Archaic England

--_aeneid_, Bk. III., lxviii.

[899] _A New Description of England and Wales_, 1724, p. 84.

[900] _The English Language_, p. 141.

[901] Mr. and Mrs. Hawes, _Crete the Forerunner of Greece_, p. 123.

[902] Hazlitt, W. Carew, _Faiths and Folklore_, i., 222.

[903] _Iliad_, ii., 940.

[904] _Myths of Crete and Pre-h.e.l.lenic Europe_, pp. 70, 190. The italics are mine.

CHAPTER XIV.

DOWN UNDER.

"It is our duty to begin research even if we have to penetrate many a labyrinth leading to nowhere and to lament the loss of many a plausible system. A false theory negatived is a positive result."--THOS. J. WESTROPP.

In the year 1585 a curious occurrence happened at the small hamlet of Mottingham in Kent: betimes in the morning of 4th August the ground began to sink, so much so that three great elm trees in a certain field were swallowed up into a pit of about 80 yards in circ.u.mference and by ten o'clock no part of them could be seen. This cavity then filled with water of such depth that a sounding line of 50 fathoms could hardly find or feel any bottom: still more alarming grew the situation when in an adjacent field another piece of ground sunk in like manner near the highway and "so nigh a dwelling house that the inhabitants were greatly terrified therewith".[905]

To account for a subsidence much deeper than an elm tree one must postulate a correspondingly lofty _soutterrain_: the precise spot at Mottingham where these subsidences are recorded was known as Fairy Hill, and I have little doubt that like many other Dunhills this particular Fairy Hill was honeycombed or hollowed. Almost every Mottingham[906] or Maiden's Home consisted not only of the characteristic surface features noted in the preceding chapter, but in addition the thoroughly ideal Maiden's Home went down deep into the earth: in Ireland the children of Don were popularly reputed to dwell in palaces _underground_; similarly in Crete the Great Mother--the Earth Mother a.s.sociated with circles and caves, the G.o.ddess of birth and death, of fertility and fate, the ancestress of all mankind--was a.s.sumed to gather the ghosts of her progeny to her abode in the Underworld.[907]

Caves and caverns play a prime and elementary part in the mythologies of the world: their role is literally vital, for it was believed that the Life of the World, in the form of the Young Sun, was born yearly anew on 25th December, always in a cave: thus caves were invariably sacred to the Dawn or G.o.d of Light, and only secondarily to the engulfing powers of Darkness; from the simple cell, _kille_, or little church gradually evolved the labyrinthine catacomb and the stupendous rock-temple.

The County of Kent is curiously rich in caves which range in importance from the mysterious single _Dene_ Hole to the amazing honeycomb of caverns which underlie Chislehurst and Blackheath: a network of caves exists beneath Trinity Church, Margate; moreover, in Margate is a serpentine grotto decorated with a wonderful mosaic of sh.e.l.l-work which, so far as I am able to ascertain, is unique and unparalleled. The grotto at Margate is situated in the Dene or Valley underneath an eminence now termed _Dane_ Hill: one of the best known of the Cornish so-called Giant's Holts is that situated in the grounds of the Manor House of Pen_deen_, not in a dene or valley, but on the high ground at Pendeen Point. In Cornish _pen_ meant head or point, whence Pendeen means _Deen Headland_, and one again encounters the word _dene_ in the mysterious Dene holes or Dane holes found so plentifully in Kent: these are supposed to have been places of refuge from the Danes, but they certainly never were built for that purpose, for the discovery within them of flint, bone, and bronze relics proves them to be of neolithic antiquity.

There must be some close connection in idea between the serpentine grotto in The _Dane_, Margate, the subterranean chamber at Pen_deen_, Cornwall, the Kentish _Dene_ Holes and the mysterious tunnellings in the neighbourhood of County _Down_, Ireland: these last were described by Borlase as follows: "All this part of Ireland abounds with Caves not only under mounts, forts, and castles, but under plain fields, some winding into little hills and risings like a volute or ram's horn, others run in zigzag like a serpent; others again right forward connecting cell with cell. The common Irish think they are skulking holes of the Danes after they had lost their superiority in that Island."[908] They may conceivably have served this purpose, but it is more probable that these mysterious tunnellings were the supposed habitations of the subterranean Tuatha te Danaan, _i.e._, the Children of _Don_ or _Danu_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 462.--Ground plan of a section of the Chislehurst caves, from an article by Mr. W. J. Nichols, published in _The Journal of the British Archaeological a.s.sociation_, 1903.]

In County Down we have a labyrinthine connection of cell with cell, and in some parts of Kent the same principle appears to have been at work culminating in the extraordinary subterranean labyrinth known as "The Chislehurst Caves": these quarryings, hewn out of the chalk, cover in seemingly unbroken sequence--superposed layer upon layer--an enormous area, under the Chislehurst district: between 20 and 30 miles of extended burrowings have, it is said, already been located, yet it is suspected that more remain to be discovered. Commenting upon this extraordinary labyrinth Mr. W. J. Nichols, a Vice-President of the British Archaeological a.s.sociation, has observed: "Not far from this shaft we see one of the most interesting sights that these caves can show us: a series of galleries, with rectangular crossings, containing many chambers of semicircular, or apsidal form, to the number of thirty or more--some having altar-tables formed in the chalk, within a point or two of true orientation. This may be accidental, but the fact remains; and the theory is supported by the discovery of an adjoining chamber, apparently intended for the officiating priest. There is an air of profound mystery pervading the place: a hundred indications suggest that it was a subterranean Stonehenge; and one is struck with a sense of wonder, and even of awe, as the dim lamplight reveals the extraordinary works which surround us."

In the caverns of Mithra twelve apses corresponding to the twelve signs of the Zodiac used to be customary: the _thirty_ apses at Chislehurst may have had some relation to the thirty dies or days, and if the number of niches extended to thirty-three this total should be connoted with the thirty-three elementary giants considered in an earlier chapter.

There are no signs of the Chislehurst Caverns having at any time been used systematically as human abodes, but in other parts of the world similar sites have been converted into villages: one such existing at Troo in France is thus described by Baring-Gould: "What makes Troo specially interesting is that the whole height is like a sponge perforated with pa.s.sages giving access to halls, some of which are circular and lead into stone chambers; and most of the houses are wholly or in part underground. The caves that are inhabited are staged one above another, some reached by stairs that are little better than ladders, and the subterranean pa.s.sages leading from them form a labyrinth within the bowels of the hill and run in superposed stories."[909] The name of this subterranean city of Troo may be connected with _trou_, the French generic term for a hole or pit: the Provencal form of _trou_ is _trauc_, which etymologists identify with _traugum_, the Latin for a cave or den. The Latin _traugum_ (origin unknown) is radically the same as _troglos_, the Greek for a cave, whence the modern term _troglodite_ or cave dweller, and it is not unlikely that the _dene_ of _denehole_ is the same word as _den_: the Provencal _trauc_ may be connoted with the English place-name Thurrock, which is on the Ess.e.x side of the river Thames, and is famous for the large number of deneholes that still exist there.

The place-name Thurrock and the word _trauc_, meaning a cave, may evidently be equated with the two first syllables of _traugum_ and _troglos_. According to my theories the primitive meaning of _tur og_ was Eternal, or _Enduring Og_, and it is thus a felicitous coincidence that Og, the famous King of Bashan, was a troglodite: the ruins of his capital named Edrei, which was situated in the Zanite Hills, still exist, and are thus described by a modern explorer: "We took with us a box of matches and two candles. After we had gone down the slope for some time, we came to a dozen rooms which, at present, are used as goat stalls and store-rooms for straw. The pa.s.sage became gradually smaller, until at last we were compelled to lie down flat and creep along. This extremely

We now found ourselves in a broad street, which had dwellings on both sides, whose height and width left nothing to be desired. The temperature was mild, the air free from unpleasant odours, and I felt not the smallest difficulty in breathing. Further along there were several cross-streets, and my guide called my attention to a hole in the ceiling for air, like three others which I afterwards saw, now closed from above. Soon after we came to a market-place, where, for a long distance, on both sides of the pretty broad street were numerous shops in the walls, exactly in the style of the shops seen in Syrian cities.

After a while we turned into a side street, where a great hall, whose roof was supported by four pillars, attracted my attention. The roof, or ceiling, was formed of a single slab of jasper, perfectly smooth and of immense size, in which I was unable to perceive the slightest crack."[910] The here-described holes in the ceiling for air "now closed from above" correspond very closely to the shafts running up here and there from the Chislehurst caves to the private gardens overhead.

In connection with the troglodite town of Troo, and with the French word _trou_ meaning a hole, it is worthy of note that a subterranean chamber or "Giant's Holt," exists at _Trew_ in Cornwall, and a similar one at the village of _Trew_oofe: the name Trewoofe suggests the word _trough_, a generic term for a scooped or hollowed-out receptacle: we have already noted that in the west of England a small s.h.i.+p is still called a _trow_; the Anglo-Saxon for a trough was _troh_, the German is _trog_, the Danish is _trug_, and the Swedish _trag_.

The artificial cave at _Trewoofe_ also suggests a connection with the famous Cave-oracle in Livadia known as the Den of _Trophonius_: this celebrated oracle contained small niches for the reception of gift-offerings and there are curious little wall-holes in some of the Cornish _souterrains_ which cannot, so far as one can judge, have filled any other purpose than that served by the niches in the Cave of Trophonius. The calcareous mountain in which the oracle of Trophonius was situated is tunnelled by a number of other excavations, but over the entrance to what is believed to be the veritable prophetic grotto is graved the mysterious word CHIBOLET, or, according to others, ZEUS BOULAIOZ, meaning ZEUS THE COUNSELLOR. The Greek for _counsellor_ is _bouleutes_, and the radical _bouleut_ of this term is curiously suggestive of Bolleit, the name applied to _two_ of the Cornish subterranean chambers, _i.e._, the Bolleit Cave in the parish of St.

Eval and the Bolleit Cave near St. Buryan: the latter of these sites includes a stone circle and other monolithic remains which are believed by antiquarians to mark the site of some battle; whence the name Bolleit is by modern etymologers interpreted as having meant _field of blood_, but it exceeds the bounds of coincidence that there should also be a Bolleit cave elsewhere, and the greater probability would seem that these Cornish _souterrains_ were sacred spots serving among other uses the purposes of Oracle and Counsel Chambers. If the disputed inscription over the Trophonian Den really read CHIBOLET it would decode agreeably in accordance with my theories into CHI or Jou the COUNSELLOR; but I am unaware that the Greek Zeus was ever known locally as Chi.[911]

The celebrated Blue John cave of Derbys.h.i.+re--where we have noted Chee Dale--is situated in _Tray_ Cliff, and in the neighbouring "Thor's Cave"

have been found the remains of prehistoric man: similar remains have been unearthed at Thurrock where the dene holes are conspicuously abundant, and in view of the persistent recurrence of the cave-root _tur_ or _trou_ it is worth noting that cave making was a marked characteristic of the people of _Tyre_: "Wherever the Tyrians penetrated, to Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, similar burial places have been discovered."[912] According to Baring-Gould all the subterranean dwellings of Europe bear a marked resemblance to the troglodite town of King Og at Edrei--a veritable Tartarus or Underworld--and the _drei_ of Edrei is no doubt a variant of trou, Troo, Trew or Troy, for, as already seen, in the Welsh language "Troy town" is Caer _Droia_ or Caer _Drei_.

One has to consider three forms or amplifications of the same phenomenon: (1) the single cave; (2) several caves connected to one another by serpentine tunnels; (3) a labyrinth or honeycomb of caves leading one out of the other and ranged layer upon layer. Etymology and mythology alike point to the probability, if not the certainty, that among the ancients a cave, natural or artificial, was regarded as the symbol of, and to some extent a facsimile of the intricate Womb of Creation, or of Mother Nature. "Man in his primitive state," says a recent writer, "considers himself to have emerged from some cave; in fact, _from the entrails of the Earth_. Nearly all American creation-myths regard men as thus emanating from the bowels of the great terrestrial mother."[913]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 463.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sections of a Dene-hole and Ground Plan of Chambers.

(_Based upon a plan and description by Mr. T. V.

Holmes, F.G.S._)

FIG. 464.--From _The Chislehurst Caves_ (Nichols, W. J.).]

Fig. 463, evidently representative of the Great terrestrial Mother holding in her hand a simple horn, the fore-runner of the later _cornu copia_ or horn of abundance, is the outline sketch of a rock-carved statue, 2 feet in height, discovered on the rubble-covered face of a rock cliff in the Dordogne: this has been proved to be of Aurignacian age and is the only yet discovered statue of any size executed by the so-called Reindeer men; in the Chislehurst caves have been discovered the deer horn picks of the primeval men who apparently first made them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 465.--Ground plan of a group of Dene Holes in Hangman's Wood, Kent. From a plan by Mr. A. R.

G.o.ddard, F.S.A.]

The Kentish Dene hole is never an aimless quarrying; on the contrary it always has a curiously specific form, dropping about 100 feet as a narrow shaft approximately 3 feet in diameter and then opening out into a six-fold chamber, _vide_ the plans[914] herewith. This is not a rational or business-like form of chalk quarry, and it must have been very difficult indeed to bucket up the output in small driblets, transport it from the tangled heart of woods, and pack-horse it on to galleys in the Thames: nevertheless something similar seems to have been the procedure in Pliny's time for he tells that white chalk, or _argentaria_, "is obtained by means of pits sunk like wells with narrow mouths to the depth sometimes of 100 feet, when they branch out like the veins of mines and this kind is chiefly used in Britain".[915]

In view of the fact that either chalk or flints could have been had conveniently in unlimited quant.i.ties for s.h.i.+pment, either from the coast cliffs of Albion, or if inland from the commonsense everyday form of chalk quarry, it is difficult to suppose otherwise than that the Deneholes--which do _not_ branch out indiscriminately like ordinary mine-veins--were dug under superst.i.tious or ecclesiastical control. Of this system perhaps a parallel instance may be found in the remarkable turquoise mines recently explored at Maghara near Sinai: "These mines,"

says a writer in _Ancient Egypt_,[916] "lie in the vicinity of two adjacent caves facing an extensive site of burning, which has the peculiarities of the high-places of which we hear so much in the Bible.

These caves formed a sanctuary which, judging from what is known of ancient sanctuaries in Arabia generally, was at once a shrine and a store house, presumably in the possession of a priesthood or clan, who, in return for offerings brought to the shrine, gave either turquoise itself, or the permission to mine it in the surrounding district. The sanctuary, like other sanctuaries in Arabia, was under the patronage of a female divinity, the representative of nature-wors.h.i.+p, and one of the numerous forms of Ishthar."

The name of this Istar-like or Star Deity is not recorded, but in this description she is alluded to as _Mistress of the Turquoise Country_, and later simply as _Mistress of Turquoise_. We may possibly arrive at the name of the British Lady of the star-shaped dene holes by reference to a votive tablet which was unearthed in 1647 near Zeeland: this is to the following effect:--

To the G.o.ddess Nehalennia-- For his goods well preserved-- Secundus Silvanius A chalk Merchant Of Britain Willingly performed his merited vow.

I am acquainted with no allusions in British mythology to Nehalennia, but she is recognisable in the St. Newlyna of Newlyn, near Penzance, and of Noualen in Brittany: it is not an unreasonable conjecture that St.

Nehalennia of the Thames was a relative of Great St. Helen, and she was probably the little, young, or _new Ellen_. At Dunstable, where also there are dene holes, we find a Dame Ellen's Wood, and it may be surmised that _Nelly_ was originally a _diminutive_ of Ellen.

Among the Bretons as among the Britons precisely the same mania for burrowing seems at one period to have prevailed, and in an essay on _The Origin of Dene Holes_, Mr. A. R. G.o.ddard pertinently inquires: "What, then, were these great excavations so carefully concealed in the midst of lone forests?" Mr. G.o.ddard points out that an interesting account of the use made of very similar places in Brittany by the peasant armies, during the war in La Vendee, is to be found in Victor Hugo's _Ninety Three_, and that that narrative is partially historic, for it ends, "In that war my father fought, and I can speak advisedly thereof". Victor Hugo writes: "It is difficult to picture to oneself what these Breton forests really were. They were towns. Nothing could be more secret, more silent, and more savage. There were wells, round and narrow, masked by coverings of stones and branches; the interior at first vertical, then horizontal, spreading out underground like funnels, and ending in dark chambers." These excavations, he states, had been there from time immemorial, and he continues: "One of the wildest glades of the wood of Misdon, perforated by galleries and cells, out of which came and went a mysterious society, was called The Great City. The gloomy Breton forests were servants and accomplices of the rebellion. The subsoil of every forest was a sort of _madrepore_, pierced and traversed in all directions by a secret highway of mines, cells, and galleries. Each of these blind cells could shelter five or six men."

The notion that the dene holes of Kent were built as refuges from the Danes, and that the tortuous _souterrains_ of County Down were constructed by the defeated Danes as skulking holes is on a par with the supposition that the _souterrains_ of La Vendee were built as an annoyance to the French Republic; and the idea that the solitary or combined dene holes situated in the heart of lone, dense, and inaccessible forests were due to action of the sea, or mere shafts sunk by local farmers simply for the purpose of obtaining chalk seems to me irrational and inadequate. It is still customary for hermits to dwell in caves, and in Tibet there are Buddhist Monasteries "where the inmates enter as little children, and grow up with the prospect of being literally immured in a cave from which the light of day is excluded as well as the society of their fellow-men, there to spend the rest of their life till they rot": it is thus not impossible that each dene hole in Britain was originally the abode of a hermit or holy man, and that cl.u.s.ters of these sacred caves const.i.tuted the earliest monasteries. In Egypt near Antinoe there is a rock-hewn church known as _Dayn_ Aboo Hannes, which is rendered by Baring-Gould as meaning "The Convent of Father John": it would thus appear that in that part of the world _dayn_ was the generic term for _convent_, and it is not unlikely that the ecclesiastical _dean_ of to-day does not owe his t.i.tle to the Greek word _diaconus_, but that the original deaneries were congeries of dene holes or dens. The mountains and deserts of Upper Egypt used to be infested with ascetics known as Therapeutae who dwelt in caves, and the immense amount of stone which the extensive excavations provided served secondarily as material for building the pyramids and neighbouring towns: the word Therapeut, sometimes translated to mean "holy man," and sometimes as "healer," is radically _thera_ or _tera_, and one of the most remarkable of the Egyptian cave temples is that situated at Derr or Derri.

In addition to dene holes on the coast of _Dur_ham and at _Dun_stable there are dene holes in the _dun_, _down_, or hill overlooking Kit's Coty: it may reasonably be surmised that the latter were inhabited by the _drui_ or wise men who constructed not only Kit's Coty but also the other extensive megalithic remains which exist in the neighbourhood. The well-known cave at St. Andrews contains many curious Pictish sculptures, and the connection between _antrou_ (or _Andrew_), a cave, and _trou_, a hole, extends to the words _entrails_, _intricate_, and _under_.

Practically all the "Mighty Childs" of mythology are represented as having sprung from caves or underground: Jupiter or Chi (the _chi_ or [Greek: ch] is the cross of _Andrew_[917]) was cave-born and wors.h.i.+pped in a cave; Dionysos was said to have been nurtured in a cave; Hermes was born at the mouth of a cave, and it is remarkable that, whereas a cave is still shown as the birthplace of Jesus Christ at Bethlehem, St.

Jerome complained that in his day the pagans celebrated the wors.h.i.+p of Thammuz, or Adonis, _i.e._, Adon, _at that very cave_.

Etymology everywhere confirms the supposition that underlying cave construction and governing wors.h.i.+p within caves was a connection, in idea, between the cave and the Mother of Existence or the Womb of Nature. The "Womb of Being" is a common phrase applied to Divinity, and in Scotland the little pits which were constructed by the aborigines are still known as _weems_, from _wamha_, meaning a cave. In Lowland Scotch _wame_ meant _womb_, and _wamha_, a cave, is obviously akin not only to _wame_ but also to _womb_, Old English _wambe_; indeed the cave was considered so necessary a feature of Mithra-wors.h.i.+p that where natural cavities did not exist artificial ones were constructed. The standard reason given for Mithraic cave-wors.h.i.+p was that the cave mystically signified "the descent of the soul into the sublunary regions and its regression thence". Doubtless this sophisticated notion at one period prevailed: that all sorts of Mysteries were enacted within caves is too well known to need emphasis, and I think that the seemingly unaccountable apses within the Chislehurst labyrinth may have served a serious and important purpose in troglodite philosophy.

The celebrated cave at Royston is remarkably bell-shaped; many of the barrows at Stonehenge were _bell_-formed, and in Ceylon the gigantic bell-formed pyramids there known as Dagobas are connected by etymologists with _gabba_, which means not only _shrine_ but also _womb_. In the design on p. 783, Isis, the Great Mother, is surrounded by a cartouche or halo of bell-like objects: the sistrum of Isis which was a symbol of the Gate of Life was decorated with bells; bells formed an essential element of the sacerdotal vestments of the Israelites; bells are a characteristic of modern Oriental religious usage, and in Celtic Christianity the bell was regarded--according to C. W. King--as "the actual type of the G.o.dhead".[918]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 466.--Section of Royston Cave traced from a drawing in _Cliff Castles and Cliff Dwellings of Europe_ (Baring-Gould, S.).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 467.--From _Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism_ (Inman, C. W.).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 468. [_To face page 788._]