Archaic England

In Calmet’s Biblical Dictionary there is illustrated a medal of ancient Corinth representing an old man in a state of decrepitude entering a whale, but on the same medal the old man renewed is shown to have come out of the same fish in a state of infancy.

Among the Greeks Apollo or the Sun was represented as riding on a dolphin’s back: the word dolphin is connected with delphus, the womb, and doubtless also with Delphi, the great centre of Apollo worship and the legendary navel of the Universe. Alpha has been noted as the British name of Noah’s wife, and it is probable that Delphi meant at one time the Divine Alpha or Elf: in the Iberian coin here illustrated (origin uncertain) the little Elf or spriggan is equipped with a cross; in the coin of Carteia (Spain) the inscription Xidd probably corresponds to the name which the British Bards wrote—“Ked”.

In India the Ark or Leviathan of Life is represented as half horse or half mare, and among the Phœnicians the word hipha denoted both mare and ship: in Britain the Magna Mater, Ked, was figured as the combination of an old giantess, a hen, a mare, and as a ship which set sail, lifted the Bard from the earth and swelled out like a ship upon the waters. Davies observes: “And that the ancient Britons actually did portray this character in the grotesque manner suggested by our Bard appears by several ancient British coins where we find a figure compounded of a bird, a boat, and a mare”. The coin to which Davies here refers is that illustrated on page 596, Fig. 356: that the Babylonians built their ships in the combined form of a mare and fish is clear from the illustration overleaf.

The most universal and generally understood emblem of peace is a dove bearing in its beak an olive-branch,[756] or sprig, and this emblem is intimately associated with the Ark: among the poems of the Welsh Bard Aneurin is the expectation—

As Iona means dove, the culver on the hackney’s back (Fig. 415) is evidently St. Columba, and the crowned Babe in Fig. 414 is in all probability that same “spriggan on Dowdy’s back,” or Elphin, as the British Bards speak so persistently and mysteriously of “liberating”. In Egypt the spright is portrayed rising from a maculate or spotted beast, and in all these and parallel instances the emblem probably denoted rejuvenescence or new birth; either Spring ex Winter, Change ex Time, the Seen from the Unseen, Amor ex Nox, Visible from Invisible, or New from Old.

The eight parents from the Ark may be connoted with Aught from Naught, for eight is the same word as aught and naught is the same word as night, nuit, or not: naughty means evil, whence the legend of Amor being born from Nox or Night might perhaps have been sublimated into the idea of Good emerging even from things noxious or nugatory.[758] Yet in the Cox and Box like rule of Night and Day the all-conquering Nikky was no doubt regarded as unique: “Shining and vanishing in the beauteous circle of the Hours, dwelling at one time in gloomy Tartarus, at another elevating himself to Olympus giving ripeness to the fruits”: it is not unlikely that the ruddy nectarine was assigned to him, and similarly nectar the celestial drink of the gods, or ambrosia in a liquid form.

Of the universally recognised Dualism the black and white magpie was evidently an emblem, and the superstitions in connection with this bird are still potent. The Magpie is sometimes called Magot-pie, and Maggoty-pie, and for this etymology Skeat offers the following explanation: “Mag is short for Magot—French Margot, a familiar form of Marguerite, also used to denote a Magpie. This is from Latin Margarita, Greek Margarites, a pearl.” There is no material connection between a pearl and a Magpie, but both objects were alike emblems of the same spiritual Power or Pair: between Margot and Istar the same equation is here found, for in Kent magpies were known popularly as haggisters.[759] Although I have deemed hag to mean high it will be remembered that in Greek hagia meant holy, whence haggister may well have been understood as holy ister.

Layamon in his Brut mentions that the Britons at the time of Hengist’s invasion “Oft speak stilly and discourse with whispers of two young men that dwell far hence; the one hight Uther the other Ambrosie”. Of these fabulous Twain—the not altogether forgotten Two Kings of their ancestors—we may equate Uther with the uter or womb of Night and Aurelie Ambrosie with Aurora the Golden Sunburst.

It is probable that the Emporiae, some of whose elphin horse coins were reproduced on page 281, were worshippers of Aurelie Ambrosie or “St. Ambrose” of whom it will be remembered: “some said that they saw a star upon his body”: it is also not unlikely that our Mary Ambree or Fair Ambree was the daughter of Amber, the divine Umpire and the Emperor of the Empyrean. The ballad recalls:—

The sex of this braw Maiden was disguised under a knight’s panoply, and it was only when the fight was finished that her personality was revealed.

If the reader will turn back to the Virago coins illustrated ante, p. 596, which I think represent Ked in the aspect of Hecate—the names are no doubt cognate—he will notice the pastoral crook of the little Shepherdess or Bishop of all souls, and there is little doubt that these figures depict what a Welsh Bard termed “the winged genius of the splendid crosier”.

Although Long Meg of Westminster was said to be a Virago, and was connected in popular opinion with “Bulloigne,” it is not unlikely that Bulloigne was a misconception of Bulinga; the ornamental water of what is now St. James’ Park is a reconstruction of what was originally known as Bulinga Fen, and in that swamp it is probable that Kitty-with-her-canstick, alias Belinga the Beautiful Angel, was supposed to dwell. The name Bolingbroke implies the existence somewhere of a Bolinga’s brook where Belle Inga might also probably have been seen “dancing to the cadence of the stream”; in Shropshire is an earthwork known as Billings Ring, and at Truro there is a Bolingey which is surmised to have meant “isle of the Bollings”. These Bollings were presumably related to the Billings of Billingsgate and elsewhere,[761] and the Bellinge or Billing families were almost certainly connected with Billing, the race-hero of the Angles and Varnians. According to Rydberg the celestial Billing “represents the evening and the glow of twilight, and he is ruler of those regions of the world where the divinities of light find rest and peace”: Billing was the divine defender of the Varnians or Varinians, which word, says Rydberg, “means ‘defenders’ and the protection here referred to can be none other than that given to the journeying divinities of light when they have reached the Western horizon”.[762]

That Billing and the Ingles were connected with Barkshire, the county of the Vale of the White Horse or Brok, is implied by place-names such as Billingbare by Inglemeer Pond in the East, by Inkpen Beacon—originally Ingepenne or Hingepenne—in the South, and by Inglesham near Fearnham and Farringdon in the West. Near Inglemeer is Shinfield and slightly westward is Sunning, which must once have been a place of uncanny sanctity for “it is amazing that so inconsiderable a village should have been the See of eight Bishops translated afterwards to Sherborn and at last to Salisbury.”[763] The seal of Salisbury represents the Maiden of the Sun and Moon, and it is probable that the place-name Maidenhead, originally Madenheith, near Marlow (Domesday Merlawe—Mary low or hill?) did not, as Skeat so aggressively assumes, mean a hythe or landing place for maidens, but Maidenheath, a heath or mead sacred to the braw Maiden.

With the Farens and the Varenians may be connoted the Cornish village of Trevarren or the abode of Varren: this is in the parish of St. Columb, where Columba the Dove is commemorated not as a man but as a Virgin Martyr. Many, if not all, Cornish villages had their so-called “Sentry field” and the Broad Sanctuary at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, no doubt marks the site of some such sanctuary or city of refuge as will be considered in a following chapter. That St. Margaret the Meek or Long Meg was the Bride of the adjacent St. Peter is a reasonable inference, and it is probable that “Broad Sanctuary” was originally hers. According to The Golden Legend: “Margaret is Maid of a precious gem or ouche[764] that is named a Margaret. So the blessed Margaret was white by virginity, little by humility, and virtuous by operation. The virtue of this stone is said to be against effusion of blood, against passion of the heart, and to comfortation of the spirit.” I am unable to trace any immediate connection between St. Margaret and the Dove, but an original relation is implied by the epithets which are bestowed by the Gaels to St. Columbkille of Iona who is entitled “The Precious Gem,” “The Royal Bright Star,” “The Meek,” “The Wise,” and “The Divine Branch who was in the yoke of the Pure Mysteries of God”. These are titles older than the worthy monk whose biography was written by Adamnan: they belong to the archetypal Columba or Culver. There is a river Columb in Devonshire upon which stands the town of Cullompton: in Kent is Reculver once a Royal town of which “the root is unknown, but the present form has been influenced by old English culfre, culfer, a culver-dove or wood-pigeon”.

That St. Columba of Iona was both the White and the Black Culver is implied by his two names of Colum (dove) and Crimthain (wolf): that the great Night-dog or wolf was for some reason connected with the nutrix (vide the coin illustrated on page 364, and the Etrurian Romulus and Remus legend) is obvious, apart from the significance of the word wolf which is radically olf. Columbas’ mother, we are told, was a certain royal Ethne, the eleventh in descent from Cathair Mor, a King of Leinster: Leinster was a stadr, ster, or place of the Laginenses, and that Columba was a personification of Young Lagin or the Little Holy King of Yule is implied (apart from much other evidence) in the story that one of his visitors “could by no means look upon his face, suffused as it was with a marvellous glow, and he immediately fled in great fear”.

Among the Gaels the Little Holy King of Tir an Og, or the Land of the Young, was Angus Og or Angus the youthful: when discussing Angus (excellent virtue) in connection with the ancient goose and the cain goose I was unaware that the Greek for goose is ken. In the far-away Hebrides the men, women, and children of Barra and South Uist (or Aust?) still hold to a primitive faith in St. Columba, St. Bride, or St. Mary, and as a shealing hymn they sing the following astonishingly beautiful folk-song:—

But the Boatmen of Barray sing for the last verse:—

CHAPTER XII
Peter’s Orchards.

“But all the beauty of the pleasaunce drew its being from the song of the bird; for from his chant flowed love which gives its shadow to the tree, its healing to the simple, and its colour to the flower. Without that song the fountain would have ceased to spring, and the green garden become a little dry dust, for in its sweetness lay all their virtue.”—Provençal Fairy Tale.

Among the relics preserved at the monastery of St. Nicholas of Bari is a club with which the saint, who is said to have become a friar at the age of eleven, was beaten by the devil: a club was the customary symbol of Hercules; the Celtic Hercules was, as has been seen, depicted as a baldhead leading a rout of laughter-loving followers by golden chains fastened to their ears, and as it was the habit of St. Nicholas-of-the-Club to wander abroad singing after the ancient fashion, one may be sure that Father Christmas is the lineal descendant of the British Ogmios or Mighty Muse, alias the Wandering Jew or Joy. That Bride “the gentle” was at times similarly equipped is obvious from a ceremony which in Scotland and the North of England used to prevail at Candlemas: “the mistress and servants of each family take a sheaf of oats and dress it up in woman’s apparel, put it in a large basket and lay a wooden club by it, and this they call “Briid’s Bed,” and then the mistress and servants cry three times: “Briid is come, Briid is welcome”! This they do just before going to bed”: another version of this custom records the cry as—“Bridget, Bridget, come is; thy bed is ready”.

In an earlier chapter we connected Iupiter or Jupiter with Aubrey or Oberon, and that this roving Emperor of Phairie Land was familiar to the people of ancient Berkshire is implied not only by a river in that county termed the Auborn, but also by adjacent place-names such as Aberfield, Burfield, Purley, and Bray. Skeat connotes Bray (by Maidenhead) with “Old English braw, Mercian breg, an eyebrow,” but what sensible or likely connection is supposed to exist between the town of Bray and an eyebrow I am unable to surmise: we have, however, considered the prehistoric “butterfly” or eyebrows, and it is not impossible that Bray was identified with this mysterious Epeur (Cupid) or Amoretto. The claims to ubiquity and antiquity put by the British poet into the mouth of Taliesin or Radiant Brow—the mystic child of Nine constituents[766]—is paralleled by the claims of Irish Ameurgin, likewise by the claims of Solomonic “Wisdom,” and there is little doubt that the symbolic forms of the “Teacher to all Intelligences” are beyond all computation.

That Berkshire, the shire of the White Horse, was a seat of beroc or El Borak the White Horse is further implied by the name Berkshire: according to Camden this originated “some say from Beroc, a certain wood where box grew in great plenty”; according to others from a disbarked oak [i.e., a bare oak!] to which when the state was in more than ordinary danger the inhabitants were wont to resort in ancient times to consult about their public affairs”.[767] Overlooking Brockley in Kent is an Oak of Honor Hill, and probably around that ancient and possibly bare Oak the natives of old Brockley or Brock Meadow met in many a consultation.[768] At Coventry is Berkswell: Berkeleys are numerous, and that these sites were abris or sanctuaries is implied by the official definition of Great Berkhamstead, i.e., “Sheltered, home place, or fortified farm”.

At St. Breock in Cornwall there is a pair of Longstones, one measuring 12 feet 4 inches, the other 8 feet, and in all probability at some time or other these pierres or petras were symbols of the phairy Pair who were the Parents and Protectors of the district. At St. Columb in Cornwall there is a Longstone known as “The Old Man”: now measuring 7 feet 6 inches, in all probability this stone was originally 8 feet high; it was also “once apparently surrounded by a small circle”.

In the British coin here illustrated the Old Man jogging along with a club is probably Cun the Great One, or the Aged One. The brow of Honor Oak ridge is known as Canonbie Lea, which may be resolved into the “meadow of the abode of King On”: from this commanding height one may contemplate all London lying in the valley; facing it are the highlands of Cuneburn, Kenwood, Caenwood, and St. John’s Wood. London stone is situated in what is now termed Cannon Street—a supposed corruption of Candlewick Street: the greater probability is that the name is connected with the ancient Kenning or Watch Tower, known as a burkenning, which once occupied the site now marked by Tower Royal in Cannon Street: the ancient Cenyng Street by Mikelgate at York, or Eboracum—a city attributed to a King Ebrauc who will probably prove to be identical with Saint Breock—marked in all likelihood the site of a similar broch, burgkenning, barbican, or watch tower. One may account for ancient Candlewick by the supposition that this district was once occupied by a candle factory, or that it was the property of a supposititious Kendal, who was identical with the Brook, Brick, or Broken of the neighbouring Brook’s wharf, Brickhill, and Broken wharf. At Kendal in Westmorland, situated on the river Can or Kent, around which we find Barnside, the river Burrow or Borrow, and Preston Hall, we find also a Birbeck, and the memories of a Lord Parr: this district was supposedly the home of the Concanni. The present site of Highbury Barn Tavern by Canonbury (London) was once occupied by a “camp” in what was known as Little St. John’s Wood,[769] and as this part of London is not conspicuously “high,” it is not improbable that Highbury was once an abri: in the immediate neighbourhood still exists Paradise Road, Paradise Passage, Aubert Park and a Calabria Road which may possibly mark the site of an original Kil abria. At Highbury is Canonbury Tower, whence tradition says an underground passage once extended to the priory of St. John’s in Clerkenwell: from Highbury to the Angel at Islington there runs an Upper Street: upper is the Greek hyper meaning over (German uber), and that the celebrated “Angel” was originally a fairy or Bellinga, is somewhat implied by the neighbouring Fairbank Street—once a fairy bank?—and by Bookham Street—once a home of Bogie or Puck? From Canonbie Lea at Honor Oak, Brockley (London), one overlooks Peckham, Bickley, Beckenham, and Bellingham, the last named being decoded by the authorities into home of Belling.

We have noted the tradition at Brentford of Two Kings “united yet divided twain at once,” yet there is also an extant ballad which commences—

The Cornish hill of Godolphin was also known as Godolcan, and in view of the connection between Nicolas and eleven it may be assumed that this site was sacred either to Elphin, the elven, the Holy King, or the Old King. At Highbury is an Old Cock Tavern, and in Upper Street an Old Parr Inn: not improbably Old Parr was once the deity of “Upper” Street or “Highbury,” and it is also not unlikely that the St. Peter of Westminster was similarly Old Parr, for according to The History of Signboards—“‘The Old Man,’ Market Place, Westminster, was probably intended for Old Parr, who was celebrated in ballads as ‘The Olde, Olde, Very Olde Manne’. The token represents a bearded bust in profile, with a bare head.[770] In the reign of James I. it was the name of a tavern in the Strand, otherwise called the Hercules Tavern, and in the eighteenth century there were two coffee-houses, the one called ‘the Old Man’s,’ the other ‘the Young Man’s’ Coffee-house.”[771]

If the Old, Old, Very Old Man were Peter the white-haired warden of the walls of Heaven it is obvious that the Young Man would be Pierrot: it is not by accident that white-faced Pierrot, or Peterkin, or Pedrolino, is garbed in white and wears a conical white cap, the legend that accounts for this curious costume being to the effect that years and years ago St. Peter and St. Joseph were once watching (from a burkenning?) over a wintry plain from the walls of Paradise, when they beheld what seemed a pink rose peering out from beneath the snow; but instead of being a rose it proved to be the face of a child, who St. Peter picked up in his arms, whereupon the snow and rime were transformed into an exquisite white garment. It was intended that the little Peter should remain unsullied, but, as it happened, the Boy, having wandered from Paradise, started playing Ring-o-Roses on a village green where a little girl tempted him to talk: then the trouble began, for Pierrot speckled his robe, and St. Peter was unable to allow him in again; but he gave him big black buttons and a merry heart, and there the story ends.[772]

In Pantomime—which has admittedly an ancestry of august antiquity—the counterpart to Pierrot is Columbine, or the Little Dove; doubtless the same Maiden as the Virgin Martyr of St. Columb, Cornwall: this parish is situated in what was termed “The Hundred of Pydar”; in Welsh Bibles Peter is rendered Pedr, and one of the Welsh bards refers to Stonehenge as “the melodious quaternion of Pedyr”: in Cornwall there is also a Padstow or Petroxstowe, and there is no doubt that Peter, like Patrick, was the Supreme Padre or Parent. According to the native ancient ecclesiastical records of Wales known as the Iolo MSS., the native name of St. Patrick was Maenwyn, which means stone sacred: hence one may assume that the island of Battersea or Patrixeye was the abode of the padres who ministered at the neighbouring shrine of St. Peter or petra, the Rock upon which the church of Christ is traditionally built.