Archaic England Part 67

[989] Num. xxiv. 21.

[990] In modern Egyptian _kunjey_ means _kins.h.i.+p_.

[991] 1 Sam. xv. 6.

[992] Adam, W. H. D., _Famous Caves and Catacombs_, p. 167.

[993] Adams, W. H. D., _Famous Caves and Catacombs_, p. 163.

[994] Usher, Dr. J., _A Discourse on the Religion Anciently Professed by the Irish and British_, p. 77.

[995] At the foot of this emblem the designer has introduced an intreccia or Solomon's knot between his initials R. S.

CONCLUSIONS

"I can affirm that I have brought it from an utter darknesse to a thin mist, and have gonne further than any man before me."--JOHN AUBREY.

"But for my part I freely declare myself at a loss what to say to things so much obscured by their distant antiquity; and you, when you read these conjectures, will plainly perceive that I have only groped in the dark."--CAMDEN.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 484.--From _Mythology of the Celtic Races_ (Rolleston, T. W.).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 485.--_Ibid._]

One may perhaps get a further sidelight on the marvellous labyrinthic cave temples of the ancients by a reference to the so-called worm-knots or cup-and-ring markings on cromlechs and menhirs. With regard to these sculptures Mr. T. W. Rolleston writes: "Another singular emblem, upon the meaning of which no light has yet been thrown, occurs frequently in connection with megalithic monuments. The accompanying ill.u.s.trations show examples of it. Cup-shaped hollows are made in the surface of the stone, these are often surrounded with concentric rings, and from the cup one or more radial lines are drawn to a point outside the circ.u.mference of the rings. Occasionally a system of cups are joined by these lines, but more frequently they end a little way outside the widest of the rings. These strange markings are found in Great Britain and Ireland, in Brittany, and at various places in India, where they are called _mahadeos_. I have also found a curious example--for such it appears to be--in Dupaix' _Monuments of New Spain_. It is reproduced in Lord Kingsborough's _Antiquities of Mexico_, vol. lv. On the circular top of a cylindrical stone, known as the Triumphal Stone, is carved a central cup, with nine concentric circles round it, and a duct or channel cut straight from the cup through all the circles to the rim.

Except that the design here is richly decorated and accurately drawn, it closely resembles a typical European cup-and-ring marking. That these markings mean something, and that wherever they are found they mean the same thing, can hardly be doubted, but what that meaning is remains yet a puzzle to antiquarians. The guess may perhaps be hazarded that they are diagrams or plans of a megalithic sepulchre. The central hollow represents the actual burial-place. The circles are the standing stones, fosses, and ramparts which often surrounded it: and the line or duct drawn from the centre outwards represents the subterranean approach to the sepulchre. The apparent avenue intention of the duct is clearly brought out in the varieties given herewith, which I take from Simpson.

As the sepulchre was also a holy place or shrine, the occurrence of a representation of it among other carvings of a sacred character is natural enough; it would seem symbolically to indicate that the place was holy ground. How far this suggestion might apply to the Mexican example I am unable to say."[996]

Mr. Rolleston is partially right in his idea that the designs are as it were ground plans of monuments, but that theory merely carries the point a step backward and the question remains--Why were monuments constructed in so involved and seemingly absurd a form? I hazard the conjecture that the Triumphal Stone with its central cup and _nine_ concentric circles was a symbol of Life, and of the _nine_ months requisite for the production of Human Life; that the duct or channel straight from the cup through all the circles to the rim implied the mystery of creation; and that the seemingly senseless meander of long pa.s.sages was intended as a representation of the maw or stomach. That the Druids were practised physiologists is deducible from the complaint made against one of them, that he had dissected 600 bodies: the ancient anatomists might quite reasonably have traced Life to a germ or cell lying within a mazy and seemingly unending coil of viscera: we know that auguries were drawn from the condition of the entrails of sacrificial victims, whence originally the entrails were in all probability regarded as the seat of Life. _Mahadeo_, the Indian term for a worm-knot or cup-marking, resolves as it stands into _maha_, great; and _deo_, G.o.ddess: our English word _maw_, meaning stomach, is evidently allied to the Hebrew _moi_, meaning bowels; with _moeder_, the Dutch for womb, may be connoted Mitra or Mithra, and perhaps Madura. It is well known that the chief Festival celebrated in the Indian cave temples at Madura and elsewhere is a.s.sociated with the _lingam_, or emblem of s.e.x, and it may be a.s.sumed that the invariable sixfold form of the Kentish dene holes was connected in some way with s.e.x wors.h.i.+p. The word _six_ is for some reason, which I am unable to surmise, identical with the word _s.e.x_: the Chaldees--who were probably not unconnected with the "pure Culdees" of Caledonia--taught that Man, male and female, was formed upon the _sixth_ day: Orpheus calls the number _six_, "Father of the celestial and mortal powers," and, says Davidson, "these considerations are derived from the doctrine of Numbers which was highly venerated by the Druids".[997] Six columbas centring in the womb of the Virgin Mary were ill.u.s.trated on page 790, and it will probably prove that _columba_ meant holy womb, just as _culver_ seemingly meant holy ovary.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 486 to 491.--Paper-marked Mediaeval Emblems, Showing the Combination of Serpent, Circle, and Six Lobes. From _Les Filigranes_ (Briquet, C. M.).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 492 to 502.--Paper-marked Mediaeval Emblems, Showing Circle and Serpent "like the intestines". From _Les Filigranes_ (Briquet, C.M.).]

The sixfold marigold or wheel was used not infrequently as an emblem during the Middle Ages: in Fig. 504--a mediaeval paper-mark--this design is sanctified by a cross, and the centre of Fig. 486 consists of the circle and Serpent. Figs. 492 to 502 exhibit further varieties of this circle and Serpent design--the symbol of fructifying Life--and some of these examples bear a curious resemblance to the twists and convolutions of the entrails. In Egypt, Apep, the Giant Serpent, was said to have--"resembled the intestines":[998] the word Apep is apparently related to _pepsis_, the Greek for _digestion_, as likewise to our _pipe_, meaning a long tube.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 503]

Prof. Elliot Smith, who has recently published some lectures ent.i.tled _The Evolution of the Dragon_, sums up his conclusions as follows: "The dragon was originally a concrete expression of the divine powers of life-giving; but with the development of a higher conception of religious ideals it became relegated to a baser role, and eventually became the symbol of the powers of evil".[999] I have elsewhere ill.u.s.trated a mediaeval dragon-mark which was sanctified by a cross, and it is a highly remarkable fact that the papermakers of the Middle Ages were evidently _au fait_ with the ancient meaning of this sign. Several of their multifarious serpent designs are a.s.sociated with the small circle or pearl, in which connection it is noteworthy that not only had pearls the reputation of being givers of Life, but that _margan_, the ancient Persian word for pearl, is officially interpreted as meaning _mar_, "giver," and _gan_, "life". This word, says Prof. Elliot Smith, has been borrowed in all the Turanian languages ranging from Hungary to Kamchatka, also in the non-Turanian speech of Western Asia, thence through Greek and Latin (_margarita_) to European languages.[1000] The Persian _gan_, in Zend _yan_, seeming corresponds to the European John, or Ian; and it is evident that Figs. 486 to 491 might justly be termed marguerites.

One of the most favourite decorations amongst Cretan artists is the eight-limbed octopus, and it is believed that the Mykenian volute or spiral is a variant of this emblem. According to Prof. Elliot Smith the evidence provided by Minoan paintings, and Mykenian decorative art, demonstrates that the spiral as a symbol of life-giving was definitely derived from the octopus.[1001] Other authorities believe that the octopus symbolised "the fertilising watery principle," and that the svastika is a conventionalised form of this creature. In the light of these considerations it would thus seem highly probable that the knot, maze, Troy Town, or trou town, primarily was emblematic of the Maze or Womb of Life, conceived either physically or etherially in accord with the spirit of the time and people.

There is a certain amount of testimony to the fact that the Druids taught and wors.h.i.+pped within caves, and there is some reason to suppose that the Druids had a knowledge, not only of the lense, telescope, or Speculum of the Pervading Glance, but also of gunpowder, for Lucan, writing of a grove near Ma.r.s.eilles, remarks: "There is a report that the grove is often shaken and strangely moved, and that dreadful sounds are heard from its caverns; and that it is sometimes in a blaze without being consumed". That abominations were committed in these eerie places I do not doubt: that animals were maintained in them there is good reason to suppose; and in all probability the story of the Cretan Minotaur, to whom Athenian youths were annually sacrificed, was based on a certain amount of fact. The Bull being the symbol of life and fecundity, there would have been peculiar propriety in maintaining a bull or _toro_, Celtic _tarw_, within the _trou_, labyrinth, or maze of life: upon two of the British coins here ill.u.s.trated the Mithraic Bull appears in combination with an intreccia. The colossal labyrinths built in Egypt to the honour of the sacred toro are well known: in Europe remains of the horse are constantly discovered within caves,[1002] and it is a cognate fact that in Mexico a tapir--the nearest approach Mexico could seemingly show to a horse--was maintained in the subterranean temple of the G.o.d Votan.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 504 to 506.--British. From Akerman.]

This Votan of South America is an interesting personality: according to the native traditions of the Chiapenese Indians--there was once a man named Votan, who was the grandson of the man who built the ark to save himself and family from the Deluge. Votan was ordered by the Lord to people America and "He came _from the East_" bringing with him seven families: Votan, we are further told, was of the race of Chan, and built a city in America named Nachan, after Chan his family name. The name Votan is seemingly a variant of Wotan, the Scandinavian All Father, and also of Wootton, which is a common Kentish family name: Wotan of _Wednesday_ was, it is believed, once widely wors.h.i.+pped in Kent, notably at _Woodnes_borough, which is particularly a.s.sociated with the tradition: on Christmas Eve Thanet used to celebrate a festival called _Hooden_ing which consisted of decorating either the skull of a horse, or the wooden figure of a horse's head, which then was perambulated on a pole by a man hidden beneath a sheet.[1003]

In Central America _chan_ meant serpent, in which connection it is noteworthy that in Scandinavian mythology Wotan presides over the great world snake coiled at the roots of the mighty Ash Tree, named Iggdrasil.

This word may, I think, be resolved into _igg dra sil_, or High Tree Holy, and the Ash of our innumerable Ashdowns, Ashtons, Ashleys, Ashursts, etc., may in all probability be equated not only with _aes_, the Welsh for _tree_, but also with _oes_, the Welsh for _life_. That Ja.n.u.s, whose coin was ent.i.tled the _as_, was King As has already been suggested, and that As or Ash[1004] was Odin is hardly open to doubt.

According to Borlase (W. C.): "There is reason to believe that the Sun was a princ.i.p.al divinity wors.h.i.+pped under the name of Fal, Phol, Bel, Beli, Balor, and Balder, all synonymous terms in the comparative mythology of the Germanic peoples whether Celtic or Teutonic in speech.

A curious pa.s.sage in Johannes Cornubiensis permits us to equate this deity with Asch or As, one name of Odin. The more deeply we study this portion of the subject the more certain becomes the ident.i.ty of the members of the pantheon of the two western branches of the Aryan-speaking peoples."[1005]

The word _Kent_ or Cantium is, I think, connected with Candia, but whether Votan of the race of Chan came from Candia, Cantium, or Scandinavia is a discussion which must be reserved for a subsequent volume: it is sufficient here to note in pa.s.sing that one-third of the language of the Mayas is said to be pure Greek, whence the question has very pertinently been raised, "Who brought the dialect of Homer to America? or who took to Greece that of the Mayas?"

It is now well known that there was communication between the East and West long before America was rediscovered by Columbus, and there is nothing therefore improbable in the Chiapenese tradition that their Votan, after settling affairs in the West, visited Spain and Rome. The legend relates that Votan "went by the road which his brethren, the Culebres, had bored," these Culebres being presumably either the inhabitants of Calabar in Africa now embraced in the Niger Protectorate, or of Calabria, the southernmost province of Italy. The allusion to a road which the Culebres had bored might be dismissed as a fiction were it not for the curious fact mentioned by Livingstone that tribes lived underground in Rua: "Some excavations are said to be thirty miles long and have running rills in them; a whole district can stand a siege in them. The 'writings' therein I have been told by some of the people are drawings of animals and not letters, otherwise I should have gone to see them." The primitive but, in many respects, advanced culture of Mykenae and of Troy does not seem to have possessed the art of writing, and contemporary ideas must thus necessarily have been expressed by symbols akin to the multifarious animal-hieroglyphics of ancient Candia: it would even seem possible that the writings of underground Rua were parallel to the records of Egypt alleged in the following pa.s.sage: "It is affirmed that the Egyptian priests, versed in all the branches of religious knowledge, and apprised of the approach of the Deluge, were fearful lest the divine wors.h.i.+p should be effaced from the memory of man. To preserve the memory of it, therefore, they dug in various parts of the kingdom subterranean winding pa.s.sages, on the walls of which they engraved their knowledge, under different forms of animals and birds, which they call hieroglyphics, and which are unintelligible to the Romans."[1006]

The existence of underground ways seems to be not infrequent in Africa, for Captain Grant, who accompanied Captain Speke in his exploration for the source of the Nile, tells of a colossal tunnel or subway bored under the river Kaoma. Grant asked his native guide whether he had ever seen anything like it elsewhere and the guide replied, "This country reminds me of what I saw in the country to the south of Lake Tanganyika": he then described a tunnel or subway under another river named also Kaoma, a tunnel so lengthy that it took the caravan from sunrise to noon to pa.s.s through. This was said to be so lofty that if mounted upon camels the top could not be touched: "Tall reeds the thickness of a walking-stick grew inside; the road was strewed with white pebbles, and so wide--400 yards--that they could see their way tolerably well while pa.s.sing through it. The rocks looked as if they had been planed by artificial means." The guide added that the people of Wambeh Lake shelter in this tunnel,[1007] and live there with their families and cattle.[1008]

In view of these Rider-Haggard-like facts it is unnecessary to discredit the tradition that the South American Votan of the tribe of Chan visited his kinsmen the Culebres, by the road which the Culebres had bored. The journey is said to have taken place in the year 3000 of the world or 1000 B.C., and among the spots alleged to have been visited was the city of Rome where Votan "saw the house of G.o.d building". It is well known that great cities almost invariably exhibit traces of previous cities on the same site: Schliemann's excavations at Troy proved the pre-existence of a succession of cities on the site of Troy, and the same fact has recently been established at Seville and elsewhere. The city of Rome is famous for a labyrinth of catacombs, the building of which has always been a mystery: the catacombs abound in pagan emblems, and it is, I believe, now generally supposed that they are of pre-Christian origin.

A correspondent of _Notes and Queries_ suggested in 1876 that the Roman Catacombs were the work of the prehistoric Cimmerii who notoriously dwelt _in subterraneis domiciliis_. The rocks of the Crimea, notably at Inkerman, are honeycombed with caverns; in fact the burrowing proclivities of the Kymbri are proverbialised in the expression "Cimmerian darkness". The same correspondent of _Notes and Queries_[1009] further drew attention to the remarkable fact that in the year 1770 coal mining operations in Ireland, at Fair Head, near The Giant's Causeway, disclosed prehistoric quarryings together with stone hammers "of the rudest and most ancient form". It is difficult to believe that prehistoric man, surrounded by inexhaustible supplies of fuel in the form of forest and peat, found it necessary to mine, with his poor implements, for coal fuel, and the description of the supposedly prehistoric mine--"wrought in the most expert manner, the chambers regularly dressed and pillars left at proper intervals to support the roof"--arouses not only a strong suspicion that the _souterrain_ in question was actually a shrine, but also that the place-name Antrim--where these quarryings occur--may be connected with _antre_, a cave. When the Fair Head labyrinth was accidentally disclosed we are told that two lads were sent forward who soon found themselves in "numerous apartments in the mazes and windings of which they were completely bewildered and were finally extricated, not without some difficulty".

With Joun of Etruria, and Ja.n.u.s of Janicula may be connoted the Ogane of Africa, whose toe, like that of Peter, was reverently kissed: that Northern Africa, Etruria, and Dodona were once peopled by a kindred race is one of the commonplaces of anthropology, and these Iberian people are, I think, traceable not only in Britain and Hibernia, but in the actual names _Berat_, _Bri_tain, _Aparica_ (now Africa), _Barbary_, _Berber_ or _Barabbra_, _Epirus_, _Hebrew_, _Culebre_, _Calabria_, and _Celtiberia_. Tacitus, who describes the ancient Britons as being dark complexioned and curly haired, adds: "that portion of Spain in front of Britain encourages the belief that the ancient Iberians had come over and colonised this district--the Gauls took possession of the adjacent coast". According to Huxley and Laing the aboriginal inhabitants of Caledonia were from--"the great Iberian family, the same stock as the Berbers of North Africa":[1010] the prehistoric inhabitants of Wales similarly belonged to the Iberian stock and--"no other race of men existed in Wales until the neolithic period".[1011]

In Cornwall the persisting Iberian type is popularly supposed to be the offspring of Spanish sailors wrecked at the time of the Armada, but this theory is not countenanced by anthropologists. Speaking of the short natives of the Hebridean island of Barra--a significant name--Campbell, in his _West Highland Tales_, observes: "Behind the fire sat a girl with one of these strange foreign faces which are occasionally to be seen in the Western Isles, a face which reminded me of the Nineveh sculptures, and of faces seen in St. Sebastian. Her hair was as black as night, her clear eyes glittered through the peat smoke. Her complexion was dark and her features so unlike those who sat about her, that I asked if she were a native of the island, and learned that she was a Highland girl."

Whether this Barra maiden was a persistent type of Hebrew may be questioned: she was certainly not Mongolian, the other great family whose traces still persist here. The Hebrews traditionally came from Candia, and the Candians or Cretans are universally described as diminutive and dark-haired: according to Prof. Keith the typical Bronze Age man was narrow-faced, round-headed, handsome, and about 5 feet 8 inches in height. "It is curious," he says, "that men of this type are playing leading parts in large proportion to the number living."

The ant.i.thesis to the round-headed Gael, and the oval-headed Cynbro is the square-headed Teuton, Finn, or Mongol. While the Cretan was essentially creative and artistic, we are told on the other hand that "it must always be remembered that the Phoenicians were only intermediaries and created no art of their own".[1012] The same verity is still curiously true of the modern Jew who almost invariably is an intermediary, rarely if ever a producer: neither in Caledonia, Cambria, or Hibernia does one often find a Jewish nose, and the craftsmen-artists of the primeval world were, I think, not the Jews of Tyre, but the older Jous of Candia or Crete. In the name Drew, translated to have meant _skilful_, we have apparently a true tradition of the Jous of Cornwall and the Jous of Droia, or Troy.

It is presumably the Mongolian influence in Prussia, the home of the square-headed, that justified Matthew Arnold in writing: "The universal dead-level of plainness and homeliness, the lack of all beauty and distinction in form and feature, the slowness and clumsiness of the language, the eternal beer, sausages, and bad tobacco, the blank commonness everywhere pressing at last like a weight on the spirits of the traveller in Northern Germany, and making him impatient to be gone--this is the weak side, the industry, the well-doing, the patient, steady elaboration of things, the idea of science governing all departments of human activity--this is the strong side; and through this side of her genius, Germany has already obtained excellent results."

The unimaginative and plodding German is the ant.i.thesis to the impressionable, poetic, and romantic Celt, as probably were the loathed Magogei to the chic Cretans whose national characteristics are commemorated in their frescoes and vases. I have already suggested that the same antipathies existed between the ugsome Mongolians and the swarthy slim Iberians of Epirus or Albania. Descendants of both Mongolians and Jous undoubtedly exist to-day in Britain, particularly in Cornwall, where Dr. Beddoe notes and comments upon the slanting Ugrian or Mongolian eye. The same authority observes that anthropologists had long been calling out for the remains of an Iberian, or pre-Celtic, language in the British Isles before their philological brethren awoke to the consciousness of their existence. "Mongolian or Ugrian types have been recognised though less distinctly; and now Ugrian grammatical forms are being dimly discerned in the Welsh and Irish languages."[1013] In Ireland only two Iberian words are known to have survived, one of which, as we have seen, was _fern_, meaning _anything good_. In view of the fact that the Celtiberians were also known as Virones,[1014] and as the Berones (these last named neighbouring the Pyrenees), it would seem possible that the Iberians were the Hibernians, and had originally a first-cla.s.s reputation. As already noted our records state of Prydain, the son of Aedd, that before his advent there was little gentleness in Britain, and only a superiority in oppression.

It is probable that the Iberians were the original builders of _barrows_, and the excavators of the stupendous _burrows_, found from Burmah to Peru, and from Aparica to Barra: in which direction the Iberian culture flowed it would be premature at present to discuss, but the question will ultimately be settled by an exercise of the perfectly sound canon of etymology, that in comparing two words _a_ and _b_ belonging to the same language, of which _a_ contains a lesser number of syllables, _a_ must be taken to be a more original word unless there be evidence of contractions or other corruption. The theory of a generation ago that our innumerable British monosyllables are testimonies of phonetic decay is probably as false as many similar notions that have recently been relegated to limbo. In a paroxysm of enthusiasm for the German-made Science of Language, and for the theory that sound etymology has nothing to do with sound, one of the disciples of Max Muller has observed that unless _every letter_ in a modern word can be scientifically accounted for according to rule the derivation and definition cannot be accepted. The Dictionaries now prove that spelling was a whimsical, temporary, shallow thing, and it will, I am confident, be an accepted axiom in the future that "Language begins with voice, language ends with voice". If the present book fails to add any weight to this dictum of Latham the evidence is none the less everywhere, and is merely awaiting the shaping hand of a stronger, more competent, and more influential workman than the present writer.

Whether or not the radicals I have used will prove to be chips of Iberian speech remains to be further tested, but in any case, the official contention that the language we speak to-day is, "of course, in no sense native to England but was brought thither by the German tribes who conquered the island in the fifth and sixth centuries"[1015] may be confidently impugned: Prof. Smith is, however, doubtless correct in his statement that when our Anglo-Saxon ancestors came first to ravage Britain, and finally to settle there, they found the island inhabited by a people "weaker, indeed, but infinitely more civilised than themselves".

The present essay will not have been published in vain if to any extent it discredits the dull contempt in which our traditions and ancient coinage are now held; still less if it negatives the offensive supposition that England was "the one purely German nation which arose out of the wreck of Rome," and that practically all our English place-names are of German origin.

On re-reading my MSS. in as far as possible a detached and impartial spirit, there would appear to be much _prima facie_ evidence in favour of the traditional belief that these islands once possessed a very ancient culture, and that the Kimbri, or followers of Brute, were originally pirates or adventurers who reached these sh.o.r.es "over the hazy sea from the summer country which is called Deffrobani, that is where Constantin.o.blys now stands".[1016] Constantinople--originally the Greek colony of Byzantium--is the city nearest the site of Troy; aegean influences have long been recognised in Britain, and the accepted theory is that these influences penetrated overland via Gaul. This supposition seems, however, to be strikingly negatived in a fact noted recently by Prof. Macalister, who, speaking of the spiral decoration found alike at Mykenae and New Grange, observes: "But spirals cannot travel through the air; they must be depicted on some portable object in order to find their way from Orchomenos to the neighbourhood of Drogheda. The lines of the trade routes connecting these distant places ought to be peppered with objects of late Minoan Art-bearing spirals. Even a few painted potsherds would be sufficient. But there is no such thing. The media through which the spiral patterns were _ex hypothesi_ carried to the north have totally disappeared."[1017] We have seen a similar lack of connective evidence in the case of the British spearhead, which seemingly either evolved independently in this country, or was brought hither by sea from the aegean.

With regard to Celtic and aegean spiral decoration, Prof. Macalister writes: "People in the cultural stage of the builders of New Grange do not cultivate Art for Art's sake. Some simple religious or magical significance must lie hidden in these patterns.... Therefore, if we are to suppose that the barbarians acquired the spiral patterns from the aegean merchants we must once more postulate the enthusiastic trading missionary who taught them how to draw spirals in the intervals of business. I, for one, cannot believe in that engaging altruist. I prefer to believe that the spirals at New Grange are not derived from the aegean at all, but that they are an independent growth."[1018]

The Trojans were proverbially a pious race, and personally I should prefer the theory of enthusiastic (sea) trading missionaries to the painfully overworked hypothesis of independent growth.

According to Mr. Donald A. Mackenzie the process of developing symbols from natural objects can be traced even in the Paleolithic Age:[1019]

the earliest town at Troy which was built in the Neolithic Age existed on a hillock and has been likened to the ubiquitous hill fort of Caledonia; seemingly Troy was originally a Dunhill and it was not until about 2500 B.C. that the original hillock, dunhill, or Athene Hill,[1020] was levelled. It is a most remarkable fact that, according to Prof. Virchow, "the few skulls which were saved out of the lower cities have this in common, that without exception they present the character of a more civilised people: all savage peculiarities in the stricter sense are entirely wanting in them".[1021] So far, then, as the testimony of anthropology carries weight, the Trojan fell from a high state of grace, and neolithic Man was quite as capable of the fair humanities as any modern Doctor of Divinity.

If, as I now suggest, the Iberians, the Hebrews, and the British or Kimbry were originally one and the same race, and if, as I further suggest, fragments of the "British" language are recoverable, it follows that the same words will unlock doors in every direction where Iberian or Kimbrian influence permeated: this in a subsequent volume I shall endeavour to show is actually the case, from Burmah to Peru.[1022]

Schliemann mentions in connection with Mykenae a small stream known nowadays as the Perseia, and as Mykenae was said to have been founded by Perseus, the stream Perseia was presumably connected with the ancient pherepolis. The survival of this fairy name is the more remarkable as Mykenae itself was utterly destroyed, buried, and lost sight of, yet the t.i.tle of this rivulet survived: is there any valid reason to deny a similar vitality and antiquity to the brook- and river-names of Britain? Most of these have been complacently ascribed to German settlers, others to Keltic words, but some are admittedly pre-Keltic.

Amongst the group of "rare insolubles" occurs the river Kennet which flows past Abury, and may be connoted with the river Kent in the Kendal district. Apart from the Kentish Cantii Herodotus speaks of a race called Kynetes or Kynesii, both of which terms, as Sir John Rhys says, "have a look of Greek words meaning dogmen": according to Herodotus, "the Celts are outside the Pillars of Hercules and they border on the Kynetii, who dwell the farthest away towards the west of the inhabitants of Europe". Ancient writers locate the Kynetes in the west of Spain which, according to Rhys, "suggests a still more important inference--namely, that there existed in Herodotus' time a continental people of the same origin and habits as the non-Celtic aborigines of these islands".[1023] _Kennet_, as we have seen, was a British word meaning Greyhound; I think the Kynetes were probably wors.h.i.+ppers of every variety of _chien_, and that dog-headed St. Christopher, the kindly giant of Canaan, was the jackal-headed "Mercury" of the track-making merchants of Candia.[1024] In Ireland there figures in the Pantheon a Caindea, whose name is understood to mean the _gentle G.o.ddess_: the fact of the dove being held in such high estimation in Candia,[1025] as elsewhere, is presumptive evidence of the Candian G.o.ddess being fundamentally regarded as gentle, and that Candian adventurers were gentlemen. That Crete or Candia was an Idaeal, Idyllic, and an Aerial island is implied not only by its t.i.tles Idaea, Doliche, and Aeria, but also by the characteristics of its Art.

Etymology--by which I mean a Science that does not quibble at everything beyond the view of Mrs. Markham as being out of bounds--permits us to a.s.sume that the faith of the Iberii was belief in the Iberian _peyrou_, the Parthian _peri_, the British _perry_, _phairy_, or _fairy_.