Archaic England Part 66

[945] Ogilvie, J. S., _A Pilgrimage in Surrey_, ii., 183.

[946] _Ibid._, p. 166.

[947] _Ibid._, p. 167. The italics are mine.

[948] "The old Bourne stream, generally known as the 'Surrey Woe Water,' has already commenced to flow through Caterham Valley, and at the moment there is quite a strong current of water rus.h.i.+ng through an outlet at Purley.

"There are also pools along its course through Kenley, Whyteleafe, and Warlingham, which suggest that the stream is rising at its princ.i.p.al source, in the hills around Woldingham and Oxted, where it is thought there exists a huge natural underground reservoir, which, when full, syphons itself out at certain periods about every seven years.

"Tradition says that when the Bourne flows 'out of season' or at irregular times it foretells some great calamity. It certainly made its appearance in a fairly heavy flow in three of the years of the war, but last year, which will always be historical for the declaration of the armistice and the prelude of peace, there was no flow at all."--_The Star_, 15th March, 1919.

[949] "Archaeologia" (from _The Gentleman's Magazine_), i., 283.

[950] _Cf._ Johnson, W., _Byeways_, pp. 411, 417.

[951] Ogilvy, J. S., _A Pilgrimage in Surrey_, ii., 164.

[952] That the solar horse was sacred among the Ganganoi of Hibernia is probable, for: "On that great festival of the peasantry, St. John's Eve, it is the custom, at sunset on that evening, to kindle immense fires throughout the country, built like our bonfires, to a great height, the pile being composed of turf, bogwood, and such other combustibles as they can gather. The turf yields a steady, substantial body of fire, the bogwood a most brilliant flame: and the effect of these great beacons blazing on every hill, sending up volumes of smoke from every part of the horizon, is very remarkable. Early in the evening the peasants began to a.s.semble, all habited in their best array, glowing with health, every countenance full of that sparkling animation and excess of enjoyment that characterise the enthusiastic people of the land. I had never seen anything resembling it: and was exceedingly delighted with their handsome, intelligent, merry faces; the bold bearing of the men, and the playful, but really modest deportment of the maidens; the vivacity of the aged people, and the wild glee of the children. The fire being kindled, a splendid blaze shot up; and for a while they stood contemplating it, with faces strangely disfigured by the peculiar light first emitted when the bogwood is thrown on. After a short pause, the ground was cleared in front of an old blind piper, the very beau-ideal of energy, drollery, and shrewdness, who, seated on a low chair, with a well-plenished jug within his reach, screwed his pipes to the liveliest tunes and the endless jig began.

"But something was to follow that puzzled me not a little. When the fire burned for some hours, and got low, an indispensable part of the ceremony commenced. Every one present of the peasantry pa.s.sed through it, and several children were thrown across the sparkling embers; while a wooden frame of some 8 feet long, with a horse's head fixed to one end, and a large white sheet thrown over it, concealing the wood and the man on whose head it was carried, made its appearance. This was greeted with loud shouts as the '_white horse_'; and having been safely carried by the skill of its bearer several times through the fire with a bold leap, it pursued the people, who ran screaming and laughing in every direction. I asked what the horse was meant for, and was told it represented all cattle.

"Here was the old pagan wors.h.i.+p of Baal, if not of Moloch too, carried on openly and universally in the heart of a nominally Christian country, and by millions professing the Christian name! I was confounded; for I did not then know that Popery is only a crafty adaptation of pagan idolatries to its own scheme; and while I looked upon the now wildly excited people, with their children and, in a figure, all their cattle pa.s.sing again and again through the fire, I almost questioned in my own mind the lawfulness of the spectacle, considered in the light that the Bible must, even to the natural heart, exhibit it in to those who confess the true G.o.d."--Elizabeth, Charlotte, _Personal Recollections_, quoted from "S. M." _Sketches of Irish History_, 1845.

[953] _The Religion of Ancient Britain_, p. 28.

[954] _Prehistoric London_, p. 137.

[955] _Man the Primeval Savage_, p. 328.

[956] _Ibid._, p. 66.

[957] _Archaeologia_, i., 29.

[958] _Le donseil_ probably here means _donsol_, or _lord sun_.

Adonis and all the other Sun lords were supposed to have beep born in a cave on 25th December. We have seen that Michael's Mount (family name St. Levan), was known alternatively as _dinsol_.

[959] Adams, W. H. D., _Famous Caves and Catacombs_, p. 183.

[960] _aegean Archaeologia_, p. 156.

[961] Mr. and Mrs. Hawes, _Crete the Forerunner of Greece_, p. 65.

[962] _Myths of Crete and Pre-h.e.l.lenic Europe_, p. 183.

[963] "Herodotus in _Book VIII_. says that the ancients wors.h.i.+pped the G.o.ds and Genii of any place under the form of serpents.

'Set up,' says some one in Persius' _Satires_ (No. 1), 'some marks of reverence such as the painting of two serpents to let boys know that the place is sacred.'"--Seymour, F., _Up Hill and Down Dale in Ancient Etruria_, p. 237.

[964] Johnson, W., _Byways_, p. 304.

[965] _Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society_, 1869.

[966] MacKenzie, D. A., _Myths of Crete_, p. 138.

[967] _Light of Britannia_, p. 200.

[968]_Cf._ _Percy Reliques_ (Everyman's Library), p. 21.

[969] The Baron's Cave at Reigate is "about 150 feet long" (_ante_, p. 799).

[970] _Percy Reliques_, p. 20.

[971] Hawes, _Crete the Forerunner of Greece_, p. 125.

[972] _The Cornish Riviera_, p. 265.

[973] H. O. F., _St. George for England_, p. 15.

[974] _A Pilgrimage in Surrey_, ii., 177.

[975] At Bristol is White Lady's Road.

[976] The curious name Newlove occurs as one of the erstwhile owners of the Margate grotto: the Lovelace family, for whose name the authorities offer no suggestions except that it is a corruption of the depressing Loveless, probably either once wors.h.i.+pped or acted the Lovela.s.s. This conjecture has in its favour the fact that "many of our surnames are undoubtedly derived from characters a.s.sumed in dramatic performances and popular festivities".--Weekley, A. B., _The Romance of Names_, p. 197. "To this cla.s.s belong many surnames which have the form of abstract nouns, _e.g._, _charity_, _verity_, _virtue_, _vice_. Of similar origin are perhaps, _bliss, chance, luck_, and _goodluck_."--_Ibid._, p. 197.

[977] With the old English custom of burying the dead in roses, and with the tradition that at times a white lady with a red rose in her mouth used to appear at Pen_deen_ cave (Courtney, Miss M. L., _Cornish Feasts and Folklore_, p. 9), in Cornwall may be connoted the statement of Bunsen: "The Phoenicians had a grand flower show in which they hung chaplets and bunches of roses in their temples, and _on the statue of the G.o.ddess Athena_ which is only a feminine form of Then or Thorn"

(_cf._ Theta, _The Thorn Tree_, p. 40). The probability is that not only was the rose sacred to Athene but that Danes Elder (_Sambucus ebulus_), and Danes flower (_Anemone pulsutilla_) had no original reference to the Danes, but to the far older Dane, or donna, the white Lady. Both _don_ and _dan_ are used in English, as the equivalent of _dominus_, whence Shakespeare's reference to Dan Cupid.

[978] Adams, W. H. D., _Famous Caves and Catacombs_, p. 177.

[979] Davidson, P., _The Mistletoe and its Philosophy_, p. 51.

[980] The term Christ is interpreted as "the anointed".

[981] Akerman, J. Y., _Ancient Coins_, p. 25.

[982] We shall consider Robin Hood whom the authorities already equate with Odin in a subsequent chapter. In Robin Hood's Cave have been discovered remains of paleolithic Art representing a horse's head. In Kent the ceremony of the Hooden Horse used until recently to survive, and the same Hood or Odin may possibly be responsible for "_Wood_stock".

[983] Crutched Friars in London marks the site of a priory of the freres of the Crutch or Crouch.

[984] The San_creed_ chalice may be connoted ideally and philologically with the San_graal_, Provencal _gradal_: the apparition of a child in connection with the graal or gradal also permits the equation _gradal_ = _cradle_. At Llandudno is the stone ent.i.tled _cryd Tudno, i.e._, the cradle of Tudno.

[985] _Cyclops_, p. 137

[986] _The Mistletoe and its Philosophy_, p. 31.

[987] "The young people being all a.s.sembled in a large meadow, the village band strikes up a simple but lively air, and marches forward, followed by the whole a.s.semblage, leading hand-in-hand (or more closely linked in case of engaged couples) the whole keeping time to the tune with a lively step. The band or head of the serpent keeps marching in an ever-narrowing circle, whilst its train of dancing followers becomes coiled around it in circle after circle. It is now that the most interesting part of the dance commences, for the band, taking a sharp turn about, begins to retrace the circle, still followed as before, and a number of young men with long, leafy branches in their hands as standards, direct this counter-movement with almost military precision."--_Cf._ Courtney, Miss M. L., _Cornish Feasts and Folklore_, p. 39.

[988] The name Kent here appears to be of immemorial antiquity, and was apparently first printed in a 1769 map which shows "Kent's Hole Field".