto in Dane Hill, Margate (Thanet), is a sh.e.l.l-mosaic _yoni_ surmounted by an eleven-rayed star.

The a.s.sociation of "les Inglais" with the fosses in the forest of Tournehem may possibly throw some light upon the curiously persistent sixfold form in which our British dene holes seem invariably to have been constructed. Engelland as we have seen was the mystic Angel Land in which the unborn children of the future were awaiting incarnation: that six was for some reason a.s.sociated with birth and creation is evident from the six days of Jewish tradition, and from the corresponding 6000 years of Etrurian belief. The connection between six and creation is even more pointed in the Druidic chant still current in Brittany, part of which has already been quoted:--

Beautiful child of the Druid, answer me right well.

What would'st thou that I should sing?

Sing to me the series of number one that I may learn it this very day.

There is no series for one, for One is Necessity alone.

The father of death, there is nothing before and nothing after.

Nevertheless the Druid or Instructor runs through a sequence expounding three as the three Kingdoms of Merlin, five as the terrestrial zones, or the divisions of time, and _six_ as "_babes of wax quickened into life through the power of the moon_":[928] the moon which periodically wanes and waxes like a matron, was of course Diana, whence possibly the sixfold form of the dene or Dane holes.

In the Caucasus--the land of the Kimbry, _don_ was a generic term for water and for river:[929] we have a river _Dane_ in Ches.h.i.+re, a river _Dean_ in Nottinghams.h.i.+re, a river _Dean_ in Forfars.h.i.+re, a river _Dun_ in Lincolns.h.i.+re, a river _Dun_ in Ayrs.h.i.+re, and a river _Don_ in Yorks.h.i.+re, Aberdeen, and Antrim. There is a river Don in Normandy, and elsewhere in France there is a river Madon which is suggestive of the _Madonna_: the root of all these terms is seemingly Diane, Diana, or Dione, and it may reasonably be suggested that the dene or Dane holes of this country, like many other dens, were originally shrines dedicated to the prehistoric Madonna.

The fact that the subsidence at Modingham immediately filled up with water is presumptive evidence not only of a vast cavern, but also of a subterranean river, or perhaps a lake. That such spots were sacrosanct is implied by numerous references such as that quoted by Herbert wherein an Italian poet describes a visit of King Arthur to a small mount situated in a plain, and covered with stones: into that mount the King followed a hind he was chasing, tracking her through subterranean pa.s.sages until he reached a cavern where "he saw the preparations for earthquakes and volcanic fires. He saw the flux and reflux of the sea."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Thirteenth Century Window from Chartres. FIG.

472.--From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]

Among the poems of Taliesin is one ent.i.tled _The Spoils of Hades_, wherein the mystic Arthur is figured as the retriever of a magic cauldron, no doubt the sun or else the _pair dadeni_, or cauldron of new birth: "It commences," says Herbert, "with reference to the prison-sepulchre of Arthur describing in all _six_ such sanctuaries; though I should rather say one such under _six_ t.i.tles". This mysterious _six_ is suggestive of the _six_fold dene holes, and that this six was for some reason a.s.sociated with the Madonna is obvious from the Christian emblem here ill.u.s.trated. According to the theories of the author of _L'Antre des Nymphes_, "the cave was considered in ancient times as the universal matrix from which the world and men, light and the heavenly bodies, alike have sprung, and the initiation into ancient mysteries always took place in a cave". I have not read this work, and am unacquainted with the facts upon which M. Saintyves bases his conclusions: these, however, coincide precisely with my own. It will not escape the reader's attention that Fig. 472 is taken from Chartres, the _central_ site of Gaul, to which as Caesar recorded the Druids annually congregated.

Layamon in his _Brut_ recounts that Arthur took counsel with his knights on a spot exceeding fair, "beside the water that Albe was named":[930] I am unable to trace any water now existing of that name which, however, is curiously reminiscent of Coleridge's romantic Alph:--

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree, Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

It has already been noted that the Saxon monks filled up pa.s.sages at St.

Albans which ran even under the river: that similar constructions existed elsewhere is clear from the Brut of Kings where it is stated that Lear was buried by his daughter Cordelia in a vault under the river Soar in Leicesters.h.i.+re: "a place originally built in honour of the G.o.d Ja.n.u.s, and in which all the workmen of the city used to hold a solemn ceremony before they began upon the new year".[931] That the Druids wors.h.i.+pped and taught in caves is a fact well attested; that solemn ceremonies were enacted at Chislehurst is probable; that they were enacted in Ireland at what was known as Patrick's Purgatory even to comparatively modern times is practically certain. This famous subterranean Purgatory, which Faber describes as a "celebrated engine of papal imposture," flourished amazingly until 1632, when the Lords Justices of Ireland ordered it to be utterly broken down, defaced, and demolished; and prohibited any convent to be kept there for the time to come, or any person to go into the said island on a superst.i.tious account.[932] The popularity of Patrick's Purgatory, to which immense numbers of pilgrims until recently resorted, is connected with a local tradition that Christ once appeared to St. Patrick, and having led him to a desert place showed him a deep hole: He then proceeded to inform him that whoever entered into that pit and continued there a day and a night, having previously repented and being armed with the true faith, should be purged from all his sins, and He further added that during the penitent's abode there he should behold both the torments of the d.a.m.ned, and the joyful blisses of the blessed. That both these experiences were dramatically represented is not open to doubt, and that the actors were the drui or magi is equally likely: Lough _Derg_, the site of the Purgatory, is suggestive of drui, and also of Thurrock where, as we have seen, still exist the dene holes of troglodites.

On page 558 was reproduced a coin representing the Maiden in connection with a right angle, and there may be some connection between this emblem and the form of Patrick's Purgatory: "Its shape," says Faber, "resembles that of an L, excepting only that the angle is more obtuse, and it is formed by two parallel walls covered with large stones and sods, its floor being the natural rock. Its length is 16-1/2 feet, and its width 2 feet, but the building is so low that a tall man cannot stand erect in it. It holds nine persons, and a tenth could not remain in it without considerable inconvenience."[933] This Irish chapel to hold nine may be connoted with Bishop Arculf's description in A.D. 700 of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. He describes this church as very large and round, encompa.s.sed with three walls, with a broad s.p.a.ce between each, and containing three altars of wonderful workmans.h.i.+p, in the middle wall, at three different points; on the south, the north, and the west.

"It is supported by twelve stone columns of extraordinary magnitude; and it has eight doors or entrances through the three opposite walls, four fronting the north-east, and four to the south-east. In the middle s.p.a.ce of the inner circle is a _round grotto cut in the solid rock_, the interior of which is _large enough to allow nine men to pray standing_, and the roof of which is about a foot and a half higher than a man of ordinary stature."[934] To the above particulars Arculf adds the interesting information that: "On the side of Mount Olivet there is a cave not far from the church of St. Mary,[935] on an eminence looking towards the valley of Jehoshaphat, in which are two very deep pits. One of these extends under the mountain to a vast depth; the other is sunk straight down from the pavement of the cavern, and is said to be of great extent. These pits are always closed above. In this cavern are four stone tables; one, near the entrance, is that of our Lord Jesus, whose seat is attached to it, and who, doubtless, rested Himself here while His twelve apostles sat at the other tables."[936]

Jerusalem was for many centuries regarded as the admeasured centre of the whole earth, and doubtless every saintuaire was originally the local _centre_: in Crete there has been discovered a small shrine at Gournia "situated in the very centre of the town," and with the mysterious pits of elsewhere may be connoted the "three walled pits," nearly 25 feet deep, which remain at the northern entrance of Knossus: the only explanation which has been suggested for these constructions is that "they may have been oubliettes".

Around Patrick's Purgatory in Lough Derg were built seven chapels, and it is evident that at or near the site were many other objects of interest: Giraldus Cambrensis says there were nine caves there,[937]

another account states that an adventurer--a venerable hermit, Patrick by name--"one day lighted on this cave which is _of vast extent_. He entered it and wandering on in the dark lost his way so that he could no more find how to return to the light of day. After long rambling through the gloomy pa.s.sages he fell upon his knees and besought Almighty G.o.d if it were His will to deliver him from the great peril wherein he lay."[938] This adventure doubtless actually befell an adventurous Patrick, and before starting on his foolhardy expedition he would have been well advised to have consulted some such experienced Bard as the Taliesin who--claiming himself to be born of nine const.i.tuents--wrote--

I know every pillar in the Cavern of the West.

Similarly the author of _The Incantation of Cunvelyn_ maintained:--

With the habituated to song (Bard) Are flashes of light to lead the tumult In ability to descend Through spikes along brinks Through the opening of trapdoors.[939]

This same poet speaks of the furze or broom bush in blossom as being a talisman: "The furzebush is it not radiance in the gloom?" and he adds "of the sanct.i.ty of the winding refuge they (the enemy) have possessed themselves". Upon this Herbert very pertinently observes: "This sounds as if the possessors of the secret had an advantage over their opponents from their faculty of descending into chambers and galleries cunningly contrived, and artfully obscured and illuminated.... I think there was somewhere a system of chambers, galleries, etc.,[940] approaching to the labyrinthine character."[941]

The Purgatory of St. Patrick was once called _Uamh Treibb Oin_, the _wame_, or cave of the tribe of Oin or Owen, upon which Faber comments: "Owen, in short, was no other than the Great G.o.d of the Ark, and the same as Oan, Oannes, or Dagon": he was also in all probability the _Ja.n.u.s_ of the river Soar, the _Shony_ of the Hebrides, the Blue _John_ of Buxton, the Tar_chon_ of Etruria, and the St. Patrick on whose festival and before whose altar all the fishes of the sea rose and pa.s.sed by in procession. After expressing the opinion "I am persuaded that Owen was the very same person as Patrick," Faber notes the tradition, no doubt a very ancient one among the Irish, that Patrick was likewise called Tailgean or Tailgin: there is a celebrated Mote in Ireland named Dun_dalgan_, and the Glen_dalgeon_, to which the miraculous Bird of St. Bridget is said to have taken its flight, was presumably a glen once sacred to the same Tall John, or Chief King, or Tall Khan, or High Priest, as was wors.h.i.+pped at the Pictish town of Delginross in Caledonia; we have already considered this term in connection with the Telchines of Telchinia, Khandia, or Crete.

That Lough _Derg_ was a.s.sociated with Drei, Droia, or Troy, and with the _drui_ or Druids, is further implied by its ancient name Lough _Chre_, said to mean lake of the _soothsayers_. Sooth is Truth and the Hibernian _chre_ may be connoted with the "Cray," which occurs so persistently in the Kentish dene hole district, _e.g._, Foots Cray, St. Mary Cray, and St. Paul's Cray: the Paul of this last name may be equated with the Poole of the celebrated Buxton Poole's Cavern, Old Poole's Saddle, and Pell's Well: the "bogie" of Buxton was no doubt the same Puck, Pooka, or Bwcca, as that of the Kentish Bexley, Bickley, and Boxley at each of which places are dene holes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 473.--Sculpture on the Wall of St. Clement's Cave, Hastings.

[_To face page 797._]

The cauldron of British mythology was known occasionally as Pwyll's Cauldron, Pwyll, the chief of the Underworld, being the infernal or Plutonic form of the Three Apollos. Referring to the Italian tale of King Arthur's entrance into the innermost caverns of the earth, Herbert observes: "Valvasone's account of this place is a just description of the Cor upon Mount Ambri, and goes to identify it with the mystical Ynys Avallon (Island of Apples). All that he says of it is in wide departure from the tales which he might have read in Galfridus and Giraldus. But when we further see that he places within its recesses the cauldron of deified nature or Keridwen, it truly moves our wonder whence this matter can have come into his pages."[942] Doubtless Herbert would have puzzled still more in view of what is apparently the same mystic cauldron, bowl, or tureen carved upon the walls of St. Clement's Caves at Hastings.[943]

Presumably the St. Clement of these caves which have been variously ascribed to the Romans and the Danes, was a relative of St. Clement Dane in London by St. Dunstan in the West: the Hastings Caves are situated over what is marked on the Ordnance map as Torfield, and as this is immediately adjacent to a St. Andrew it is probable that the Anderida range, which commences hereby and terminates at the Chislehurst Caves, was all once dedicated to the ancient and eternal Ida. _Antre_ is a generic term for cave, and as _trou_ means hole, the word _antrou_ is also equivalent to _old hole_. When first visiting the famous Merlin's Cave at Tintagel or Dunechein, where it is said that Art_hur_ or Ar_tur_, the mystic Mighty Child, was cast up by the ninth wave into the arms of the Great Magician, my companion's sense of romance received a nasty jar on learning that Merlin's Cave was known locally as "The Old Hole": it may be, however, that this term was an exact rendering of the older Keltic _antrou_, which is literally _old hole_: the Tray Cliff in Derbys.h.i.+re, where is situated the Blue John Mine, may well have been the _trou_ cliff.

The highest point of the highland covering St. Clement's Caves is known as "The Ladies' Parlour"; at the foot of this is Sandringham Hotel, whence--in view of the neighbouring St. Andrew and Tor field--it is possible that "Sandringham"[944] was here, as elsewhere, a _home of the children of Sander_: immediately adjacent is a Braybrook, and a Bromsgrove Road. Near Reigate is a Broome Park which we are told "in the romantic era rejoiced in the name of Tranquil Dale":[945] the neighbouring Buckland, Boxhill, and Pixhome Lane may be connoted with Bexhill by Hastings, and there are further traditional connections between the two localities. Under the dun upon which stand the remains of Reigate Castle are a series of caves, and besides the series of caves under the castle there are many others of much greater dimensions to the east, west, and south sides:[946] my authority continues, "Here many of the side tunnels are sealed up; one of these is said to go to Reigate Priory--which is possible--but another which is _reputed to go to Hastings_, impels one to draw the line somewhere".[947]

We have seen that Brom and Bron were obviously once one and the same, and there is very little doubt that the Bromme of Broompark or Tranquil Dale was the same Peri or Power as was presumably connected with Purley, and as the Bourne or Baron a.s.sociated with Reigate. In one of the Reigate caverns is a large pool of clear water which is said to appear once in seven years, and is still known as Bourne water:[948] under the castle is a so-called Baron's Cave which is about 150 feet long, with a vaulted roof and a circular end with a ledge or seat around it. In popular estimation this is where the Barons met prior to the signing of Magna Charta: possibly they did, and without doubt many representatives of _The_ Baron--good, bad, bold, and indifferent--from time to time sat and conferred upon the same ledge. From the Baron's Cave a long inclined plane led to a stairway of masonwork which extended to the top of the mound.

Reigate now consists of a pair of ancient Manors, of which one was Howleigh; the adjacent _Ag_land Moor, as also _Ox_ted, suggests the troglodyte King Og of Edrei. Among the Reigate caves is one denominated "The Dungeon": _Tin_tagel was known alternatively not only as _Dun_dagel, but also as _Dune_chein, evidently the same word as the great _Dane_ John tumulus at Canterbury. The meaning of this term depends like every other word upon its context; a _dungeon_ is a down-under or dene hole, the keep or _donjon_ of a castle is its main tower or summit: similarly the word dunhill is identical with dene hole; _abyss_ now means a yawning depth, but on page 224 Abyss was represented as a dunhill.

From the cavern at Pentonville, known as Merlin's Cave, used to run a subterranean pa.s.sage: modern Pentonville takes its t.i.tle from a ground landlord named Penton, a tenant who presumably derived his patronymic either from that particular _penton_ or from one elsewhere. In connection with the term _pen_ it is curious to find that at Penselwood in Somerset there are what were estimated to be 22,000 "pen pits": these pits are described as being in general of the form which mathematicians term the frustrum of a cone, not of like size one with another, but from 10 to 50 feet over at top and from 5 to 20 feet in the bottom.[949] I have already surmised that the various Selwoods, Selgroves, and Selhursts were so named because they contained the cells of the austere _selli_: by Penselwood is Wincanton, a place supposed to have derived its t.i.tle from "probably a man's name; nasalised form of _Hwicca_, _cf._ Whixley, and see _ton_"; but in view of the innumerable _cone_-shaped cells hereabout, it would seem more feasible that _canton_ meant _cone town_. We have already ill.u.s.trated the marvellous cone tomb said to have once existed in Etruria: in connection with this it is further recorded that within the bas.e.m.e.nt King Porsenna made an inextricable labyrinth, into which if one ventured without a clue, there he must remain for he never could find the way out again; according to Mrs. Hamilton Gray the labyrinth of a counterpart of this tomb still exists, "but its locality is unascertained".

There are said to be pits similar to the Wincanton pen pits in Berks.h.i.+re, there known as Coles pits: we have already connoted St.

Nichol of the tub-miracle, likewise King Cole of the Great Bowl with Yule the Wheel or Whole. The Bowl of Cole was without doubt the same as the _pair dadeni_, or Magic Cauldron of _Pwyll_ which Arthur "spoiled"

from Hades: with _Paul's_ Cray may be connoted the not-far-distant Pol Hill overlooking Sevenoaks. Otford, originally Ottanford, underlies Pol Hill, which was no doubt a dun of the celestial Pol, _alias_ Pluto, or Aidoneus: in the graveyard at Ottanford may be seen memorials of the Polhill family, a name evidently a.n.a.logous to Penton of Pentonville.

The memory of our ancestors dwelling habitually in either pen pits, dene holes, or cole pits, has been preserved in Layamon's _Brut_, where it is recorded: "At Totnes, Constantin the fair and all his host came ash.o.r.e; thither came the bold man--well was he brave!--and with him 2000 knights such as no king possessed. Forth they gan march into London, and sent after knights over all the kingdom, and every brave man, that speedily he should come anon. The Britons heard that, _where they dwelt in the pits_, in earth and in stocks they hid them (like) badgers, in wood and in wilderness, in heath and in fen, so that well nigh no man might find any Briton, except they were in castle, or in burgh inclosed fast. When they heard of this word, that Constantin was in the land, _then came out of the mounts_ many thousand men; they leapt out of the wood as if it were deer. Many hundred thousand marched toward London, by street and by weald all it forth pressed; and the brave women put on them men's clothes, and they forth journeyed toward the army."

It has been a.s.sumed that the means of exit from the dene holes, and from the subterranean city with which they communicated, was a notched pole, and it is difficult to see how any other method was feasible: in this connection the Mandan Indians of North America have a curious legend suggestive of the idea that they must have sprung from some troglodite race. The whole Mandan nation, it is said, once resided in one large village underground near a subterranean lake; a grape-vine extended its roots down to their habitation and gave them a view of the light. Some of the most adventurous climbed up the vine and were delighted with the sight of the earth which they found covered with buffalo and rich with every kind of fruit: men, women, and children ascended by means of the vine (the notched pole?), but when about half the nation had attained the surface of the earth a big or buxom woman, who was clambering up the vine, broke it with her weight and closed upon herself and the rest the light of the Sun. There is seemingly some like relation between this legend and the tradition held by certain hill tribes of the old Konkan kingdom in India, who have a belief that their ancestors came out of a cave in the earth. In connection with this Konkan tale, and with the fact that the Concanii of Spain fed on horses, it may here be noted that not only do traces of the horse occur in the most ancient caves, but that vast deposits of horse bones point to the probability that horses were eaten sacrificially in caves.[950] In the Baron's Cave at Reigate, "There are many bas relief sculptures, Roman soldiers' heads, grotesque masks of monks, horses' heads and other subjects which can only be guessed at":[951] these idle scribblings have been a.s.signed to the Roman soldiery, who are supposed at one time to have garrisoned the castle, and the explanation is not improbable: the favourite divinity of the Roman soldiery was Mithra, the Invincible White Horse, and several admittedly Mithraic Caves have been identified in Britain.[952] It has always been supposed that these were the work of Roman invaders, and in this connection it should be noted that deep in the bowels of the Chislehurst labyrinth there is a clean-cut well about 70 feet deep lined with Roman cement: but granting that the Romans made use of a ready-made cave, it is improbable that they were responsible for the vast net-work of pa.s.sages which are known to extend under that part of Kent. There is--I believe--a well in the heart of the Great Pyramid; a deep subterranean well exists in one of the series of caves at Reigate.

In his article on the Chislehurst Caves Mr. Nichols inquires, "might not the shafts of these dene holes have lent themselves to the study of the heavenly bodies?" That the Druids were adepts at astronomy is testified by various cla.s.sical writers, and according to Dr. Smith there are sites in Anglesey still known in Welsh as "the city of the Astronomers," the Place of Studies, and the Astronomers' Circle.[953] There was a famous Holy Well in Dean's Yard, Westminster, and it would almost seem that a well was an integral adjunct of the sacred duns: according to Miss Gordon "there is a well of unknown antiquity at Pentonville under Sadlers Wells Theatre (Clerkenwell), lined with masonry of ancient date throughout its entire depth, similar to the prehistoric wells we have already mentioned in the Windsor Table Mound, on the Wallingford Mound, and the Well used by the first Astronomer Royal at Greenwich".[954] But masonry-lined wells situated in the very bowels of the earth as at Chislehurst and Reigate cannot have served any astronomic purpose; they must, one would think, have been constructed princ.i.p.ally for ritualistic reasons. At Sewell, near Dunstable, immediately next to Maiden Bower there once existed a very remarkable dene hole: this is marked on the Ordnance Maps as "site of well," but in the opinion of Worthington Smith, "this dene hole was never meant for a well". It was recently destroyed by railway constructors who explored it to the depth of 116 feet; but, says Worthington Smith, "amateur excavators afterwards excavated the hole to a much greater depth and found more bones and broken pots. The base has never been reached. The work was on the top of a very steep and high bank."[955] On Mount Pleasant at Dunstable was a well 350 feet deep,[956] and any people capable of sinking a narrow shaft to this depth must obviously have been far removed from the savagery of the prime.

In 1835 at _Tin_well, in Rutlands.h.i.+re, the singular discovery was made of a large subterranean cavern supported in the centre by a stone pillar: this chamber proved on investigation to be "an oblong square extending in length to between 30 and 40 yards, and in breadth to about 8 feet. The sides are of stone, the ceiling is flat, and at one end are two doorways bricked up."[957] About forty years ago, at Donseil in France--or rather in a field belonging to the commune of Saint Sulpice le _Don_seil[958]--a ploughman's horse sank suddenly into a hole: the grotto which this accident revealed was found to have been cut out from soft grey granite in an excellent state of preservation and is thus described: "After pa.s.sing through the narrow entrance, you make your way with some difficulty down a sloping gallery some 15 yards in length, to a depth beneath the surface of nearly 20 feet; this portion is in the worst condition. Then you find yourself in a _circular gallery_ measuring about 65 feet in circ.u.mference, _with the roof supported by a huge pillar_, 18 feet in diameter. It is worth noticing that the walls, which are hewn out of the granite, are not vertical, but convex like an egg. At 19 feet to the left of the inclined corridor, and at an elevation of 30 inches above the level of the soil of the circular gallery, we come upon a small opening, through which it is just possible for a man to squeeze himself: it gives access to a gallery _thirty-three_ feet long, at the bottom of which a loftier and more s.p.a.cious gallery has been begun, but, apparently, not completed."[959]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 474. PLAN OF THE GROTTO AT MARGATE.]

I invite the reader to note the significance of these measurements and to compare the general design of the Donseil _souterrain_ with the form of Fig. 474: this is the ground plan of a grotto which was accidentally discovered by some schoolboys in 1835, and exists to-day in the side of _Dane_ Hill, Margate. Its form is very similar to the apparent design of the great two-mile Sanctuary at Avebury, see page 351, and its situation--a dene or valley on the side of a hill--coincides exactly with that of the small Candian cave-shrines dedicated to the serpent G.o.ddess. In Candia no temples have been discovered but only small and insignificant household shrines: "It is possible," says Mr. Hall, "that the wors.h.i.+p of the G.o.ds on a great scale was only carried out in the open air, or the palace court, or in a grave or cave not far distant.

Certainly the sacred places to which pilgrimage was made and at which votive offerings were presented, were such groves, rocky gorges, and caves."[960]