Chapter IX: Bride's Bairns (1)

"But, I do not know how it comes to pass, it is the unhappy fashion
of our age to derive everything curious and valuable, whether the
works of art or nature, from foreign countries: as if Providence
had denied us both the genius and materials of art, and sent us
everything that was precious, comfortable, and convenient, at
second-hand only, and, as it were, by accident, from charity of our
neighbours."--BORLASE (1754).

Homer relates that the gods watched the progress of the siege of Troy from the far-celebrated Mount Ida in Asia Minor: there is another equally famous Mount Ida in Crete, at the foot of which lived a people known as the Idaei. With Homer's allusion to "spring-abounding Ida's lowest spurs," where wandered--

... in the marshy mead
Rejoicing with their foals three thousand mares,

may be connoted his reference to "Hyde's fertile vale,"[506] and there is little doubt that spring-abounding Idas and Hyde Parks were once as plentiful as Prestons, Silverdales, and Kingstons.

The name Ida is translated by the dictionaries as meaning _perfect happiness_, and Ada as _rich gift_: we have already seen that the ideal pair of Ireland were Great King Conn and Good Queen Eda, and that it was during the reign of these royal twain that Ibernia, "flowed with the pure lacteal produce of the dairy".[507]

Hyde Park, now containing Rotten Row at Kensington, occupies the site of what figured in Domesday Book as the Manor of Hyde: the immediately adjacent Audley Streets render it possible that the locality was once known as Aud lea, or meadow, whence subsequent inhabitants derived their surname. Hyde Park is partly in Paddington, a name which the authorities decode into "town of the children of Paeda". This Paeda is supposed to have been a King of Mercia, but he would hardly have been so prolific as to have peopled a town, and, considered in conjunction with the neighbouring Praed or _pere Aed_ street, it is more likely that Paeda was Father Eda, the consort of Maida or Mother Eda, after whom the adjacent Maida Vale and Maida Hill seemingly took their title. By passing up Maida Vale one may traverse St. John's Wood, Brondesbury or Brimsbury, Kensal Green, Cuneburn, and eventually attain the commanding heights of Caen, or Ken wood, from whence may be surveyed not only "Hyde's fertile vale," situated on "spring-abounding Ida's lowest spurs," but a comprehensive sweep of greater London.

According to Tacitus "some say that the Jews were fugitives from the island of Crete,"[508] and he continues: "There is a famous mountain in Crete called Ida; the neighbouring tribe, the Idaei, came to be called Judaei by a barbarous lengthening of the national name". Modern editors of Tacitus regard this statement as no doubt the invention of some Greek etymologer, but with reference to the Idaei they speak of this old Cretan race as "being regarded as a kind of mysterious half-supernatural beings to whom mankind were indebted for the discovery of iron and the art of working it".[509]

There is evidence of a similar idealism having once existed among the Britons and the Jews in the second Epistle of Monk Gildas to the following effect: "The Britons, contrary to all the world and hostile to Roman customs, not only in the mass but also in the tonsure, are with the Jews slaves to the shadows of things to come rather than to the truth".[510] By "truth" Gildas here of course means his own particular "doxy," and the salient point of his testimony is the assertion that practically alone in the world the British and the Jews were dreamy, immaterial, superstitious idealists. That the Idaeians of Crete, Candia, or Idaea were singularly pure or candid may be judged from the testimony of Sir Arthur Evans: "Religion entered at every turn, and it was, perhaps, owing to the religious control of art that among all the Minoan representations--now to be numbered by thousands--no single example of indecency has come to light".[511] Referring to British candour, Procopius affirms: "So highly rated is chastity among these barbarians that if even the bare mention of marriage occurs without its completion the maiden seems to lose her fair fame".[512]

This alleged purity of the British Maid is substantiated by the words _prude_ and _proud_, both of which like _pretty_, _purity_, and _pride_, are radically pure Ide. Skeat defines _prude_ as a woman of affected modesty, and adds "see _prowess_"; but prudery has little connection with prowess, and is it really necessary to assume that primitive prudery was "affected"? The Jewish JAH is translated by scholars as "pure Being"; the passionate adoration of purity is expressed in the prehistoric hymn quoted _ante_ page 183, Hu the Mighty was pre-eminently pure, and it is thus likely that the ancient Pere, Jupiter, or Aubrey meant originally the _Pure_.

We have seen that Jupiter, the divine _Power_, was conceived indifferently as either a man or an immortal maid: a maid is a virgin, and the words _maid_ or _mayde_, like Maida, is radically "Mother Ida". According to Skeat _maid_ is related to Anglo-Saxon _magu_, a son or kinsman; and one may thus perhaps account for _brother_, _bruder_, or _frater_, as meaning originally the produce or progeny of the same _pere_--but not necessarily the same _pair_.

To St. Bride may be assigned not only the terms _bride_ and bridegroom, or brideman; but likewise _breed_ and _brood_. Skeat connects the latter with the German _bruhen_ to scald, but a good mother does not scald her brood, and as St. Bride was known anciently as "The Presiding Care"; even although _bairn_ is the same word as _burn_, we may assume that St. Bride did not burn her _brat_.

There is a Bridewell and a church of St. Bride in London, but to the modern Londoner this "greatest woman of the Celtic Church" is practically unknown. In Hibernia and the Hebrides, however, St. Bride yet lives, and in the words of a modern writer is "more real than the great names of history. They, pale shadows moving in an unreal world, have gone, but she abides. With each revolving year she flits across the Machar, and her tiny flowers burn golden among the short, green, turfy grass at her coming. Her herald, the Gillebrighde, the servant of Bride, calls its own name and hers among the shores, a message that the sea, the treasury of Mary, will soon yield its abundance to the fisher, haven-bound by the cold and stormy waters of winter. He sees St. Bride, the Foster Mother, but his keen vision penetrates a vista far beyond the ages when Imperial Rome held sway and, in that immemorial past, beholds her still. In the uncharted regions of the Celtic imagination, she abides unchanging, her eyes starlit, her raiment woven of fire and dew; her aureole the rainbow. To him she is older than the world of men, yet eternally young. She is beauty and purity and love, and time for her has no meaning. She is a ministering spirit, a flame of fire. It is she who touches with her finger the brow of the poet and breathes into his heart the inspiration of his song. She is born with the dawn, and passes into new loveliness when the sun sets in the wave. The night winds sing her lullaby, and little children hear the music of her voice and look into her answering eyes. Who and what, then, is St. Bride? She is Bridget of Kildare, but she is more. She is the daughter of Dagda, the goddess of the Brigantes; but she is more. She is the maid of Bethlehem, the tender Foster Mother; but she is more even than that. She is of the race of the immortals. She is the spirit and the genius of the Celtic people."[513]

St. Bride was known occasionally as St. Fraid, and Brigit, or Brigid, an alternative title of the Fair Ide, may be modernised into _Pure Good_. With her white wand Brigit was said to breathe life into the mouth of dead Winter, impelling him to open his eyes to the tears, the smiles, the sighs, and the laughter of Spring, whence to Brid, or Bryth of the Brythons, may be assigned the word _breathe_; and as Bride was represented by a sheaf of grain carried joyously from door to door, doubtless in her name we have the origin of _bread_.

The name Bradbury implies that many barrows were dedicated to Brad; running into the river Rye of Kent is a river Brede, and as the young goddess of Crete was known to the Hellenes as Britomart, which means _sweet maiden_, we may equate Britomart with Britannia. At the village of Brede in Kent the seat now known as Brede Place is also known as the Giant's House, whence in all probability St. Bride was the maiden Giant, Gennet, or Jeanette.

In the province of Janina in Albania is the town of Berat, and the foundation of either this Berat or else the Beyrout of Canaan was ascribed by the Greek mythologists to a maiden named Berith or Beroë.

Hail Beroë, fairest offering of the Nereids!
Beroë all hail! thou root of life, thou boast
Of Kings, thou nurse of cities with the world
Coeval; hail thou ever-favoured seat of Hermes ...
With Tethys and Oceanus coeval.
But later poets feign that lovely Beroë
Derived her birth from Venus and Adonis
Soon as the infant saw the light with joy
Old Ocean straight received her in his arms.
And e'en the brute creation shared the pleasure.
... In succeeding years
A sacred town derived its mystic name
From that fair child whose birth coeval was
With the vast globe; but rich Ausonia's sons
The city call Berytus.[514]

The same poet repeatedly maintains that the age of the city of Beroë was equal to that of the world, and that it could boast an antiquity much greater than that of Tarsus, Thebes, or Sardis. The reference to Beroë or Berith as the ever-favoured seat of Hermes implies the customary equation of Britannia = Athene = Wisdom. The prehistoric car illustrated in the preceding chapter is reproduced from a stone in Perthshire or Perithshire, and in a description written in 1569 this stone was then designated the Thane Stone.[515] That this was an Athene stone is somewhat implied by the further details, "it had a cross at the head of it and a goddess next that in a cart, and two horses drawing her and horsemen under that, and footmen and dogs". The Thanes of Scotland were probably the official representatives of Athene, or Wisdom, or Justice, and the dogs of the Thane Stone may be connoted with the Hounds of Diana or Britomart, and the greyhounds of the English Fairy Queen.

Athene is presumably the same as Ethne, the reputed mother of St. Columba, and also as Ieithon, the Keltic goddess of speech or _prat_ing, after whom Anwyl considers the river Ieithon in Radnorshire was named. This Welsh river-name may be connoted with the river Ythan in Scotland, and the legend IDA, found upon the reverse of some of the Ikenian coins of England, may be connoted with the place-name Odestone, or Odstone, implying seemingly a stone of Od, or Odin.

At Oddendale in Westmorland are the remains of a Druidic circle and traces of old British settlements: with the Thanestone may be connoted the carved example illustrated _ante_, page 381, from Dingwall, and also the decorated "Stone of the Fruitful Fairy," which exists in Ireland.[516]

The authorities think it possible that the river Idle--a tributary of the Trent--derived its name from being empty, vain, or useless; but it is more probable that this small stream was christened by the Idaeans, and that the resident Nymph or Fruitful Fairy was the idyll, or the idol, whom they idealised. It is not without significance that the starting point of the races at Uffington was Idles Bush: "As many as a dozen or more horses ran, and they started from Idle's Bush which wur a vine owld tharnin-tree in thay days--a very nice bush. They started from Idle's Bush as I tell 'ee sir, and raced up to the Rudge-way."[517] Doubtless there were also many other "Idles Bush's," perhaps at some time one in every Ideian town or neighbourhood: there is seemingly one notable survival at Ilstrye or _Ideles_tree, now Elstree near St. Albans.

That the Idaean ideal was Athene is implied by the adjective _ethnic_. The word _ethic_ which means, "relating to morals," is connected by Skeat with _sitte_, the German for custom: there is, however, no seeming connection between German custom and the Idyllic.[518]

The early followers of Britomart are universally described as an industrious and peaceful people who made their conquests in arts and commerce: to them not only was ascribed the discovery of iron and the working of it, but the Cretan treatment of bronze proves that the Idaeans were consummate bronzesmiths. In Crete, according to Sir Arthur Evans, "new and refined crafts were developed, some of them like inlaid metal-work unsurpassed in any age or country".

That the Britons were expert blacksmiths is evident not merely from their chariot wheels, but also from the superb examples of bronze art-craft, found notably in the Thames. For the sum of one shilling the reader may obtain _A Guide to the Antiquities of the Iron Age_, published by the British Museum, in which invaluable volume two wonderful examples of prehistoric ironmongery are illustrated in colour. One of these, a bronze shield discovered at Battersea, is rightly described by Romilly Allen, as "about the most beautiful surviving piece of late Celtic metal-work". The Celts, as this same authority observes, had already become expert workers in metal before the close of the Bronze Age; they could make beautiful hollow castings for the chapes of their sword sheaths; they could beat out bronze into thin plates and rivet them together sufficiently well to form water-tight cauldrons; they could ornament their circular bronze shields and golden diadems with repoussé patterns, consisting of corrugations and rows of raised bosses; and they were not unacquainted with the art of engraving on metal.[519]

Not only were the Britons expert in ordinary metal-work but they are believed to have _invented_ the art of enamelled-inlay. Writing in the third century of the present era, an oft-quoted Greek observed: "They say that the barbarians who live in Ocean pour colours on heated bronze and that they adhere, become as hard as stone, and preserve the designs that are made in them".

It is admitted that nowhere was greater success attained by this art of the early Iron Age than in Britain, and as Sir Hercules Read rightly maintains: "There are solid reasons for supposing this particular style to have been confined to this country".[520] The art of enamelling was of course practised elsewhere, particularly at Bibracte in Gaul, long before the Roman Conquest, but in the opinion of Dr. Anderson, the Bibracte enamels are the work of mere dabblers in the art compared with the British examples: the home of the art was Britain, and the style of the patterns, as well as the associations in which the objects decorated with it were found, demonstrate with certainty that it had reached its highest stage of indigenous development before it came in contact with the Roman culture.[521] The evidence of the bronze spear-head points to the same remarkable conclusions as the evidence of enamelled bronze, and in the opinion of the latest and best authorities, from its first inception throughout the whole progress of its evolution the spear-head of the United Kingdom has a character of its own, one quite different from those found elsewhere. In no part of the world did the spear-head attain such perfection of form and fabric as it did in these islands, and the old-fashioned notion that bronze weapons were imported from abroad is now hopelessly discredited. "Why, then," ask the authors of _The Origin, Evolution, and Classification of the Bronze Spear-Head_,[522] "may not a bronze culture have had its birth in our country where it ultimately attained a development scarcely equalled, certainly not surpassed, by that in any other part of the world?"

One of the distinctions of the British spear-head is a certain variety of tang, of which the only parallel has been found in one of the early settlements at Troy. Forms also, somewhat similar, have been discovered in the Islands of the Ægean sea, and in the Terramara deposits of Northern Italy, but it is the considered opinion of Canon Greenwell and Parker Brewis, that whatever may be the true explanation of the history of the general development of a bronze culture in Great Britain and Ireland, "there can be no doubt whatever that the spear-head in its origin, progress, and final consummation was an indigenous product of those two countries, and was manufactured within their limits apart from any controlling influence from outside".[523]

The magnificent bronze shield and _bric a brac_ found in London were thus presumably made there, and it is not improbable that the principal smitheries were situated either at Smithfield in the East, or Smithfield in the West in the ward of Farringdon or Farendone.

Stow in his _London_ uses the word _fereno_ to denote an ironmonger, in old French _feron_ meant a smith, and wherever the ancient ferenos or smiths were settled probably became known as _Farindones_ or _fereno towns_. Stow mentions several eminent goldsmiths named Farendone; from _feron_, the authorities derive the surname Fearon, which may be seen over a shop-front near Farringdon Street to-day.

Modern Farringdon Street leads from Smithfield or Smithy field[524] to Blackfriars, and it may be suggested that the original Black Friars were literally freres or brethren, who forged with industrious ferocity at their fires and furnaces. Without impropriety the early fearons might have adopted as their motto _Semper virens_: smiting in smithies is smutty work, and all these terms are no doubt interrelated, but not, I think, in the sense which Skeat supposes them, _viz._: "Smite, _to fling_. The original sense was to smear or rub over. 'To rub over,' seems to have been a sarcastic expression for 'to beat'; we find _well anoynted_--well beaten."

The word _bronze_ was derived, it is said, from Brundusinum or Brindisi, a town which was famous for its bronze workers. Brindisi is almost opposite Berat in Epirus; the smith or _faber_ is proverbially _burly_, _i.e._, _bur_ like or _brawny_, and it is curious that the terms _brass_, _brasier_, _burnish_, _bronze_, etc., should all similarly point to Bru or Brut. With St. Bride or St. Brigit, who in one of her three aspects was represented as a smith, may be connoted _bright_, and with Bress, the Consort of Brigit, may be connoted _brass_. And as Bride was alternatively known as Fraid, doubtless to this form of the name may be assigned _fer_, _fire_, _fry_, _frizzle_, _furnace_, _forge_, _fierce_, _ferocious_, and _force_.

That the island of Bru or Barri in South Wales was a reputed home of the burly _faber_, _feuber_, or Fire Father, is to be inferred from the statement of Giraldus Cambrensis, that "in a rock near the entrance of the island there is a small cavity to which if the ear is applied a noise is heard like that of smiths at work, the blowing of the bellows, strokes of the hammers, grinding of tools and roaring of furnaces".[525] It is supposed that Barri island owes its name to a certain St. Baroc, the remains of whose chapel once stood there: that St. Baroc was Al Borak, the White Horse or _brok_, upon whom every good Mussalman hopes eventually to ride, is implied by the story that St. Baroc borrowed a friend's horse and rode miraculously across the sea from Pembrokeshire to Ireland.

On the coast between Pembroke and Tenby is Manor_beer_, known anciently as Maenor Pyrr, that is, says Giraldus, "the mansion of Pyrrus, who also possessed the island of Chaldey, which the Welsh call Inys Pyrr, or the island of Pyrrus". But the editor of Giraldus considers that a much more natural and congenial conjecture may be made in supposing Maenor Pyrr to be derived from _Maenor_ a _Manor_, and Pyrr, the plural of Por, a lord. I have already suggested a possible connection between the numerous _pre_ stones and Pyrrha, the first lady who created mankind out of stones.

Near Fore Street, in the ward of Farringdon by Smithfield, will be found Whitecross Street, Redcross Street, and Cowcross Street: the last of these three cross streets by which was "Jews Garden," may be connoted with the Geecross of elsewhere. The district is mentioned by Stow as famous for its coachbuilders, and there is no more reason to assume that the word _coach_ (French _coche_) was derived from Kocsi, a town in Hungary, than to suppose that the first coach was a cockney production and came from Chick Lane or from Cock Lane, both of which neighbour the Cowcross district in Smithfield. The supposition that the _gig_ or _coach_ (the words are radically the same) was primarily a vehicle used in the festivals to Gog the _High High_, or _Mighty Mighty_, is strengthened by the testimony of the solar chariot illustrated _ante_, page 405.

Not only were the British famed from the dawn of history[526] for their car-driving but from the evidence of sepulchral chariots and sepulchral harness the authorities are of opinion that the fighting car was long retained by the Kelts, "and its presence in the Yorkshire graves seems to show that it persisted in Britain longer than elsewhere".[527]

Somewhere in the Smithfield district originally existed what Stow mentions as Radwell, and this well of the Redcross, or Ruddy rood, may be connoted with the Rood Lane a mile or so more eastward. Between Rood Lane and Red Cross Street is Lothbury: the suffix _bury_ (as in Lothbury, and Aldermanbury) is held by Stow, and also by Camden, to mean a Court of Justice, and this definition accords precisely with the theory that the barrow was originally the seat of Justice. At Lothbury the noise or _bruit_ made by the burly fabers was so vexatious that Stow seriously defines the place-name _Loth_bury as indicating a _loath_some locality.[528] The supposition that Cowcross Street, Jews Garden, and the Redcross or Ruddy rood site were primarily in the occupation of men of Troy or Droia may possibly be strengthened by the fact that here was a _Tre_mill brook, and the seat of a Sir Drew Drury. The parish church of Blackfriars is St. Andrews, there is another St. Andrews within a bow-shot of Smithfield, and that the "drews" were a skilled family is obvious from the fact that the name Drew is defined as Teutonic _skilful_. Both Scandinavians and Germans possess the Trojan tradition; the All Father of Scandinavia was named _Borr_, Thor, the Hammer God, was assigned to Troy, and in Teutonic mythology there figure two celestial Smith-brethren named Sindre and Brok.

The cradle of the Cretan Zeus is assigned sometimes not to Mount Ida but to the neighbouring Mount Juktas which is described as an extraordinary "cone". When the Cretan script is deciphered it will probably transpire that Mount Juktas was associated with Juk, Jock, or Jack, and the name may be connected with _jokul_, the generic term in Scandinavia for a snow-covered or white-crowned height. Jack is seemingly the same word as the Hebrew Isaac, which is defined as meaning _laughter_; Jack may thus probably be equated with _joke_ and _jokul_ with _chuckle_, all of which symptoms are the offspring of _joy_ or _gaiety_. To _kyg_, an obsolete adjective meaning _lively_--and thus evidently a variant of _agog_--are assigned by our authorities the surnames Keach, Ketch, Kedge, and Gedge. In connection with _kyg_ Prof. Weekley quotes the line--

_Kygge_ or joly, _jocundus_.

Among the gewgaws found in the sacred shrines of Juktas are numerous bijou gigs, or coaches, all no doubt once very _juju_, or sacred.

To appreciate the outlook of the "half-supernatural" Idaeans one may find a partial key in the words of Aratus: "Let us begin with _Zeus_, let us always call upon and laud his name; all the network of interwending roads and all the busy markets of mankind are full of _Zeus_, and all the paths and fair havens of the sea, and everwhere our hope is in _Zeus_ for we are also his children".[529]

Stow mentions the firmly-rooted tradition that the Cathedral of St. Paul stands upon the site of an ancient shrine to Jupiter. It may be merely coincidence that close to St. Paul's once stood an Ypres Hall:[530] in the immediate vicinity of Old St. Paul's used also to exist a so-called Pardon Churchyard, perhaps an implication that Ludgate Hill was once known as _Par dun_ or _Par Hill_. That "Pardon" was equivalent to "Pradon" is evident from the fact that modern Dumbarton was originally _Dun Brettan_, or the Briton's Fort. The slope leading from the Southern side of St. Paul's or Pardon Churchyard, is still named Peter's Hill, and in view of the Jupiter tradition it is not altogether unlikely that Peter's Hill was originally _eu Peter's_ Hill, synonymously _Pere dun_. The surname Pardon may still be found in this Godliman Street neighbourhood, where in Stow's time stood not only Burley House, but likewise Blacksmiths Hall. A funeral _pyre_ is a fire; a _phare_ is a lighthouse, and the intense purity of Bride's fire, phare, or pyre is implied by the fact that it was not suffered to be blown by human breath but by bellows only. From time immemorial the Fire of Bride was tended by nineteen holy maids, each of whom had the care of the Fire for one night in turn: on the twentieth night the nineteenth maid, having piled wood upon the fire, said: "Brigit, take charge of your own fire, for this night belongs to you". The tale ends that ever on the twentieth morning the fire had been miraculously preserved.[531]

The patron saint of engineers is Barbara or Varvara, the sacred pyre of Bride was maintained within a circle or periphery of stakes and brushwood, and close at hand were certain very beautiful meadows called St. Bridget's pastures, in which no plough was ever suffered to turn a furrow. The words _mead_ and _meadow_ are the same as _maid_ and _maida_, whence it seems to follow that all meadows were dedicated to Bride, the pretty Lady of the Kine. Homer's "fertile vale of Hyde," and the Londoner's Hyde Park, were alike probably idealised and sacred meadows corresponding to the Irish Mag-Ithe or Plains of Ith; it is not unlikely that all _heaths_ were dedicated to _Ith_. To the Scandinavian Ith or Ida Plains we find an ancient poet thus referring: "I behold Earth rise again with its evergreen forests out of the deep ... the Anses meet on Ida Plain, they talk of the mighty earth serpent, and remember the great decrees, and the ancient mysteries of the unknown God". After foretelling a time when "All sorrows shall be healed and Balder shall come back," the poet continues: "Then shall Hoeni choose the rods of divination aright, and the sons of the _Twin Brethren_ shall inhabit the wide world of the winds".[532]

In Fig. 266--an Etrurian bucket--two diminutive Twin Brethren are being held by the _Bona Dea_--a winged Ange or Anse--who is surmounted by the symbolic cockle or coquille. The fact that this bucket was found at Offida renders it possible that the mother here represented was known to the craftsman who portrayed her as _Offi divine_, otherwise Hipha, Eve, or Good Iva. It will be noticed that the child on the right is white, that on the left black, and I have elsewhere drawn attention to many other emblems in which two A's, Alphas, Alifs, or Elves were similarly portrayed, the one as white, the other as black.[533] The intention of the artist seems to have been to express the current philosophy of a Prime or Supreme supervising both good and evil, light and dark, or day and night. Pliny says that British women used to attend certain religious festivals with their nude bodies painted black like Ethiopians, and there is probably some close connection between this obscure function, and the fact that Diana of the Ephesians, the many-breasted All-mother of Life, was portrayed at times as white, at times as black. There must be a further connection between this black and white _Bona Dea_, and the fact that in the Lady Godiva processions near Coventry, which took place at the opening of the Great May Fair festival, there were two Godivas, one of whom was the natural colour but the other was dyed black.[534]

The _Bona Dea_ of Egypt, like the figure on the Etrurian bucket, was represented holding in her arms two children, one white and one black; and the two circles at Avebury, lying within the larger Avereberie or periphery, were probably representative of Day and Night circled by all-embracing and eternal Time.

The Twin Brethren or Gemini are most popularly known as Castor and Pollux, and the propitious figures of these heavenly Twins were carved frequently upon the _prows_ of ancient ships. The phosphorescent stars or Will-o-the-wisps, which during storms sometimes light upon the masts of ships, used to be known as St. Elmo's Fires: St. Elmo is obviously St. Alma or St. All Mother, and the St. Helen with whom she is identified is seemingly St. Alone. It was believed that two stars were propitious, but that a solitary one boded bad luck; according to Pliny a single St. Elmo's fire was called Helen, "but the two they call Castor and Pollux, and invoke them as gods".

The appearance of the will-o-the-wisps, Castor and Pollux, was held to be an argument that the tempest was caused by "a sulphurous spirit rarefying and violently moving the clouds, for the cause of the fire is a sulphurous and bituminous matter driven downwards by the impetuous motion of the air and kindled by much agitation". I quote this passage as justifying the suggestion that _sulphur_--the yellow and fiery--is radically _phur_, and that _brimstone_, or _brenstoon_, as Wyclif has it, may be the stone of Brim or Bren, which burns.

The identification of Castor and Pollux with stars or _asters_, enables us to equate Castor as the White god or Day god, for _dextra_, the Latin for right, is _de castra_, _i.e._, _good great astra_. The white child in Fig. 266 is that on the _right_ hand of the _Bona Dea_: that Pollux was the dark, _sinister_, _sinistra_, or left-hand power, is somewhat confirmed by the fact that the Celtic Pwll was the Pluto or deity of the underworld. Possibly the Latin _castra_, meaning a fort, originated from the idea that Castor was the heroic Invictus who has developed into St. Michael and St. George. The _sin_ of _sinister_ may possibly be the Gaelic _sen_, meaning senile, and the implication follows that the dark twin was the old in contradistinction to the new god.

The French for nightmare is _cauche_mar, the French for left is _gauche_, and it is the left-hand mairy, or fairy, in Fig. 266 which is the shady one. Not only does _gauche_ mean _left_, but it also implies awkward, uncanny, and inept, whence it is to be feared that the Gooches, the Goodges, and their affiliated tribes were originally "Blackfriars," and followers of the Black God. I have already suggested that the Gogs were unpopular among the Greeks, and the intensity of their feeling is seemingly reflected by the Greek adjective _kakos_[535] (the English _gagga_?), which means evil, dirty, or unpleasant.

Castor and Pollux, or the Fires of St. Helen, were known along the shores of the Mediterranean as St. Telmo's Fires, the word Telmo being seemingly _t Elmo_ or Good Alma. By the Italians they are known as the Fires of St. Peter and St. Nicholas; Peter here corresponding probably to the _auburn_ Aubrey, and Nicholas to "Old Nick".

It was fabled that Castor and Pollux were alike immortal, that like day and night they periodically died, but that whenever one of the brothers expired the other was restored to life, thus sharing immortality between them. "There was," says Duncan, "an allusion to this tradition in the Roman horse-races, where a single rider galloped round the course mounted on one horse while he held another by the rein."[536] This ceremony becomes more interesting when we find that the cauchemar, the nightmare, or the blackmare used in England to be known as the "ephialtes".[537] That this ill-omened _hipha_, or hobby, was ill-boding Helena, seems somewhat to be confirmed by the custom in Cumberland of allotting to servants the years' allowance for horse-meat on St. Helen's, Eline's, or Elyn's day.[538] It is believed that horse meat is now taboo in Britain, because the eating of horse was so persistently denounced by Christianity as a heathen rite.

I have shown elsewhere some of the innumerable forms under which the fires of Elmo, or the heavenly Twain, were represented. In England it is evident that a pair of horses served as one form of expression, for among the treasures at the British Museum is an article which is thus described: "Bronze plate representing an altar decorated with blue, green, and red sunk enamels, and evidently unfinished, hence native work of the fourth or fifth century. Found in the river Thames, 1847". The principal decoration of this bijou altar--significantly 7 inches high--is two winged steeds supporting a demijohn, vase, or phial, the handles of which, in the form of [SS], are detached from the vase, but are emerging flame-like from the supporters' heads. The fact of these steeds appearing upon an "altar" is evidence of their sacred character, and one finds apparently the same two beasts delineated on a bucket, _vide_ Fig. 270. This so termed "barbaric production," discovered in an Aylesford gravel pit belonging to a gentleman curiously named Wagon, is attributed to the first century B.C., and has been compared unfavourably with the Etruscan bucket reproduced on page 474. The authorities of the British Museum comment upon it as follows: "The effect of barbaric imitation during two or three centuries may be appreciated by comparing the Etruscan _cista_ of the _fourth century_, with the Aylesford bucket of the _first century_ B.C. The first thing to be noticed is the absence from the latter of the heavy solid castings that form the feet and handle-attachments of the classical specimen. Such work was beyond the range of the British artificer, who was never successful with the human or animal form, but there is an evident desire to reproduce the salient features of the prototype. The solid uppermost band of the Etruscan specimen is represented by a thin embossed strip at Aylesford, while the classical motives are woefully caricatured. Minor analogies are noticed later, but the degradation of the ornament may fitly be dwelt on here as showing the limitations, and at the same time the originality of the native craftsman."

I confess myself unable either to appreciate or dwell upon the alleged degradation of this design, or the woeful inadequacy of the craftmanship. The bold execution of the spirals proves that the British artist--had such been his intent--could without difficulty have delineated a copybook horse: what, however, he was seemingly aiming at was a facsimile of the heraldic and symbolic beasts which our coins prove were the cherished insignia of the country, and these "deplorable abortions" I am persuaded were no more barbarous or unsuccessful than the grotesque lions and other fantastics which figure in the Royal Arms to-day.

In all probability the Aylesford bucket was made in the neighbourhood where it was found, for at Aylesford used to stand a celebrated "White Horse Stone". The attendant local legend--that anyone who rode a beast of this description was killed on or about the spot[539]--is seemingly a folk-memory of the time when the severe penalty for riding a white mare was death.[540] The place-name Aylesbury is derived by the authorities from _bury_, a fortified place of, and _Aegil_, the Sun-archer of Teutonic mythology: the head-dress of the face constituting the hinge of the Aylesford bucket consists of two circles which correspond in idea with the two children in the arms of the Etruscan hinge. That the bucket was originally a sacerdotal and sacred vessel is implied not only by the word but by the ancient custom thus recorded: "First on a pillar was placed a perch on the sharp prickled back whereof stood this idol ... in his left hand he held up a wheel, and in his right he carried a pail of water wherein were flowers and fruits".[541] I have elsewhere reproduced several emblems of Jupiter and Athene each seated on a "sharp prickled back," _i.e._, a _broccus_, saw, or zigzag, symbolic of the shaggy solar rays.

There is nothing decadent or seriously wrong with the drawing of the steeds delineated in Figs. 271 and 272, although the "what-not" proceeding from the mouth of the Geho is somewhat perplexing. This is seemingly a ribbon or a chain, and like the perfect chain surrounding our SOLIDO coins, and the chain which will be noted upon the Trojan spindle whorl illustrated on page 583, was probably intended to portray what the ancients termed Jupiter's Chain: "All things," says Marcus Aurelius, "are connected together by a sacred chain, and there is not one link in it which is not allied with the whole chain, for all things have been so blended together as to form a perfect whole, on which the symmetry of the universe depends. There is but one world, and it comprehends everything; one God endued with ubiquity; one eternal matter; and one law, which is the Reason common to all intelligent creatures."

A chain of pearls is proceeding from the mouth of the little figure which appears on some of the Channel Island coins, _vide_ the DRUCCA example herewith: students of fairy-tale are familiar with the story of a Maid out of whose mouth, whenso'er she opened it fell jewels, and that this fairy Maid was Reason is implied by the present day compliment in the East, "Allah! you are a wise man, you spit pearls." The DRUCCA coin is officially described as a "female figure standing to the left, her right hand holding a serpent (?)" and it is quite likely that the serpent or symbol of Wisdom was intended by the artist. There is no question about the serpents in the Tyrian coin here illustrated, where on either side of the Maiden they are represented with almost precisely the same [SS] form as the [SS] proceeding from the mouths of the two steeds on the British "altar". In the latter case the centre is a vase or demijohn, in the former the centre is a Maid or Virgin. Without a doubt this BER virgin is Beroë or Berith, the _pherepolis_ of Beyrout: in Fig. 278 the two serpents are associated with a phare, fire, or pyre; from the mouth of the British "Jupiters," illustrated in Figs. 274 and 275, the same two serpentine flames or S's are emerging.

The word BER, as has been seen, is equivalent to Vir, and in all probability the word _virgin_ originally carried the same meaning as _burgeon_. That old Lydgate, the monk of _Bery_, knew all about Vera and how she made the buds to burgeon is obvious from his lines:--

Mightie Flora Goddesse of fresh flowers
Which clothed hath the soyle in lustie greene,
Made buds spring with her sweet showers
By influence of the sunne-shine
To doe pleasaunce of intent full cleane,
Unto the States which now sit here
Hath _Vere_ down sent her own daughter deare.

It is evident that Vere is here the equivalent of Proserpine, the Maid who was condemned to spend one-half her time in Hades, and that "Verray" was occasionally noxious is implied by the old sense attributed to this word of _nightmare_, _e.g._, Chaucer:--

Lord Jesus Christ and Seynte Benedykte
Bless this house from every wikked wight
Fro nyghte's _verray_, etc.

Some authorities connoted this word _verray_ with Werra, a Sclavonic deity, and the connection is probably well founded: the Cornish Furry dance was also termed the Flora dance.

The name Proserpine is seemingly akin to Pure Serpent--the same Serpent, perhaps, whose form is represented _in extenso_ at Avebury: the _Bona Dea_ of Crete was figured holding serpents and the nude figure on the left of Fig. 279 has been ingeniously, and, I think, rightly interpreted by Borlase as Truth, or Vera. It was doubtless some such similar emblem as originated the ridiculous story that St. Christine of Tyre was "tortured" by having live serpents placed at her breasts: "The two asps hung at her breasts and did her no harm, and the two adders wound them about her neck and licked up her sweat."[542] Not only is this suffering Christine assigned to Tyre (in Italy), but she is said to have been enclosed in a certain _tower_ and to have been set upon a burning _tour_ or wheel. Christine is the feminine of Christ, and that Christ was identified with _Sophia_ or Wisdom is obvious from the design herewith.

The Sicilian coins of Janus depicted Columba or the Dove, and the same symbol of the Cretan, Epheia, Britomart, Athene, or Rhea figures in the hand of the Elf on page 627, and on the reverse of other British coins illustrated on the same page. The Dove is the acknowledged symbol of the Holy Ghost, yet the symbolists depicted even the immaculate Dove as duplex: the six wings of the parti-coloured Columba have in all probability an ultimate connection with the six beneficent world-supervisors of the Persian philosophy.

In the Christian emblem below, the Holy Ghost is represented as a Child floating on the Waters of Chaos between the circles of Day and Night, and that the Supreme was the Parent alike of both Good and Evil is expressed in the verse: "I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things." The preceding sentence runs: "There is none beside me. I am the Lord and there is none else."[543] That this idea was prevalent among the Druids of the west is strongly to be inferred from an ancient chant still current among the Bretons, which begins--

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.[544]

The _Magna Mater_ of Fig. 266 might thus appropriately have been known as Fate, Destiny, Necessity, or Fortune. _Fortuna_ is radically _for_, and with the Fortunes or fates may be connoted the English fairies known as Portunes. The Portunes are said to be peculiar to England, and are known by the French as Neptunes: the English Portunes are represented as diminutive little people who, "if anything is to be carried into the house, or any laborious work to be done, lend a hand and finish it sooner than any man could".[545] A jocular and amiable little people who loved to warm themselves at the fire.

Among the heathen chants of the Spanish peasantry is one in which the number One stands for the wheel of Fortune, and the number six "for the loves you hold". These six loves may be connoted with the six pinions of the Dove illustrated on page 486, and that Janus of the Dove was regarded as the Chaos, Ghost, or Cause is obvious from the words which are put into his mouth by Ovid: "The ancients called me Chaos (for I am the original substance). Observe, how I can unfold the deeds of past times. This lucid air, and the three other bodies which remain, fire, water, and earth, formed one heap.[546] As soon as this mass was liberated from the strife of its own discordant association, it sought new abodes. Fire flew upwards: air occupied the next position, and earth and water, forming the land and sea, filled the middle space. Then I, who was a globe, and formless, assumed a countenance and limbs worthy of a god. Even now, as a slight indication of my primitive appearance, my front and back are the same."

In the mouth of Fig. 283 is the wheel of the four quarters, and variants of this wheel-cross form the design of a very large percentage of English coins: I here use the word English in preference to British as "there was no native coinage either in Scotland, Wales, or Ireland": in England alone have prehistoric British coins been found,[547] and in England alone apparently were they coined. Somewhat the same conclusions are indicated by the wheel-cross which is peculiar to Wales, Cornwall, and the Isle of Man: neither in Scotland or Ireland does the circular form exist.[548]

Among the seals of Crete there has been found one figuring a ship and two half-moons: it has been supposed that this token signified that the devotee had ventured on a two months' voyage and signalised the successful exploit by the fabrication of an _ex voto_; but if the subject in question actually represents a material vessel one may question whether the mariner could successfully have negotiated even a two hours' trip. The pair of crescents which figure so frequently on the wheel-cross coins of Britain probably implied the twin lily-white maids of Druidic folk-song, and the superstitions in connection with this symbol of the two _sickles_--the word is essentially the same as _cycle_, Greek _kuklos_--seem in Anglesea or Mona even to linger yet.[549] Among sepulchral offerings found in a prehistoric barrow near Bridlington or Burlington, were "two pieces of flint chipped into the form of crescents,"[550] and it is possible that Ida the Flame bearer, whose name is popularly connected with _flame bearer_ or Flamborough Head, was not the Anglian chieftain, but the divine Ida, Head, or Flame to whom all Forelands and Headlands were dedicated. With Bridlington or Burlington may be connoted the fact that this town of the children of Brid is situated in the Deira district, which was occupied by the Parisii: this name is by some authorities believed to be only a corruption of that of the Frisii, originally settlers from the opposite coast of Friesland.

The Etruscan name for Juno was Cupra, which may be connoted with Cabira, one of the titles of Venus, also with Cabura, the name of a fountain in Mesopotamia wherein Juno was said to bathe himself. The mysterious deities known as the Cabiri are described as "mystic divinities (? Phoenician origin) worshipped in various parts of the ancient world. The meaning of their name, their character, and nature are quite uncertain".[551] Faber, in his _Dissertation on the Mysteries of the Cabiri_, states that the Cabiri were the same as the Abiri:[552] in Hebrew _Cabirim_ means the Mighty Ones, and there is seemingly little doubt that Cabiri was originally _great abiri_. In Candia or Talchinea, the Cabiri were worshipped as the Telchines, and as _chin_ or _khan_ meant in Asia Minor Priest as well as King, and as the offices of Priest and King were anciently affiliated, the term _talchin_ (which as we have seen was applied to St. Patrick) meant seemingly _tall_ or _chief King-Priest_. The custom of Priest-Kings adopting the style and titles of their divinities renders it probable that the historical Telchins worshipped an archetypal Talchin. The original Telchins are described by Diodorus, as first inhabiting Rhodes, and the Colossus of Rhodes was probably an image of the divine _Tall King_ or _Chief King_.

It is related that Rhea entrusted the infant Neptune to the care of the Telchines who were children of the sea, and that the child sea-god was reared by them in conjunction with Caphira or Cabira, the daughter of Oceanus. As Faber observes: "Caphira is evidently a mere variation of Cabira," and he translates Cabira as _Great Goddess_: in view of the evidence already adduced one might likewise translate it Great _Power_, Great _Pyre_, or Great _Phairy_. The Cabiri are often equated with the Dioscuri or Great _Pair_, and these Twain were not infrequently expressed symbolically by Twin circles.

The emblem of the double disc, "barnacle," or "spectacle ornament" is found most frequently in Scotland where it is attributed to the Picts: sometimes the discs are undecorated, others are elaborated by a zigzag or zed, which apparently signified the Central and sustaining _Power_, Fire, or Force. Figs. 287 and 288 from Crete represent the discs transfixed by a _broca_ or spike and the winged ange or angel with a wand--the magic rod or wand which invariably denoted Power--may be designated King Eros. In Scotland the central _brocco_, _i.e._, skewer, shoot, or stalk is found sprouting into what one might term _broccoli_, and in Fig. 291 the dotted eyes, wheels, or paps are elaborated into sevens which possibly may have symbolised the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Notable examples of this disc ornament occur at Doo Cave in Fife, and as the Scotch refer to a Dovecote as "Doocot," it may be suggested that Doo Cave was a Dove Cave sacred to the _deux_, or _duo_, or Dieu. Other well-known specimens are found on a so-called "Brodie" stone and on the Inchbrayock stone in Forfarshire. Forfar, I have already suggested, was a land of St. Varvary: Overkirkhope, where the symbol also occurs, was presumably the hope or hill of Over, or _uber_, Church, and Ferriby,[553] in Lincolnshire, where the emblem is again found, was in all probability a _by_ or abode of Ferri. The name Cupar may be connoted with Cupra--the Juno of Etruria--and Inchbrayock is radically Bray or Brock.

Sometimes the discs--which might be termed _Brick a Brack_ or, Bride's Bairns--are centred by what looks like a tree (French _arbre_) or, in comparison with Fig. 295, from the catacombs, might be an anchor: it has no doubt rightly been assumed that this and similar carvings symbolised the Tree of Life with Adam and Eve on either hand. According to a recent writer: "The symbol group of a man and woman on either side of a tree with a serpent at times introduced is of pre-Christian origin. The figures narrowly considered as Adam and Eve and broadly as the human family are accompanied by the Tree which stands for Knowledge, and the serpent which represents Wisdom. This old world-wide symbol seems to crop up in Pictland twisted and changed in a curious fashion."[554] One of these fantastic forms is, I think, the feathered elphin or _antennaed_ solar face of Fig. 293.

Among the ancients the word _Eva_, not only denoted _life_, but it also meant _serpent_: the jumbled traditions of the Hebrews associated Eve and the Serpent unfavourably, but according to an early sect of Gnostic Christians known as the Ophites, _i.e._, _Evites_, or "Serpentites," the Serpent of Genesis was a personification of the Good principle, who instructed Eve in all the learning of the world which has descended to us. There is frequent mention in the Old Testament of a people called the Hivites or Hevites, so called because, like the Christian Ophites, they were worshippers of the serpent. We meet again with Eff the serpent in F the fifth letter of the alphabet: this letter, according to Dr. Isaac Taylor, was formed originally like a horned or sacred serpent, and the two strokes of our F are the surviving traces of the two horns.[555]

The term Hivites is sometimes interpreted to mean Midlanders, which seems reasonable as they lived in the middle of Canaan. In connection with these serpent-worshipping Midlanders or Hivites it is significant that not only is the English Avebury described as being "situated in the very centre or heart of our country,"[556] but that it is geographically the very nave or bogel of the surrounding neighbourhood.

Eva is in all probability the source of the word _ivy_, German _epheu_, for the evergreen ivy is notoriously a long-lived plant, and even by the early Christian Church[557] Ivy was accepted as the emblem of life and immortality. As immortality was the primary dogma of the Druids, hence perhaps why they and their co-worshippers decked themselves with wreaths of this undying and seemingly immortal plant.[558] The figure of the Græco-Egyptian "Jupiter," known as Serapis, appears (supported by the Twins) surrounded by an ivy wreath, and that the ancient Jews ivy-decked themselves like the British on festival occasions is evident from the words of Tacitus: "Their priests it is true made use of fifes and cymbals: they were crowned with wreaths of ivy, and a vine wrought in gold was seen in their temple".[559] The leaf on the British VIRI coin here illustrated has been held to be a vine "which does not appear to have been borrowed from any Roman coin," but, continues Sir John Evans, "whether this was an original type to signify the fertility of the soil in respect of vines or adapted from some other source it is hard to say".[560] If the device be a Vine leaf it probably symbolised the True Vine; if a fig leaf it undoubtedly was the sign of Maggie Figgy, the Mother of Millions, and the Ovary of Everything: the Sunday before Easter used to be known as Fig Sunday, and on this occasion figs were eaten in large quantities.