Fig. 311.—From The Cross: Heathen and Christian (Brock, M.).
In 1190 Halifax was referred to as Haliflex, upon which the Rev. J. B. Johnston comments: “the l seems to be a scribe’s error, and flex must be feax. Holy flax would make no sense. In Domesday it seems to be called Feslei, can the fes be feax too?” In view of the cruciform streets of Chichester, of our cruciform rood or rota coins, and of the four rivers supposed by all authorities to flow to the four quarters out of Paradise, is it not possible that four-quartered Haliflex was a fay’s lea or meadow, whose founders built their “abbey”[579] in the true-face form of the Holy Flux or Fount, the ain or flow of living water? Four ains or eyes are clearly exhibited on the emblems here illustrated, which show the four-quartered sacramental buns or brioches, whence the modern Good Friday bun has descended.
Fig. 312.—Roman roads. From A New Description of England and Wales (Anon. 1724).
It was a prevalent notion among our earliest historians that “In such estimation was Britain held by its inhabitants, that they made in it four roads from end to end, which were placed under the King’s protection to the intent that no one should dare to make an attack upon his enemy on these roads”.[580] These four great roads, dating from the time of King Belinus, and supposedly running from sea to sea, were probably mythical, but in view of the sanctity of public highways and the King’s Peace which was enforced thereon, it is not improbable that numerous “Holloways”—now supposed to mean hollow or sunk ways—were originally and actually holy ways.
The Punjaub is so named because it is watered not by four but by five rivers, and that five streams possessed a mystic significance in British mythology is evident from the story of Cormac’s voyage to the Land of Paradise or Promise.[581] “Palaces of bronze and houses of white silver, thatched with white bird’s wings are there. Then he sees in the garth a shining fountain with five streams flowing out of it, and the hosts in turn a-drinking its water.”[582]
It has been recently pointed out that the Celtic conception of Paradise “offers the closest parallel to the Chinese,” whence it is significant to find that in the Chinese “Abyss of Assembly” there were supposed to lie five fairy islands of entrancing beauty, which were inhabited by spirit-like beings termed shên jên.[583] I have in my possession a Chinese temple-ornament consisting of a blue porcelain broccus of five rays or peaks, which, like the five fundamental cones of the Etruscan tomb (ante, p. 237), in all probability represent the five bergs or islands of the blessed. The inner circle of Stonehenge consisted of five upstanding trilithons of which the stones came—by popular repute—from Ireland. Among the Irish divinities mentioned by Mr. Westropp is not only the gracious Aine who was worshipped by five Firbolg tribes, but also an old god who kindled five streams of magic fire from which his sons—the fathers of the Delbna tribes—all sprang.[584]
It will be remembered that the Avebury district is the boss, gush, or spring of five rivers, and Avebury or Abury was almost without doubt another “abbey” or bri of Ab on similar lines to the six-spoked hub, hob, or boss of Abchurch, Londonstone. It is difficult to believe that the six roads meeting at Abchurch arranged themselves so symmetrically by chance, and it is still more difficult to attribute them to the Roman Legions.
As Mr. Johnson has pointed out there is a current supposition, seemingly well based, that some of the supposedly Roman roads represent older trackways, straightened and adapted for rougher usage.[585] That London stone at Abchurch was the hub, navel or bogel of the Cantian British roads may be further implied by the immediately adjacent Bucklesbury, now corrupted into Bucklersbury. Parts of the Ichnield Way—notably at Broadway—are known as Buckle Street, the term buckle here being seemingly used in the sense of Bogle or Bogie. It is always the custom of a later race to attribute any great work of unknown origin to Bogle or the Devil, e.g., the Devil’s Dyke, and innumerable other instances.
Ichnos in Greek means track, ichneia a tracking; whence the immemorial British track known as the Ichnield Way may reasonably be connoted with the ancient Via Egnatio near Berat in Albania. That Albion, like Albania, possessed very serviceable ways before the advent of any Romans is clear from Cæsar’s Commentaries. After mentioning the British rearguard—“about 4000 charioteers only being left”—Cæsar continues: “and when our cavalry for the sake of plundering and ravaging the more freely scattered themselves among the fields, he (Cassivelaunus) used to send out charioteers from the woods by all the well-known roads and paths, and to the great danger of our horse engage with them, and this source of fear hindered them from straggling very extensively”.[586]
It has been seen that the Welsh tracks by which the armies marched to battle were known as Elen’s Ways, whence possibly six such Elen’s Ways concentrated in the heart of London, which I have already suggested was an Elen’s dun. In French forests radiating pathways, known as etoiles or stars, were frequent, and served the most utilitarian purpose of guiding hunters to a central Hub or trysting-place.
One of the marvels which impress explorers in Crete is the excellence of the ancient Candian roads. According to Tacitus the British, under Boudicca, chiefly Cantii, Cangians, and Ikeni, “brought into the field an incredible multitude”.[587] The density of the British population in ancient times is indicated by the extent of prehistoric reliques, whereas the Roman invaders were never numerically more than a negligible fraction. It is now admitted by historians that Roman civilisation did not succeed in striking the same deep roots in British soil as it did into the nationality of Gaul or Spain. “For one thing, the numbers both of Roman veterans and of Romanised Britons remained comparatively small; for another, beyond the Severn and beyond the Humber lay the multitudes of the un-Romanised tribes, held down only by the terror of the Roman arms, and always ready to rise and overwhelm the alien culture.”[588]
Commenting upon the Icknield Way, Dr. Guest remarks the lack upon its course of any Roman relics, a want, however, which, as he says, is amply compensated for by the many objects, mostly of British antiquity, which crowd upon us as we journey westward—by the tumuli and “camps” which show themselves on right and left—by the six gigantic earthworks which in the intervals of eighty miles were raised at widely different periods to bar progress along this now deserted thoroughfare.[589] In a similar strain Mr. Johnson writes of the Pilgrim’s Way in Surrey: “To my thinking, the strongest argument for the prehistoric way lies in the plea expressed by the grim old earthworks and silent barrows which stud its course, and by the numerous relics dug up here and there, relics of which we may rest assured not one-half has been put on record.”[590]
Tacitus pictures a Briton as reasoning to himself “compute the number of men born in freedom and the Roman invaders are but a handfull”.[591] Is it in these circumstances likely that the Roman handful troubled to construct six great arteries or main roads centring to London stone?
The Romans ran military roads from castra to castra, but in Roman eyes London was merely “a place not dignified with the name of a colony, but the chief residence of merchants and the great mart of trade and commerce”.[592]
Holloway Road, in London, implies, I think, at least one Holy Way, and there seems to me a probability that London stone was a primitive Jupiterstone, yprestone, preston, pray stone, or phairy stone, similar to the holy centre-stone of sacred Athens: “Look upon the dance, Olympians; send us the grace of Victory, ye gods who come to the heart of our city, where many feet are treading and incense streams: in sacred Athens come to the holy centre-stone”.
FOOTNOTES:
[506] Iliad, Bk. XX., 434.
[507] A King Cunedda figures in Welsh literature as the first native ruler of Wales, and tradition makes Cunedda a son of the daughter of Coel, probably the St. Helen who was the daughter of Old King Cole, and who figures as the London Great St. Helen and Little St. Helen: possibly, also, as the ancient London goddess Nehallenia = New Helen, Nelly = Ellen.
[508] History, Bk. V.
[509] Church, A. J. and Brodribb, W. J., The History of Tacitus, 1873, p. 229.
[510] Quoted in Celtic Britain, Rhys, Sir J., p. 74.
[511] Address to British Association.
[512] Quoted in The Veil of Isis, Reade, W. W., p. 47.
[513] Wilkie, James, Saint Bride, the Greatest Woman of the Celtic Church.
[514] Nonnus, quoted from A Dissertation on The Mysteries of the Cabiri, Faber, G. S., vol. ii., p. 313.
[515] Huyshe, W., The Life of St. Columba, p. 247.
[516] Canon ffrench, Prehistoric Faith and Worship, p. 56.
[517] Hughes, T., The Scouring of the White Horse, p. 111.
[518] Apart from recent experiences and the records of the Saxon invaders of this country, one may connote the candid maxims of the Frederick upon whom the German nation has thought proper to confer the sobriquet of “Great,” e.g.:—
“It was the genius of successive rulers of our race to be guided only by self-interest, ambition, and the instinct of self-preservation.”
“When Prussia shall have made her fortune, she will be able to give herself the air of good-faith and of constancy which is only suitable for great States or small Sovereigns.” “As for war, it is a profession in which the smallest scruple would spoil everything.”
“Nothing exercises a greater tyranny over the spirit and heart than religion.... Do we wish to make a treaty with a Power? If we only remember that we are Christians all is lost, we shall always be duped.”
“Do not blush at making alliances with the sole object of reaping advantage for yourself. Do not commit the vulgar fault of not abandoning them when you believe it to be to your advantage to do so; and, above all, ever follow this maxim that to despoil your neighbours is to take from them the means of doing you harm.”
In the eyes of the stupid and unappreciative Britons the Saxons were “swine,” and the “loathest of all things,” vide Layamon’s Brut, e.g.: “Lo! where here before us the heathen hounds, who slew our ancestors with their wicked crafts; and they are to us in land loathest of all things. Now march we to them, and starkly lay on them, and avenge worthily our kindred, and our realm, and avenge the mickle shame by which they have disgraced us, that they over the waves should have come to Dartmouth. And all they are forsworn, and all they shall be destroyed; they shall be all put to death, with the Lord’s assistance! March we now forward, fast together”—(Everyman’s Library, p. 195).
“The Saxons set out across the water, until their sails were lost to sight. I know not what was their hope, nor the name of him who put it in their mind, but they turned their boats, and passed through the channel between England and Normandy. With sail and oar they came to the land of Devon, casting anchor in the haven of Totnes. The heathen breathed out threatenings and slaughter against the folk of the country. They poured forth from their ships, and scattered themselves abroad amongst the people, searching out arms and raiment, firing homesteads and slaying Christian men. They passed to and fro about the country, carrying off all they found beneath their hands. Not only did they rob the hind of his weapon, but they slew him on his hearth with his own knife. Thus throughout Somerset and a great part of Dorset, these pirates spoiled and ravaged at their pleasure, finding none to hinder them at their task”—(Ibid., p. 47).
[519] Allen J. Romilly, Celtic Art in Pagan and Christian Times, p. 130.
[520] A Guide to the Antiquities of the Iron Age, p. 89.
[521] Quoted by J. Romilly Allen, in Celtic Art, p. 138.
[522] Rev. Wm. Greenwell and Parker Brewis, Archæologia, vol. lxi., pp. 439, 472 (1909).
[523] Rev. Wm. Greenwell and Parker Brewis, Archæologia, vol. lxi., p. 4.
[524] The standard supposition that Smithfield is a corruption of smooth field may or may not be well founded.
[525] Bohn’s ed., p. 382.
[526] The psychology of Homer’s description of the Vulcan menage is curiously suggestive of a modern visit to the village blacksmith:—
[527] British Museum, A Guide to the Antiquities of the Early Iron Age, p. 54.
[528] “Antiquities to be noted therein are: First the street of Lothberie, Lathberie, or Loadberie (for by all these names have I read it), took the name (as it seemeth) of berie, or court of old time there kept, but by whom is grown out of memory. This street is possessed for the most part by founders, that cast candlesticks, chafing-dishes, spice mortars, and such like copper or laton works and do afterward turn them with the foot, and not with the wheel, to make them smooth and bright with turning and scrating (as some do term it), making a loathsome noise to the by-passers that have not been used to the like, and therefore by them disdainfully called Lothberie.”—London (Ev. Lib.), p. 248.
[529] Phenomena, p. xvii.
[530] Stow, London, p. 221.
[531] Giraldus Cambrensis, p. 97.
[532] Cf. Rhys, Sir J., Celtic Heathendom, p. 613.
[533] Cf. A New Light on the Renaissance and The Lost Language of Symbolism.
[534] Windle, B. C. A., Life in Early Britain, p. 116.
[535] Cacus figures in mythology as a huge giant, the son of Vulcan, and the stealer of Hercules’ oxen.
[536] Duncan, T., The Religions of Profane Antiquity, p. 59.
[537] Hazlitt, W. Carew, Faith and Folklore, vol. i., p. 210.
[538] A trace of the old sacrificial eating?
[539] Gomme, L., Folklore as an Historic Science, p. 43.
[540] See Johnson, W., Byways of British Archæology. “Among the Saxons only a high priest might lawfully ride a mare,” p. 436.
[541] Faber, G. S., The Mysteries of the Cabiri, i., 220.
[542] Golden Legend, iv., 96.
[543] Is. xlv. 7.
[544] Quoted from Eckenstein, Miss Lena, Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes, p. 153.
[545] Keightley, Fairy Mythology, p. 285.
[547] Allen F. Romilly, Celtic Art, p. 78.
[548] Ibid., p. 188.
[549] The following letter appeared in Folklore of June 29, 1918:—
“Twenty-five years ago an old man in one of the parishes of Anglesey invariably bore or rather wore a sickle over his neck—in the fields, and on the road, wherever he went. He was rather reticent as to the reason why he wore it, but he clearly gave his questioner to understand that it was a protection against evil spirits. This custom is known in Welsh as ‘gwisgo’r gorthrwm,’ which literally means ‘wearing the oppression’. Gorthrwm = gor, an intensifying affix = super, and trwm = heavy, so that the phrase perhaps would be more correctly rendered ‘wearing the overweight’. It is not easy to see the connection between the practice and the idea either of overweight or oppression; still, that was the phrase in common use.
“For a similar reason, that is, protection from evil spirits during the hours of the night, it was and is a custom to place two scythes archwise over the entrance-side of the wainscot bed found in many of the older cottages of Anglesey. It is difficult to find evidence of the existence of this practice to-day as the old people no doubt feel that it is contrary to their prevailing religious belief and will not confess their faith in the efficacy of a ‘pagan’ rite which they are yet loth to abandon.
“R. Gwynedon Davies.”
[550] Wright T., Essays on Arch. Subjects, i., 26.
[551] Smith, W., A Smaller Classical Dictionary.
[552] Vol. i., p. 210.
[553] Domesday Ferebi, “probably dwelling of the comrade or partner”. Do the authorities mean friend?
[554] Mann, L., Archaic Sculpturings, p. 30.
[555] Cf. The Alphabet, i., 12.
[556] Lord Avebury. Preface to A Guide to Avebury, p. 5.
[557] Durandus, Rationale.
[558] “Ruddy was the sea-beach and the circular revolution was performed by the attendance of the white bands in graceful extravagance when the assembled trains were assembled in dancing and singing in cadence with garlands and ivy branches on the brow.”—Cf. Davies, E. Mythology of British Druids.
[559] History, V., 5.
[560] Ancient British Coins, p. 178.
[561] “Copied by Higgins, Anacalypsis, on the authority of Dubois, who states (vol. iii., p. 88), that it was found on a stone in a church in France, where it had been kept religiously for six hundred years. Dubois regards it as wholly astrological, and as having no reference to the story told in Genesis.”
[562] It is quite improbable that there was any foundation for Stow’s surmise that the epithet Poor was applied to the parish of St. Peter in Brode Street, “for a difference from others of that name, sometimes peradventure a poor parish”. It is, however, possible that the church was dedicated to Peter the Hermit, i.e., the poor Peter.
[563] Cf. Abelson, J., Jewish Mysticism, p. 34.
[564] Cf. also Brachet A., Ety. Dictionary of French Language: “A two-wheeled carriage which being light leaps up”. Had our authorities been considering phaeton, this definition might have passed muster. Although Skeat connects phaeton with the Solar Charioteer he nevertheless connotes phantom. Why?
[565] Blackie, C., Place-names, p. 137.
[566] Coins of the Ancient Britons, p. 121.
[567] P. 28.
[568] It is a miracle that this and the other coins illustrated on page 364 did not go into the dustbin. The official estimate of their value and interest is expressed in the following reference from Hawkin’s Silver Coins of England, p. 17:—
“After the final departure of the Romans, about the year 450, the history of the coinage is involved in much obscurity; the coins of that people would of course continue in circulation long after the people themselves had quitted the shores, and it is not improbable that the rude and uncouth pieces, which are imitations of their money, and are scarce because they are rejected from all cabinets and thrown away as soon as discovered, may have been struck during the interval between the Romans and Saxons.”
The italics are mine, and comment would be inadequate. Happily, in despite of “the practised numismatist,” Time, which antiquates and hath an art to make dust of all things, hath yet spared these minor monuments.
[569] Auburn hair is golden-red—hence I am able to recognise only a remote comparison with alburnum, the white sap wood or inner bark of trees.
[570] “We also find Adad numbered among the gods whom the Syrians worshipped; nevertheless we find but little concerning him, and that little obscure and unsatisfactory, either in ancient or modern writers. Macrobius says, “The Assyrians, or rather the Syrians, give the name Adad to the god whom they worship, as the highest or greatest,” and adds that the signification of this name is the One or the Only. This writer also gives us clearly to understand that the Syrians adored the sun under this name; at least, the surname Adad, which was given to the sun by the natives of Heliopolis, makes them appear as one and the same.”—Christmas, H. Rev., Universal Mythology, p. 119.
[571] Discourse concerning Devils, annexed to The Discovery of Witchcraft, Reginald Scot, i., chap. xxi.
[572] Folklore, xxv., 4, p. 426.
[573] “The Sun and Moon have been considered as signs of pagan origin, typifying Apollo and Diana,” History of Signboards, p. 496.
[574] Proc. of Royal Irish Acad., xxxiv., c. 10-11, pp. 318, 320.
[575] Ibid., c. 8, p. 159.
[576] Johnston, Rev. J. B., The Place-names of England and Wales, p. 304.
[577] Wilson, J. M., Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales, i., 839.
[578] Herbert, A., Cyclops Christianus, p. 93.
[579] In Ireland an “abbey” is a cell or hermitage.
[580] Cf. Guest, Dr., Origines Celticæ, ii., 223.
[581] The name Cormac is defined as meaning son of a chariot. Is it to be assumed that the followers of Great Cormac understood a physical road car?
[582] Wentz., W. Y. E., The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, p. 341.
[583] “The inhabitants are called shên jên, spirit-like beings, a term hardly synonymous with hsien, though the description of them is consistent with the recognised characteristics of hsien. The passage runs as follows: ‘Far away on the Isle of Ku-shê there dwell spirit-like beings whose flesh is [smooth] as ice and [white] as snow, and whose demeanour is as gentle and unassertive as that of a young girl. They eat not of the Five Grains, but live on air and dew. They ride upon the clouds with flying dragons for their teams, and roam beyond the Four Seas. The shên influences that pervade that isle preserve all creatures from petty maladies and mortal ills, and ensure abundant crops every year.’”—Yetts, Major W. Perceval, Folklore, XXX., i., p. 89.
[584] Proc. Roy. Irish Acad., xxxiv., c. 8, p. 135.
[585] Folk Memory, p. 339.
[586] De B. Gallico, v., 19.
[587] Annals, xxxiv.
[588] Hearnshaw, F. J. C., England in the Making, p. 22.
[589] Origines Celticæ, ii., 240.
[590] Folk Memory, p. 349.
[591] Agricola, xv.
[592] Tacitus, Annals, xxxiii.
CHAPTER X
HAPPY ENGLAND
“In the old time every Wood and Grove, Field and Meadow, Hill and Cave, Sea and River, was tenanted by tribes and communities of the great Fairy Family, and at least one of its members was a resident in every House and Homestead where the kindly virtues of charity and hospitality were practised and cherished. This was the faith of our forefathers—a graceful, trustful faith, peopling the whole earth with beings whose mission was to watch over and protect all helpless and innocent things, to encourage the good, to comfort the forlorn, to punish the wicked, and to thwart and subdue the overbearing.”—Anon, The Fairy Family, 1857.
“It is very much better to believe in a number of gods than in none at all.”—W. B. Yeats.
It is generally supposed that the site of London has been in continuous occupation since that remote period when the flint-knappers chipped their implements at Gray’s Inn, and the pile-dwelling communities, whose traces have been found in the neighbourhood of London Stone, drove their first stakes into the surrounding marshes. Not only are there in London the material evidences of antediluvian occupation, but “the fact remains that in the city of London there are more survivals from past history than can be found within the compass of any other British city, or of any other area in Britain.”[593]
Sir Laurence Gomme assigns some importance to the place-name “Britaine Street”—now “Little Britain”—where, according to Stow, the Earls of Britain were lodged, but it is probable that in Upwell, Ebgate, Abchurch, Apechurch or Upchurch, we may identify relics of an infinitely greater antiquity.
When Cæsar paid his flying visit to these islands he learned at the mouth of the Thames that what he terms an oppidum or stronghold of the British was not far distant, and that a considerable number of men and cattle were there assembled. As it has been maintained that London was the stronghold here referred to, the term oppidum may possibly have been a British word, Cæsar’s testimony being: “The Britons apply the name of oppidum to any woodland spot difficult to access, and fortified with a rampart and trench to which they are in the habit of resorting in order to escape a hostile raid”.[594] That the dum of oppidum was equivalent to dun is manifest from the place-name Dumbarton, which was originally Dunbrettan.
In view of the natural situation of St. Alban’s there is a growing opinion among archæologists that London, and not St. Alban’s, was the stronghold which stood the shock of Roman conquest when Cæsar took the oppidum of Cassivellaunus.
The inscriptions Ep, Eppi, and Ippi figure frequently on British coins, and there were probably local hobby stones, hobby towns, and oppi duns in the tribal centre of every settlement of hobby-horse worshippers. In Durham is Hoppyland Park, near Bridgewater is Hopstone, near Yarmouth is Hopton, and Hopwells; and Hopwood’s, Happy Valley’s, Hope Dale’s, Hope Point’s, Hopgreen’s, Hippesley’s and Apsley’s may be found in numerous directions. It is noteworthy that none of these terms can have had any relation to the hop plant, for the word hops is not recorded until the fifteenth century; nor, speaking generally, have they any direct connection with hope, meaning “the point of the low land mounting the hill whence the top can be seen”.[595]
The word hope, meaning expectation, is in Danish haab, in German hoffe: Hopwood, near Hopton, is at Alvechurch (Elf Church?), apart from which straw one would be justified in the assumption that Hop, Hob, or Hoph, where it occurs in place-names, had originally reference to Hob-with-a-canstick, alias Hop-o’-my-Thumb. The Hebrew expression for the witch of Endor, consulted by King Saul, is ob or oub, but in Deuteronomy xviii. 11, the term oph is used to denote a familiar spirit.[596] As we find a reference in Shakespeare to “urchins, ouphes, and fairies,” the English ouphes would seem to have been one of the orders of the Elphin realm: the authorities equate it with alph or alp, and the word has probably survived in the decadence of Kipling’s “muddied oaf”.
Offa, the proper name, is translated by the dictionaries as meaning mild, gentle: it is further remarkable that the root oph, op, or ob, is very usually associated with things diminutive and small. In Welsh of or ov means “atoms, first principles”;[597] in French œuf, in Latin ova, means an egg; the little egg-like berry of the hawthorn is termed a hip; to ebb is to diminish, and in S.W. Wiltshire is “a small river,” named the Ebbe. Hob, with his flickering candlestick, or the homely Hob crouching on the hob, seems rarely to have been thought of otherwise than as the child Elf, such as that superscribed Ep upon the British coin here illustrated: yet to the ubiquitous Hob may no doubt be assigned up, which means aloft or overhead, and hoop, the symbol of the Sun or Eye of Heaven.