Chapter II: The Magic of Words (2)

In the opinion of those best able to judge, Druidism originated in neolithic times. Just as the Druid sacrificed white bulls before he ascended the sacred oak, so did the Latin priest in the grove, which was the holy place of Jupiter. "But," says Rice Holmes, "while every ancient people had its priests, the Druids alone were a veritable clergy".[70] The clergy of to-day would find it profitable to study the symbolism which flourished so luxuriously among their predecessors, but, unfortunately, with the exception of a few time-honoured symbols such as the Dove, the Anchor, and the Lamb, symbolism in the ecclesiastical and philosophic world is now quite dead. It still, however, lingers to a limited extent in Art, and it will always be the many-coloured radiancy which colours Poetry. The ancient and the at-one-time generally accepted idea that mythology veiled Theology, has now been discarded owing to the disconcerting discovery that myths were seemingly not taught to the common people by the learned, but on the contrary spread upwards from the vulgar to the learned. This latter process has usually been the doom of Religion, and it is quite unthinkable that fairy-tales could survive its blighting effect. As a random instance of the modern attitude towards Imagination, one may cite the Rev. Prof. Skeat, who, commenting upon the Music of the Spheres, gravely informs the world that: "Modern astronomy has exploded the singular notion of revolving hollow concentric spheres". "These spheres," he adds, "have disappeared and their music with them except in poetry."[71]

Whether or not our predecessors really heard the choiring of the young-eyed cherubim, or whether the music was merely in their souls is a point immaterial to the present inquiry, which simply concerns itself with the physical remains of that poetic once-upon-a-time temperament which at some period or other was prevalent,[72] and has left its world-wide imprints on river names, such as the Irish "Morning Star".[73] One would have supposed it quite superfluous at this time of day to have to claim imagination for the anonymous ancients who mapped the whole expanse of heaven into constellations, and wove fairy-tales around the Pleiades and every other group of stars, and it is simply astonishing to find a Doctor of Divinity writing to-day in kultured complacency: "It is to the imagination of us moderns _alone_ that the grandeur of the universe appeals,[74] and it was relatively late in the history of religion--so far as can be reconstructed from the scanty data in our possession that the higher nature cults were developed."[75]

Is it wonderful that again and again the romantic soul of the Celtic peasantry has risen against the grey dogmas of official Theology, and has expressed itself in terms such as those taken down from the mouth of a Gaelic old woman in 1877: "We would dance there till we were seven times tired. The people of those times were full of music and dancing stories, and traditions. The clerics have extinguished these. May ill befall them! And what have the clerics put in their place? Beliefs about creeds and disputations about denominations and churches! May lateness be their lot! It is they who have put the cross round the heads and the entanglements round the feet of the people. The people of the Gaeldom of to-day are anear perishing for lack of the famous feats of their fathers. The black clerics have suppressed every noble custom among the people of the Gaeldom--precious customs that will never return, no, never again return."[76]

There are features about the wisdom of the ancients which the theologian neither understands nor tries to understand,[77] and it is like a breath of fresh air to find the Bishop of Oxford maintaining, "We have got to get rid of everything that makes the sound of religion irrational, and which associates it with bygone habits of thought in regard to science and history". Sir Gilbert Murray has recently expressed the opinion that "it is the scholar's special duty to trim the written signs in our old poetry now enshrined back into living thought and feeling"; but at present far from forwarding this desideratum scholarship not only discountenances imagination, but even eliminates from consideration any spiritual idea of God. To quote from a modern authority: "Track any God right home and you will find him lurking in a ritual sheath from which he slowly emerges, first as a _dæmon_ or spirit of the year, then as a full-blown divinity.... The May King, the leader of the choral dance, gave birth not only to the first actor of the drama, but also, as we have just seen, to the God, be he Dionysus or be he Apollo."[78]

The theory here assumed grossly defies the elementary laws of logic, for every act of ritual must essentially have been preceded by a thought: Act is the outcome and offspring of Thought: Idea was never the idiot-child of Act. The assumption that the first idea of God evolved from the personation of the Sun God in a mystery play or harvest dance is not really or fundamentally a mental tracking of that God right home, but rather an inane confession that the idea of God cannot be traced further backward than the ritual of ancient festivals.

Speaking of that extremely remote epoch when the twilight and mists of morning shed dim-looming shapes and flickering half lights about the path of our scarcely awakened race, _The Athenæum_ a year or two ago remarked: "No wonder that to such purblind eyes men appear as trees, and trees as men--Balder the Beautiful as the mystic oak, and the oak as Balder". This passage forms part of a congratulation that the work of Sir James Frazer is now complete, and that _The Golden Bough_ "has at length carried us forward into broad daylight".

I have studied the works of Sir James Frazer in the hope of finding therein some insight as to the origin and why of custom, but I have failed to perceive the broad daylight of _The Athenæum's_ satisfaction.

One might lay down _The Golden Bough_ without a suspicion that our purblind ancestors ever had a poetic thought or a high and beautiful ideal, and it is probable that scholarship will eventually arraign Sir James Frazer for this _suggestio falsi_. In the meanwhile it should hardly be necessary to enter a _caveat_ against the popular idea that we are now "in broad daylight". The value of _The Golden Bough_ lies largely in the evidence therein adduced of what may be termed universal ritual. But all ritual must have originated from ideas, and these original ideas do not seem to have entered the horizon of Sir James Frazer's speculations. What reason does he suppose lurked necessarily behind, say, the sacred fire being kindled from _three_ nests in _three_ trees, or by _nine_ men from _nine_ different kinds of wood? And why do the unpleasant Ainos scrupulously kill their sacred bear by _nine_ men pressing its head against a pole?

It is now the vogue to resolve every ancient ceremony into a magic charm for producing fire, or food, or rain, or what not, and there is very little doubt that magic, or sacred ceremonies, verily sank, in many instances, to this melancholy level. But, knowing what history has to tell us of priestcraft, and judging the past from the present, is it not highly likely that the primitive divine who found his tithes and emoluments diminishing from a laxity of faith would spur the public conscience by the threat that _unless_ sacred ceremonies were faithfully and punctually performed the corn would not flourish and the rain would either overflow or would not fall?[79]

It is now the mode to trace all ceremonial to self-interest, principally to the self-interest of fear or food. But on this arbitrary, stale, and ancient theory[80] how is it possible to account for the almost universal reverence for stone or rock? Rocks yield neither food, nor firing, nor clothing, nor do they ever inflict injuries: why, then, should the artless savage trouble to gratify or conciliate such innocuous and unprofitable objects? The same question may be raised in other directions, notably that of the oak tree. Here the accepted supposition is that the oak was revered because it was struck more frequently by lightning than any other tree, but if this untoward occurrence really proves the oak tree was the favourite of the Fire God surely it was an instance of affection very brilliantly dissembled.

Sir James Frazer has used his _Golden Bough_ as he found it employed by Virgil--as a talisman which led to the gloomy and depressing underworld. In Celtic myth the Silver Bough played a less sinister part, and figures as a fairy talisman to music and delight.

Whether the appeal of Sir Gilbert Murray meets with any sympathy and response, and whether the written signs in our old poetry will ever be enshrined back into living thought and feeling remains to be seen. I think they will, and that the better sense of English intellectualism will sooner or later recoil from the present mud-and-dust theories of protoplasm for, as has been well said, "Materialism considered as a system of philosophy never attempts to explain the _Why_? of things". Certainly protoplasm has unravelled nothing, nor possibly can. One of our standard archæologists lamented a few decades ago: "As the Germans have decreed this it is in vain to dispute it, and not worth while to attempt it". But the German, an indefatigable plodder, is but a second-rate _thinker_, and the time must inevitably come when English scholars will deem it well worth while to unhitch their waggons from Germania. With characteristic assurance the Teutonic _litterati_ are still prattling of The Fatherland as a "centre" of civilisation, and are pluming themselves upon the "spiritual values" given to mankind by Germany. Some of us are not conscious of these "spiritual values," but that German scholarship has poison-gassed vast tracts of modern thought is evident enough. The theories of Mannhardt, elaborated by Sir James Frazer and transmuted by him into the pellucid English of _The Golden Bough_, have admittedly blighted the fair humanities of old religion into a dull catalogue of common things,[81] and no one more eloquently deplores the situation than Sir James Frazer himself. As he says: "It is indeed a melancholy and in some respects thankless task to strike at the foundations of beliefs in which as in a strong tower the hopes and aspirations of humanity through long ages have sought refuge from the storm and stress of life. Yet sooner or later it is inevitable that the battery of the Comparative Method should breach these venerable walls mantled over with ivy and mosses, and wild flowers of a thousand tender and sacred associations."

When the Comparative Method is applied in a wider and more catholic spirit than hitherto it will then--but not till then--be seen whether the fair humanities are exploded superstitions or are sufficiently alive to blossom in the dust.

It is quite proper to designate _The Golden Bough_ a puppet-play of corn-gods,[82] for the author himself, referring to Balder the Beautiful, writes: "He, too, for all the quaint garb he wears, and the gravity with which he stalks across the stage, is merely a puppet, and it is time to unmask him before laying him up in the box".

But to me the divinities of antiquity are not mere dolls to be patted superciliously on the head and then remitted to the dustbin. Our own ideals of to-day are but the idols or dolls of to-morrow, and even a golliwog if it has comforted a child is entitled to sympathetic treatment. To the understanding of symbolism sympathy is a useful key.

The words _doll_, _idol_, _ideal_, and _idyll_, which are all one and the same, are probably due to the island of Idea which was one of the ancient names of Crete. Not only was Crete known as Idæa, but it was also entitled Doliche, which may be spelled to-day Idyllic. Crete, the Idyllic island, the island of Ideas, was also known as Aeria, and I think it probably was the centre whence was spun the gossamer of aerial and ethereal tales, which have made the Isles of Greece a land of immortal romance. We shall also see as we proceed that the mystic philosophy known to history as the Gnosis[83] was in all probability the philosophy taught in prehistoric times at Gnossus, the far-famed capital of Crete. From Gnossus, whence the Greeks drew all their laws and science, came probably the Greek word _gnosis_, meaning _knowledge_. But the mystic Gnosis connoted more than is covered by the word _knowledge_: it claimed to be the wisdom of the ancients, and to disclose the ideal value lying behind the letter of all mysteries, myths, and religious ordinances.

I am convinced that the Christian Gnostics, with whom the Tertullian type were in constant conflict, really did know much that they claimed, and that had they not been trampled out of the light of day Europe would never have sunk into the melancholy, well-designated Dark Ages. Gnostic emblems have been found abundantly in Ireland: the Pythagorean or Gnostic symbol known as the pentagon or Solomon's seal occurs on British coins,[84] and the Bardic literature of Wales is deeply steeped with a Gnostic mysticism for which historians find it difficult to account. The facts which I shall adduce in the following pages are sufficiently curious to permit the hope that they may lead a few of us to become less self-complacent, and in the words of the author of _Ancient Britain_ relative to aboriginal Britons, "to think more of those primitive ancestors. In some things we have sunk below their level."[85]

FOOTNOTES:

[39] _Words and Places._

[40] Schliemann, _Mykenæ_.

[41] _Cf._ Johnson, W., _Byways in British Archæology_.

[42] _The Cromlechs of Anglesey and Carnarvonshire._

[43] _Ancient Britain_, p. 70.

[44] Windle, Sir B. C. A., _Life in Early Britain_, p. 135.

[45] Johnston, Rev. James B., _The Place-names of England and
Wales_, 1915, p. 321. The Horse-lie-down theory is enunciated
by Sir Walter Besant.

[46] Preface to _The Place-names of Oxfordshire_.

[47] 1915.

[48] _Cf._ Bonwick, J., _Irish Druids_, p. 278.

[49] Virchow, intro. to Schliemann, _Ilios_ XII.

[50] _Cf._ _Brittany_, p. 28.

[51] Clodd, Ed., _The Story of Primitive Man_, 9, 18.

[52] Sweet, H., _The History of Language_, p. vi.

[53] _The Principles of Comparative Philology._

[54] Even after Troy had been discovered by Schliemann, Max Müller
maintained his belief that the Siege of Troy was a Sun and
Dawn myth.

[55] _Alphana_ vient d'_equus_, sans doute, Mais il faut avouer
aussi Qu'en venant de là jusqu'ici Il a bien changé sur la
route.

[56] Westropp, T. J., _Proc. R. Irish Acad._, xxxiv., C., 8, p.
159.

[57] Dallas, H. A.

[58] Norwood, J. W.

[59] Such obvious concoctions of the study as _exsufflicate_,
_deracinate_, _incarnadine_, etc., never strike root or
survive.

[60] Petrie, W. M. F., _The Formation of the Alphabet_, p. 3.

[61] _A Book of the Beginnings_, 1, p. 136.

[62] _Lectures on the English Language_, 1862, p. 16.

[63] Quoted from _ibid._, p. 30.

[64] The _Edin_ of the prehistoric British _Dun edin_, now
Edinburgh, has been calmly misappropriated to a supposed
_Edwin_.

[65] _Ancient Britain_, pp. 273, 283.

[66] _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft._

[67] Johnson, W., _Byways in British Archæology_, p. 304.

[68] Cloudesley Brereton, in _The Quest_.

[69] _Luniolatry_, p. 2.

[70] _Ancient Britain_, p. 298.

[71] This dictum would have cheered the heart of Tertullian, who
maintained that God could never forgive an actor because
Christ said: _No man by taking thought can add one cubit to
his stature_; a statement which the actor impiously falsified
by wearing high heeled boots. Commenting upon _The Lost
Language of Symbolism_, _The Expository Times_ very
courteously observed: "To the reader of the Bible its worth
is more than to all others, for the Bible is full of symbols
and we have lost their language. We are very prosaic. The
writers of the Old Testament and of the New were very
imaginative. Between us there is a gulf fixed of which we are
aware only in unquiet moments."

[72] "There must have been a time when a simple instinct for
poetry was possessed by all nations as it still is by
uncivilised races and children. Among European nations this
instinct appears to be dead for ever. We can name neither a
mountain nor a flower."--Prof. Weekley, _Romance of Words_.
"Who did first name the flowers? Who first gave them, not
their Latin titles, but the old, familiar, fanciful, poetic,
rustic ones, that run so curiously alike in all the vulgar
tongues? Who first called the lilies of the valley the
Madonna's tears? the wild blue hyacinth, St. Dorothy's
flower? the starry passiflora, the Passion of Christ; who
named them all first, in the old days that are forgotten? All
the poets that ever the world has known might have been
summoned together for the baptism of the flowers, and have
failed to name them half so well as popular tradition has
done long ago in the dim lost ages, with names that still
make all the world akin."--Anon.

[73] "This pretty name (which Fitzgerald, _History of Limerick_,
vol. i., p. 320, calls the River Dawn) arose from a change of
Samhair or Samer to Caimher, 'the daybreak,' or 'Morning
Star'".--Westropp, T. J., _Proc. of Royal Irish Acad._,
xxxiii., C. 2, p. 13.

[74] The peculiar temperament of "us moderns alone" is, I am
afraid, more acutely diagnosed by Prof. Weekley, in
_Surnames_, where he observes: "The 'practical man,' when his
attention is accidentally directed to the starry sky,
appraises that terrific spectacle with a non-committal grunt:
but he would receive with a positive snort any suggestion
that the history of European civilisation is contained in the
names of his friends and acquaintances. Still, even the
practical man, if he were miraculously gifted with the power
of interpreting surnames, could hardly negotiate the length
of Oxford Street on a motor-bus without occasionally
marvelling and frequently chuckling."

[75] Coneybeare, Dr. F. C., _The Historical Christ_, p. 19.
[Italics mine.] The views of Dr. Coneybeare may be connoted
with those of his fellow-cleric, the Rev. H. C. Christmas:
"The astrotheology into which Egyptian fables are ultimately
resolved having taken animals as symbols, soon elevated those
symbols in the minds of the people at large into real
divinities. The signs of the zodiac were worshipped, and the
constellations not in that important circle did not go
without adoration. Various stars became noted as rising or
setting at particular seasons, and serving as marks of time;
while the physical circumstances of the animal creation gave
an easy means of naming the stars and constellations, and
thus connected natural history with the symbolical theology
of the times.... In their [the Egyptians'] view the earth was
but a mirror of the heavens, and celestial intelligences were
represented by beasts, birds, fishes, gems, and even by
rocks, metals, and plants. The harmony of the spheres was
answered by the music of the temples, and the world beheld
nothing that was not a type of something divine."--_Universal
Mythology_, 1838, p. 19.

[76] Quoted from Wentz, W. D. Y., _The Fairy Faith in Celtic
Countries_.

[77] "The current ignorance of those pre-Christian evidences that
have been preserved by the petrifying past must be wellnigh
invincible when a man like Prof. Jowett could say, as if with
the voice of superstition in its dotage: '_To us the
preaching of the Gospel is a New Beginning, from which we
date all things; beyond which we neither desire, nor are
able, to inquire_.'"--Massey, G., _The Logic of the Lord_,
1897.

[78] Harrison, Miss Jane, _Ancient Art and Ritual_, pp. 192-3.

[79] A bogey of the present Bishop of London is not "no crops" but
"no foreign monarchs". _The Daily Chronicle_ of 13th May,
1914, reports his Lordship as saying: "If the British Empire
was not to be disgraced by the heart of London becoming
pagan, _his fund must be kept going_." [Italics mine.] "Once
religion went, everything else went; it would be good-bye to
the visits of foreign monarchs to London, because Londoners
would have disgraced the Empire and themselves before the
whole world."

[80] The "celebrated but infamous" Petronius, surnamed Arbiter,
philosophised in the first century to the following
up-to-date effect:--

Fear made the first divinities on earth
The sweeping flames of heaven; the ruined tower,
Scathed by its stroke. The softly setting sun,
The slow declining of the silver moon,
And its recovered beauty. Hence the signs
Known through the world, and the swift changing year,
Circling divided in its varied months.
Hence rose the error. Empty folly bade
The wearied husbandman to Ceres bring
The first fair honours of his harvest fields
To gird the brow of Bacchus with the palm,
And taught how Pales, 'mid the shepherd bands,
Stood and rejoiced, how Neptune in the flood
Plunged deep, and ruled the ever-roaring tide;
How Vallas reigned o'er earth's stupendous caves
Mightily. He who vowed and he who reaped
With eager contest, made their gods themselves.

[81] The intelligible forms of ancient poets
The fair humanities of old religion
The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty
That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain
Or forest or slow stream, or pebbly spring
Our chasms and watery depths; all these have vanished
They live no longer in the faith of reason.
--COLERIDGE.

[82] There is, of course, no novelty in these ideas, which are
merely a recrudescence and restatement of the notions to
which Plutarch thus alludes:--

"We shall also get our hands on the dull crowd, who take pleasure
in associating the ideas about these gods either with changes
of the atmosphere according to the seasons, or with the
generation of corn and sowings and ploughings, and in saying
that Osiris is buried when the sown corn is hidden by the
earth, and comes to life and shows himself again when it
begins to sprout.... They should take very good heed, and be
apprehensive lest unwittingly they write off the sacred
mysteries and dissolve them into winds and streams and
sowings and ploughings and passions of earth and changes of
seasons."

[83] "The Gnostic movement began long before the Christian era
(what its original historical impulse was we do not know),
and only one aspect of it, and that from a strictly limited
point of view, has been treated by ecclesiastical
historians."--Lamplugh, Rev. F., _The Gnosis of the Light_,
1918, p. 10.

[84] Holmes, Rice, _Ancient Britain_, p. 295.

[85] _Ibid._, p. 373.