Archaic England

The burial place of St. Patrick, St. Bride, and Columba the Mild, is alleged to be at Duno in Ulster: "In Duno," says _The Golden Legend_, "these three be buried all in one sepulchre": the word Duno is _d'uno_, the divine Uno, and the spot was no doubt an Eden of "the One Man": Honeyman[896] is a fairly common English surname, and although this family may have been dealers in honey, it is more probable that they are descendants of the One Man's ministers: in Friesland are megalithic Hunnebeds, or Giant's Beds, and I have little doubt that the marvellously scooped stone at Hoy in the Hebrides[897]--the parallel of which existed in Egypt, the Land of the Eye--was originally a Hunne Bed or _grotte des fees_.

"Of Paradise," says Maundeville, "I cannot speak for I have not been there": nevertheless this traveller--who was not necessarily the arch liar of popular a.s.sumption--has recorded many artificial paradises which he was permitted to explore: the word _paradise_ is the Persian _pairidaeza_, which means an enclosure, or place walled in: it is thus cognate with our _park_, and the first parks were probably sanctuaries of the divine Pair. Nowhere that I know of is the place-name Paradise[898] more persistent than in Thanet or Tanet, a name supposed by the authorities to be Celtic for _fire_: at the nose of the North Foreland old maps mark Faire Ness, and I have little doubt that Thanet, "by some called Athanaton and Thanaton,"[899] was originally sacred to Athene. In Suffolk is a Thingoe, which is understood to mean "how, or mound of the _thing_, or provincial a.s.sembly": the chief Cantian _thing_ or folkmoot was probably held at the Dane John at Cantuarbig or Durovernon; the word _think_ implies that Athene was a personification of Reason or Holy Rhea, and the equivalence of the words _remercie_ and _thank_, suggest that all dons, donatives, and donations were deemed to have come from the Madonna or Queen Mercy, to whom thanks or remerciements were rendered by the utterance of her name. In the North of England there are numerous places named Unthank, which seemingly is ancient Thank: the Deity is still thanked for _meat_, _i.e._, _fare_, or _forage_; _free_, according to Pearsall, "comes from an Aryan root meaning _dear_ (whence also our word _friend_), and meant in old Teutonic times those who are _dear_ to the head of the household--that is connected with him by ties of friends.h.i.+p, and not slaves, or in bondage".[900] The word _dear_, French _adore_, connects _tre_ or abode with Droia or Troy: yet the _Sweet Maiden_ of Crete could at times show dour displeasure, and one of her best known representations is thus described: "The pose of the little figure is dignified and firm, the side face is even winning, but the eyes are fierce, and the outstretched hands holding the heads of the snakes are so tense and show such strength that we instinctively feel this was no person to be played with".[901] The connection at Edanhall of The Maiden's Step with Giant Torquin establishes a probability that the Maid or the Maiden was either the Troy Queen or the Eternal Queen, or _dur queen_, the hard Queen, at times a little dragon, oftener a _dear Queen_, _i.e._, Britomart, the Sweet Maiden, or Eda, the pa.s.sionately beloved, the _Adoree_. "Bride, the _gentle_" is an epithet traditionally applied to

Brigit, or St. Brig; in Welsh, _brig_ and _brigant_ mean _tip top_ or _summit_, and these terms may be connoted with the Irish _brig_ meaning pre-eminent power, influence, authority, and high esteem. At Chester, or Deva, there has been found an inscription to the "Nymph-G.o.ddess Brig,"

and at Berrens in Scotland has been found an altar to the G.o.ddess of Brigantia, which exhibits a winged deity holding a spear in one hand, and a globe in the other.

In the British Museum is a coin lettered CYNETHRYTH REGINA: this lady, who is described as the widow of Offa, is portrayed "in long curls, behind head long cross": a.s.suredly there were numerous Queen Cynethryths, but the original Cynethryth was equally probably Queen Truth, and in view of the fact that the motto of Bardic Druidism was "the Truth against the world," we may perhaps a.s.sume that the Druid was a follower of Truth or Troth.

In the opinion of the learned Borlase the sculpture ill.u.s.trated on page 485 represents the six progressive orders of Druidism contemplating Truth, the younger men on the right viewing the Maiden draped in the garb of convention, the older ones on the left beholding her nude in her symbolic aspect as the feeder of two serpents: it is not improbable that Quendred, the miraculous light-bearing Mother of St. Dunstan, was a variant of the name Cynethryth, at times Queen Dread, at times Queen Truth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 461.--Britannia, A.D. 1919.

_By permission of the Proprietors of "Punch"._]

The frequent discovery of coins--Roman and otherwise--within cromlechs such as Kit's Coty and other sacred sites appears to me to prove nothing in respect of age, but rather a survival of the ancient superst.i.tion that the fairies possessed from time immemorial certain fields which could not be taken away or appropriated without gratifying the pixy proprietors by a piece of money:[902] the land-grabber is no novelty, nor seemingly is conscience money. That important battles occurred at such sites as Moytura and Braavalla is no argument that those fantastic Troy Towns or Drewsteigntons were, as Fergusson laboriously maintained, monuments to commemorate slaughter. According to Homer--

Before the city stands a lofty mound, In the mid plain, by open s.p.a.ce enclos'd; Men call it Batiaea; but the G.o.ds The tomb of swift Myrinna; muster'd _there The Trojans and Allies their troops array'd_.[903]

Nothing is more certain than that with the exception of a negligible number of conscientious objectors, a chivalrous people would defend its Eyedun to the death, and that the last array against invaders would almost invariably occur in or around the local Sanctuarie or Perry dun.

It is a wholly unheard of thing for the British to think or speak of Britain as "the Fatherland": the Cretans, according to Plutarch, spoke of Crete as their Motherland, and not as the Fatherland: "_At first_,"

says Mackenzie, "the Cretan Earth Mother was the _culture deity_ who instructed mankind... in Crete she was well developed before the earliest island settlers began to carve her images on gems and seals or depict them in frescoes. She symbolised the island and its social life and organisation."[904]

FOOTNOTES:

[820] _Irish Folklore_, p. 32.

[821] _Irish Folklore_, p.78

[822] Heath, F. R. and S., _Dorchester_, p. 40.

[823] Dorchester stands on the "Econ Way"

[824] _Irish Folklore_, p. 79.

[825] In _Crete the Forerunner of Greece_, Mr. and Mrs. Hawes remark that Browning's great monologue corresponds perfectly with all we know of the Minoan G.o.ddess--

I shed in h.e.l.l o'er my pale people peace On earth, I caring for the creatures guard Each pregnant yellow wolf and fox-b.i.t.c.h sleek, And every feathered mother's callow brood, And all that love green haunts and loneliness.

[826] _Iliad_, xv., 175.

[827] _London_, p. 59.

[828] _Irish Folklore_, p. 34.

[829] Gomme, Sir L., _The Topography of London_, ii., 215.

[830] See Cynethryth _post_, p. 761.

[831] _Golden Legend_, iii., 188.

[832] Hunt, R., _Popular Romances of the West of England_, p. 73.

[833] Cf. Numbers xiii. 33.

[834] Adjacent to Perry Mount, Perrivale, Sydenham, are Adamsrill road, Inglemere road, _Allen_by road, and _Ex_bury road.

[835] This Tanfield Court supposedly takes its name from an individual named Tanfield. Wherever the original Tanfield was it was doubtless the scene of many a bonfire or Beltan similar to the joyous "Tan Tads," or "Fire Fathers" of Brittany.

[836] _Cf_. Forster, Rev. C., _The One Primeval Language_, 1851.

[837] _Rude Stone Monuments_, p. 131.

[838] "His feathers were all ruffled for he had been grossly handled by a glove not of silk, but of wool, so he preened and plumed himself carefully with his beak."

[839] _Folklore_, xxix., No. 3, p. 195.

[840] P. 165.

[841] At Bickley in Kent there is a _Shaw_field Park, which may be connoted with the Bagshaw's Cavern at Buxton.

[842] By Chee Tor is Mon_sal_ Dale, and we may reasonably connote _sal_ and "_salt_" with Silbury and Sol: into the waters of the Solway Firth flows the river Eden or Ituna, and doubtless the Edinburgh by Salisbury Crags is older than any Saxon Edwin or Scandinavian Odin. (Since writing I find it was originally named Dunedin, _cf._ Morris Jones, Sir G., _Taliesin_.)

[843] _Odyssey_, Book I., 67.

[844] Chapter I.

[845] From an article by Dr. Paul Carus in _The Open Court_.

[846] The fine megalith now standing half a mile distant at "The Den" was transported from Devons.h.i.+re about a century ago--no doubt with the idea of tripping some unwary archaeologist.

[847] _Odyssey_, Book I., 67.

[848] _Cours d'Hieroglyphique Chretienne_, in _L'Universite Catholique_, vol. vi., p. 266.

[849] _Cf._ Hazlitt, W. C., _Faiths and Folklore_, i., 222.

[850] Hunt, p. 328.

[851] Deer, near Aberdeen, is said to have derived its name from _deur_, the Gaelic for _tear_, because St. Drostan shed tears there. The monkish authority in the Book of Deer says: "Drostan's tears came on parting with Columcille". Said Columcille, "Let Dear be its name henceforward".

[852] Fergusson, p. 273.

[853] The Tuttle family may similarly be a.s.signed to one or other of the innumerable Toothills.

[854] _Irish Folklore_, p. 31.

[855] Wentz, W. Y. Evans, p. 404.

[856] In Irish _aine_ means _circle_.