CHAPTER XIV.

DOWN UNDER.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The place-name Thurrock and the word _trauc_, meaning a cave, may evidently be equated with the two first syllables of _traugum_ and _troglos_. According to my theories the primitive meaning of _tur og_ was Eternal, or _Enduring Og_, and it is thus a felicitous coincidence that Og, the famous King of Bashan, was a troglodite: the ruins of his capital named Edrei, which was situated in the Zanite Hills, still exist, and are thus described by a modern explorer: "We took with us a box of matches and two candles. After we had gone down the slope for some time, we came to a dozen rooms which, at present, are used as goat stalls and store-rooms for straw. The passage became gradually smaller, until at last we were compelled to lie down flat and creep along. This extremely difficult and uncomfortable progress lasted for about eight minutes, when we were obliged to jump down a steep well, several feet in depth. Here I noticed that the younger of my two attendants had remained behind, being afraid to follow us; but probably it was more from fear of the unknown European, than of the dark and winding passages before us. We now found ourselves in a broad street, which had dwellings on both sides, whose height and width left nothing to be desired. The temperature was mild, the air free from unpleasant odours, and I felt not the smallest difficulty in breathing. Further along there were several cross-streets, and my guide called my attention to a hole in the ceiling for air, like three others which I afterwards saw, now closed from above. Soon after we came to a market-place, where, for a long distance, on both sides of the pretty broad street were numerous shops in the walls, exactly in the style of the shops seen in Syrian cities. After a while we turned into a side street, where a great hall, whose roof was supported by four pillars, attracted my attention. The roof, or ceiling, was formed of a single slab of jasper, perfectly smooth and of immense size, in which I was unable to perceive the slightest crack."[910] The here-described holes in the ceiling for air "now closed from above" correspond very closely to the shafts running up here and there from the Chislehurst caves to the private gardens overhead.

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

The artificial cave at _Trewoofe_ also suggests a connection with the famous Cave-oracle in Livadia known as the Den of _Trophonius_: this celebrated oracle contained small niches for the reception of gift-offerings and there are curious little wall-holes in some of the Cornish _souterrains_ which cannot, so far as one can judge, have filled any other purpose than that served by the niches in the Cave of Trophonius. The calcareous mountain in which the oracle of Trophonius was situated is tunnelled by a number of other excavations, but over the entrance to what is believed to be the veritable prophetic grotto is graved the mysterious word CHIBOLET, or, according to others, ZEUS BOULAIOZ, meaning ZEUS THE COUNSELLOR. The Greek for _counsellor_ is _bouleutes_, and the radical _bouleut_ of this term is curiously suggestive of Bolleit, the name applied to _two_ of the Cornish subterranean chambers, _i.e._, the Bolleit Cave in the parish of St. Eval and the Bolleit Cave near St. Buryan: the latter of these sites includes a stone circle and other monolithic remains which are believed by antiquarians to mark the site of some battle; whence the name Bolleit is by modern etymologers interpreted as having meant _field of blood_, but it exceeds the bounds of coincidence that there should also be a Bolleit cave elsewhere, and the greater probability would seem that these Cornish _souterrains_ were sacred spots serving among other uses the purposes of Oracle and Counsel Chambers. If the disputed inscription over the Trophonian Den really read CHIBOLET it would decode agreeably in accordance with my theories into CHI or Jou the COUNSELLOR; but I am unaware that the Greek Zeus was ever known locally as Chi.[911]

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

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

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

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

In view of the fact that either chalk or flints could have been had conveniently in unlimited quantities for shipment, either from the coast cliffs of Albion, or if inland from the commonsense everyday form of chalk quarry, it is difficult to suppose otherwise than that the Deneholes--which do _not_ branch out indiscriminately like ordinary mine-veins--were dug under superstitious or ecclesiastical control. Of this system perhaps a parallel instance may be found in the remarkable turquoise mines recently explored at Maghara near Sinai: "These mines," says a writer in _Ancient Egypt_,[916] "lie in the vicinity of two adjacent caves facing an extensive site of burning, which has the peculiarities of the high-places of which we hear so much in the Bible. These caves formed a sanctuary which, judging from what is known of ancient sanctuaries in Arabia generally, was at once a shrine and a store house, presumably in the possession of a priesthood or clan, who, in return for offerings brought to the shrine, gave either turquoise itself, or the permission to mine it in the surrounding district. The sanctuary, like other sanctuaries in Arabia, was under the patronage of a female divinity, the representative of nature-worship, and one of the numerous forms of Ishthar."

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

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

I am acquainted with no allusions in British mythology to Nehalennia, but she is recognisable in the St. Newlyna of Newlyn, near Penzance, and of Noualen in Brittany: it is not an unreasonable conjecture that St. Nehalennia of the Thames was a relative of Great St. Helen, and she was probably the little, young, or _new Ellen_. At Dunstable, where also there are dene holes, we find a Dame Ellen's Wood, and it may be surmised that _Nelly_ was originally a _diminutive_ of Ellen.

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

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

In addition to dene holes on the coast of _Dur_ham and at _Dun_stable there are dene holes in the _dun_, _down_, or hill overlooking Kit's Coty: it may reasonably be surmised that the latter were inhabited by the _drui_ or wise men who constructed not only Kit's Coty but also the other extensive megalithic remains which exist in the neighbourhood. The well-known cave at St. Andrews contains many curious Pictish sculptures, and the connection between _antrou_ (or _Andrew_), a cave, and _trou_, a hole, extends to the words _entrails_, _intricate_, and _under_. Practically all the "Mighty Childs" of mythology are represented as having sprung from caves or underground: Jupiter or Chi (the _chi_ or [Greek: ch] is the cross of _Andrew_[917]) was cave-born and worshipped in a cave; Dionysos was said to have been nurtured in a cave; Hermes was born at the mouth of a cave, and it is remarkable that, whereas a cave is still shown as the birthplace of Jesus Christ at Bethlehem, St. Jerome complained that in his day the pagans celebrated the worship of Thammuz, or Adonis, _i.e._, Adon, _at that very cave_.

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

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

The Royston Cave is said to be an exact counterpart to certain caves in Palestine,[919] which are described as "tall domes or bell-shaped apartments ranging in height from 20 to 30 feet, and in diameter from 10 to 12 to 20 or 30 feet, or more. The top of these domes usually terminates in a small circular opening for the admission of light and air. These dome-shaped caverns are mostly in clusters three or four together. They are all hewn regularly. Some of them are ornamented either near the bottom or high up, or both with rows of small holes or niches like pigeon holes extending quite round."[920] It was customary to sell pigeons in the Temple at Jerusalem: there is a prehistoric cave in Dordogne on the river Dronne which _vide_, Fig. 468 is distinguished by pigeon holes. This sacred cave is still used as a pigeonry, and in view of the mass of evidence connecting doves with prehistoric caves and Diana worship, I should not be surprised if the pigeons which congregate to-day around St. Paul's are the direct descendants of the Diana's Doves of the prehistoric _domus columbae_.[921] At _Chadwell_ in Essex are ordinary dene holes, and at Tilbury there were "several spacious caverns in a chalky cliff built artificially of stone to the height of 10 fathoms and somewhat straight at the top": I derive this information, as also the illustrations here reproduced, from the anonymous _New Description of England and Wales_, published in 1724.

Both St. Kit and St. Kate figure on the walls of the bell-shaped cave situated beneath Mercat House at the cross roads at Royston; and thus the name Mercat may here well have meant Big Kit or Kate: close by was an ancient inn known as the Catherine Wheel. We shall probably be safe not only in assigning Kit's Coty to Kate or Ked "the most generous and most beauteous of ladies," but also in assigning to her the Kyd brook, on the right bank of which the Chislehurst caves are situated: "It is somewhat remarkable," says Mr. Nichols, "that the archæological discoveries hitherto made have been for the most part on the line of this stream". The Kyd brook rises in what is now known as the Hawkwood, which was perhaps once equivalent to the Og from whom the King of Edrei took his title.

Following the course of the Kyd brook--in the neighbourhood of which the Ordnance Map records a "Cadlands"--there exists to this day within Elmstead Woods a sunken road, a third of a mile in length, now covered with venerable oaks: three miles southward are the great earthworks at Keston, the supposed site of the Roman station of Noviomagus, "with its temple tombs and massive foundations of flint buildings scattered through the fields and woodland in the valley below".[922]

The name Noviomagus meant seemingly New Magus; that Keston was a seat of the Magi is implied by the fact that the ruins in question are situated in Holwood Park: whether this meant Holywood Park, or whether it was so known because there were holes in it, is not of essential importance; it is sufficiently interesting to note that there are legends at Keston that two subterranean passages once ran from the ruins, the one to Coney Hall Hill adjoining Hayes Common, the other towards Castle Hill at Addington.[923] These burrows have not been explored within living memory, but at Addington itself near the remains of a monastery which stand upon an eminence "a subterranean passage communicates which even now is penetrable for a considerable distance".[924] At Addington are not only numerous tumuli, but it is a tradition among the inhabitants that the place was formerly of much greater extent than at present, and we are told that timbers and other material of ruined buildings are occasionally turned up by the plough: here also is an oak of which the trunk measures nearly 36 feet in girth, and in the churchyard is a yew which from the great circumference of its trunk must be of very great antiquity; that Addington was once a seat of the Aeddons or Magi, is an inference of high probability.

Addington is situated in what is now Surrey, and is in close proximity to a place named Sanderstead: the Sander whose stead or enclosure here stood may be connoted with the French Santerre, which district abounds with _souterrains_: in the valley of the Somme alone there are at least thirty "singular excavations" which _communicate with parish churches_:[925] these Santerre and Sanderstead similarities may be connoted with the fact that on the coast of _Dur_ham are caverns hewn in the limestone and known as Dane's holes.

In the forest of Tournehem near St. Omer are some curious square and circular _fosses_ known locally as Fosses, Sarrasines, or Fosses des Inglais:[926] saracens is the name under which the Jews or Phoenicians are still known in Cornwall, and in view of the Tyrians love of burrowing or making trous, Tournehem may here perhaps be identified with Tyre, or the Tyrrhenians of Etruria. The Inglais can hardly be the modern English, but are more probably the prehistoric Ingles whose marvellous monument stands to-day at Mount Ingleborough in Yorkshire, or ancient Deira: this must have been a perfect Angel borough, or Eden, for not only is it a majestic hill crowned by a tower called the Hospice, and with other relics previously noted, but it also contains one of the most magnificent caverns in the kingdom. This is entered by a low wide arch and consists for the first 600 feet, or thereabouts, of a mere tunnel which varies in height from 5 to 15 feet: one then enters "a spacious chamber with surface all elaborated in a manner resembling the work of a Gothic cathedral in limestone formations of endless variety of form and size, and proceeds thence into a series of chambers, corridors, first made accessible in 1838, said to have an aggregate extent of about 2000 feet, and displaying a marvellous and most beautiful variety of stalactites and stalagmites. A streamlet runs through the whole, and helps to give purity to the air."[927] This description is curiously reminiscent of the famous and gigantic Han Grotto near Dinant: with the Han Grotto, through which run the rivers Lesse and Tamise, may be connoted the Blue John Cavern in Derbyshire, and I have little doubt that Han or Blue John, or Tarchon was the Giant originally worshipped by the Chouans or Jacks, who inhabited the terrible recesses of La Vendee. The name Joynson which occurs in the Kentish dene hole district implies possibly the son of a Giant, or a son of Sinjohn: it is not unlikely that the "Hangman's" Wood, in which the group of dene holes here planned occur, was originally the Han, Hun, giant, or Hahnemann's Wood. At Tilbury the spacious caverns were adjacent to _Shen_field, in the neighbourhood of Downs Farm: at Dunstable is a little St. John's Wood, a Kensworth, and a Mount Pleasant; this district is dotted with "wells," and the adjacent Caddington is interpreted as having meant "the hill meadow of Cedd or Ceadda".

Dinant or Deonant is generally supposed to derive its name from Diana, and we are told that the town originally possessed "_onze_ eglises paroissales". Whether these eleven parishes were due to chance or whether they were originally sacred to an elphin eleven must remain a matter of conjecture: at the entry to the Grotto in Dane Hill, Margate (Thanet), is a shell-mosaic _yoni_ surmounted by an eleven-rayed star.

The association of "les Inglais" with the fosses in the forest of Tournehem may possibly throw some light upon the curiously persistent sixfold form in which our British dene holes seem invariably to have been constructed. Engelland as we have seen was the mystic Angel Land in which the unborn children of the future were awaiting incarnation: that six was for some reason associated with birth and creation is evident from the six days of Jewish tradition, and from the corresponding 6000 years of Etrurian belief. The connection between six and creation is even more pointed in the Druidic chant still current in Brittany, part of which has already been quoted:--

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.

Nevertheless the Druid or Instructor runs through a sequence expounding three as the three Kingdoms of Merlin, five as the terrestrial zones, or the divisions of time, and _six_ as "_babes of wax quickened into life through the power of the moon_":[928] the moon which periodically wanes and waxes like a matron, was of course Diana, whence possibly the sixfold form of the dene or Dane holes.

In the Caucasus--the land of the Kimbry, _don_ was a generic term for water and for river:[929] we have a river _Dane_ in Cheshire, a river _Dean_ in Nottinghamshire, a river _Dean_ in Forfarshire, a river _Dun_ in Lincolnshire, a river _Dun_ in Ayrshire, and a river _Don_ in Yorkshire, Aberdeen, and Antrim. There is a river Don in Normandy, and elsewhere in France there is a river Madon which is suggestive of the _Madonna_: the root of all these terms is seemingly Diane, Diana, or Dione, and it may reasonably be suggested that the dene or Dane holes of this country, like many other dens, were originally shrines dedicated to the prehistoric Madonna.

The fact that the subsidence at Modingham immediately filled up with water is presumptive evidence not only of a vast cavern, but also of a subterranean river, or perhaps a lake. That such spots were sacrosanct is implied by numerous references such as that quoted by Herbert wherein an Italian poet describes a visit of King Arthur to a small mount situated in a plain, and covered with stones: into that mount the King followed a hind he was chasing, tracking her through subterranean passages until he reached a cavern where "he saw the preparations for earthquakes and volcanic fires. He saw the flux and reflux of the sea."

Among the poems of Taliesin is one entitled _The Spoils of Hades_, wherein the mystic Arthur is figured as the retriever of a magic cauldron, no doubt the sun or else the _pair dadeni_, or cauldron of new birth: "It commences," says Herbert, "with reference to the prison-sepulchre of Arthur describing in all _six_ such sanctuaries; though I should rather say one such under _six_ titles". This mysterious _six_ is suggestive of the _six_fold dene holes, and that this six was for some reason associated with the Madonna is obvious from the Christian emblem here illustrated. According to the theories of the author of _L'Antre des Nymphes_, "the cave was considered in ancient times as the universal matrix from which the world and men, light and the heavenly bodies, alike have sprung, and the initiation into ancient mysteries always took place in a cave". I have not read this work, and am unacquainted with the facts upon which M. Saintyves bases his conclusions: these, however, coincide precisely with my own. It will not escape the reader's attention that Fig. 472 is taken from Chartres, the _central_ site of Gaul, to which as Cæsar recorded the Druids annually congregated.

Layamon in his _Brut_ recounts that Arthur took counsel with his knights on a spot exceeding fair, "beside the water that Albe was named":[930] I am unable to trace any water now existing of that name which, however, is curiously reminiscent of Coleridge's romantic Alph:--

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree, Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

It has already been noted that the Saxon monks filled up passages at St. Albans which ran even under the river: that similar constructions existed elsewhere is clear from the Brut of Kings where it is stated that Lear was buried by his daughter Cordelia in a vault under the river Soar in Leicestershire: "a place originally built in honour of the god Janus, and in which all the workmen of the city used to hold a solemn ceremony before they began upon the new year".[931] That the Druids worshipped and taught in caves is a fact well attested; that solemn ceremonies were enacted at Chislehurst is probable; that they were enacted in Ireland at what was known as Patrick's Purgatory even to comparatively modern times is practically certain. This famous subterranean Purgatory, which Faber describes as a "celebrated engine of papal imposture," flourished amazingly until 1632, when the Lords Justices of Ireland ordered it to be utterly broken down, defaced, and demolished; and prohibited any convent to be kept there for the time to come, or any person to go into the said island on a superstitious account.[932] The popularity of Patrick's Purgatory, to which immense numbers of pilgrims until recently resorted, is connected with a local tradition that Christ once appeared to St. Patrick, and having led him to a desert place showed him a deep hole: He then proceeded to inform him that whoever entered into that pit and continued there a day and a night, having previously repented and being armed with the true faith, should be purged from all his sins, and He further added that during the penitent's abode there he should behold both the torments of the damned, and the joyful blisses of the blessed. That both these experiences were dramatically represented is not open to doubt, and that the actors were the drui or magi is equally likely: Lough _Derg_, the site of the Purgatory, is suggestive of drui, and also of Thurrock where, as we have seen, still exist the dene holes of troglodites.

On page 558 was reproduced a coin representing the Maiden in connection with a right angle, and there may be some connection between this emblem and the form of Patrick's Purgatory: "Its shape," says Faber, "resembles that of an L, excepting only that the angle is more obtuse, and it is formed by two parallel walls covered with large stones and sods, its floor being the natural rock. Its length is 16-1/2 feet, and its width 2 feet, but the building is so low that a tall man cannot stand erect in it. It holds nine persons, and a tenth could not remain in it without considerable inconvenience."[933] This Irish chapel to hold nine may be connoted with Bishop Arculf's description in A.D. 700 of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. He describes this church as very large and round, encompassed with three walls, with a broad space between each, and containing three altars of wonderful workmanship, in the middle wall, at three different points; on the south, the north, and the west. "It is supported by twelve stone columns of extraordinary magnitude; and it has eight doors or entrances through the three opposite walls, four fronting the north-east, and four to the south-east. In the middle space of the inner circle is a _round grotto cut in the solid rock_, the interior of which is _large enough to allow nine men to pray standing_, and the roof of which is about a foot and a half higher than a man of ordinary stature."[934] To the above particulars Arculf adds the interesting information that: "On the side of Mount Olivet there is a cave not far from the church of St. Mary,[935] on an eminence looking towards the valley of Jehoshaphat, in which are two very deep pits. One of these extends under the mountain to a vast depth; the other is sunk straight down from the pavement of the cavern, and is said to be of great extent. These pits are always closed above. In this cavern are four stone tables; one, near the entrance, is that of our Lord Jesus, whose seat is attached to it, and who, doubtless, rested Himself here while His twelve apostles sat at the other tables."[936]

Jerusalem was for many centuries regarded as the admeasured centre of the whole earth, and doubtless every saintuaire was originally the local _centre_: in Crete there has been discovered a small shrine at Gournia "situated in the very centre of the town," and with the mysterious pits of elsewhere may be connoted the "three walled pits," nearly 25 feet deep, which remain at the northern entrance of Knossus: the only explanation which has been suggested for these constructions is that "they may have been oubliettes".

Around Patrick's Purgatory in Lough Derg were built seven chapels, and it is evident that at or near the site were many other objects of interest: Giraldus Cambrensis says there were nine caves there,[937] another account states that an adventurer--a venerable hermit, Patrick by name--"one day lighted on this cave which is _of vast extent_. He entered it and wandering on in the dark lost his way so that he could no more find how to return to the light of day. After long rambling through the gloomy passages he fell upon his knees and besought Almighty God if it were His will to deliver him from the great peril wherein he lay."[938] This adventure doubtless actually befell an adventurous Patrick, and before starting on his foolhardy expedition he would have been well advised to have consulted some such experienced Bard as the Taliesin who--claiming himself to be born of nine constituents--wrote--

I know every pillar in the Cavern of the West.

Similarly the author of _The Incantation of Cunvelyn_ maintained:--

With the habituated to song (Bard) Are flashes of light to lead the tumult In ability to descend Through spikes along brinks Through the opening of trapdoors.[939]

This same poet speaks of the furze or broom bush in blossom as being a talisman: "The furzebush is it not radiance in the gloom?" and he adds "of the sanctity of the winding refuge they (the enemy) have possessed themselves". Upon this Herbert very pertinently observes: "This sounds as if the possessors of the secret had an advantage over their opponents from their faculty of descending into chambers and galleries cunningly contrived, and artfully obscured and illuminated.... I think there was somewhere a system of chambers, galleries, etc.,[940] approaching to the labyrinthine character."[941]

The Purgatory of St. Patrick was once called _Uamh Treibb Oin_, the _wame_, or cave of the tribe of Oin or Owen, upon which Faber comments: "Owen, in short, was no other than the Great God of the Ark, and the same as Oan, Oannes, or Dagon": he was also in all probability the _Janus_ of the river Soar, the _Shony_ of the Hebrides, the Blue _John_ of Buxton, the Tar_chon_ of Etruria, and the St. Patrick on whose festival and before whose altar all the fishes of the sea rose and passed by in procession. After expressing the opinion "I am persuaded that Owen was the very same person as Patrick," Faber notes the tradition, no doubt a very ancient one among the Irish, that Patrick was likewise called Tailgean or Tailgin: there is a celebrated Mote in Ireland named Dun_dalgan_, and the Glen_dalgeon_, to which the miraculous Bird of St. Bridget is said to have taken its flight, was presumably a glen once sacred to the same Tall John, or Chief King, or Tall Khan, or High Priest, as was worshipped at the Pictish town of Delginross in Caledonia; we have already considered this term in connection with the Telchines of Telchinia, Khandia, or Crete.

That Lough _Derg_ was associated with Drei, Droia, or Troy, and with the _drui_ or Druids, is further implied by its ancient name Lough _Chre_, said to mean lake of the _soothsayers_. Sooth is Truth and the Hibernian _chre_ may be connoted with the "Cray," which occurs so persistently in the Kentish dene hole district, _e.g._, Foots Cray, St. Mary Cray, and St. Paul's Cray: the Paul of this last name may be equated with the Poole of the celebrated Buxton Poole's Cavern, Old Poole's Saddle, and Pell's Well: the "bogie" of Buxton was no doubt the same Puck, Pooka, or Bwcca, as that of the Kentish Bexley, Bickley, and Boxley at each of which places are dene holes.

The cauldron of British mythology was known occasionally as Pwyll's Cauldron, Pwyll, the chief of the Underworld, being the infernal or Plutonic form of the Three Apollos. Referring to the Italian tale of King Arthur's entrance into the innermost caverns of the earth, Herbert observes: "Valvasone's account of this place is a just description of the Cor upon Mount Ambri, and goes to identify it with the mystical Ynys Avallon (Island of Apples). All that he says of it is in wide departure from the tales which he might have read in Galfridus and Giraldus. But when we further see that he places within its recesses the cauldron of deified nature or Keridwen, it truly moves our wonder whence this matter can have come into his pages."[942] Doubtless Herbert would have puzzled still more in view of what is apparently the same mystic cauldron, bowl, or tureen carved upon the walls of St. Clement's Caves at Hastings.[943]

Presumably the St. Clement of these caves which have been variously ascribed to the Romans and the Danes, was a relative of St. Clement Dane in London by St. Dunstan in the West: the Hastings Caves are situated over what is marked on the Ordnance map as Torfield, and as this is immediately adjacent to a St. Andrew it is probable that the Anderida range, which commences hereby and terminates at the Chislehurst Caves, was all once dedicated to the ancient and eternal Ida. _Antre_ is a generic term for cave, and as _trou_ means hole, the word _antrou_ is also equivalent to _old hole_. When first visiting the famous Merlin's Cave at Tintagel or Dunechein, where it is said that Art_hur_ or Ar_tur_, the mystic Mighty Child, was cast up by the ninth wave into the arms of the Great Magician, my companion's sense of romance received a nasty jar on learning that Merlin's Cave was known locally as "The Old Hole": it may be, however, that this term was an exact rendering of the older Keltic _antrou_, which is literally _old hole_: the Tray Cliff in Derbyshire, where is situated the Blue John Mine, may well have been the _trou_ cliff.

The highest point of the highland covering St. Clement's Caves is known as "The Ladies' Parlour"; at the foot of this is Sandringham Hotel, whence--in view of the neighbouring St. Andrew and Tor field--it is possible that "Sandringham"[944] was here, as elsewhere, a _home of the children of Sander_: immediately adjacent is a Braybrook, and a Bromsgrove Road. Near Reigate is a Broome Park which we are told "in the romantic era rejoiced in the name of Tranquil Dale":[945] the neighbouring Buckland, Boxhill, and Pixhome Lane may be connoted with Bexhill by Hastings, and there are further traditional connections between the two localities. Under the dun upon which stand the remains of Reigate Castle are a series of caves, and besides the series of caves under the castle there are many others of much greater dimensions to the east, west, and south sides:[946] my authority continues, "Here many of the side tunnels are sealed up; one of these is said to go to Reigate Priory--which is possible--but another which is _reputed to go to Hastings_, impels one to draw the line somewhere".[947]

We have seen that Brom and Bron were obviously once one and the same, and there is very little doubt that the Bromme of Broompark or Tranquil Dale was the same Peri or Power as was presumably connected with Purley, and as the Bourne or Baron associated with Reigate. In one of the Reigate caverns is a large pool of clear water which is said to appear once in seven years, and is still known as Bourne water:[948] under the castle is a so-called Baron's Cave which is about 150 feet long, with a vaulted roof and a circular end with a ledge or seat around it. In popular estimation this is where the Barons met prior to the signing of Magna Charta: possibly they did, and without doubt many representatives of _The_ Baron--good, bad, bold, and indifferent--from time to time sat and conferred upon the same ledge. From the Baron's Cave a long inclined plane led to a stairway of masonwork which extended to the top of the mound.

Reigate now consists of a pair of ancient Manors, of which one was Howleigh; the adjacent _Ag_land Moor, as also _Ox_ted, suggests the troglodyte King Og of Edrei. Among the Reigate caves is one denominated "The Dungeon": _Tin_tagel was known alternatively not only as _Dun_dagel, but also as _Dune_chein, evidently the same word as the great _Dane_ John tumulus at Canterbury. The meaning of this term depends like every other word upon its context; a _dungeon_ is a down-under or dene hole, the keep or _donjon_ of a castle is its main tower or summit: similarly the word dunhill is identical with dene hole; _abyss_ now means a yawning depth, but on page 224 Abyss was represented as a dunhill.

From the cavern at Pentonville, known as Merlin's Cave, used to run a subterranean passage: modern Pentonville takes its title from a ground landlord named Penton, a tenant who presumably derived his patronymic either from that particular _penton_ or from one elsewhere. In connection with the term _pen_ it is curious to find that at Penselwood in Somerset there are what were estimated to be 22,000 "pen pits": these pits are described as being in general of the form which mathematicians term the frustrum of a cone, not of like size one with another, but from 10 to 50 feet over at top and from 5 to 20 feet in the bottom.[949] I have already surmised that the various Selwoods, Selgroves, and Selhursts were so named because they contained the cells of the austere _selli_: by Penselwood is Wincanton, a place supposed to have derived its title from "probably a man's name; nasalised form of _Hwicca_, _cf._ Whixley, and see _ton_"; but in view of the innumerable _cone_-shaped cells hereabout, it would seem more feasible that _canton_ meant _cone town_. We have already illustrated the marvellous cone tomb said to have once existed in Etruria: in connection with this it is further recorded that within the basement King Porsenna made an inextricable labyrinth, into which if one ventured without a clue, there he must remain for he never could find the way out again; according to Mrs. Hamilton Gray the labyrinth of a counterpart of this tomb still exists, "but its locality is unascertained".

There are said to be pits similar to the Wincanton pen pits in Berkshire, there known as Coles pits: we have already connoted St. Nichol of the tub-miracle, likewise King Cole of the Great Bowl with Yule the Wheel or Whole. The Bowl of Cole was without doubt the same as the _pair dadeni_, or Magic Cauldron of _Pwyll_ which Arthur "spoiled" from Hades: with _Paul's_ Cray may be connoted the not-far-distant Pol Hill overlooking Sevenoaks. Otford, originally Ottanford, underlies Pol Hill, which was no doubt a dun of the celestial Pol, _alias_ Pluto, or Aidoneus: in the graveyard at Ottanford may be seen memorials of the Polhill family, a name evidently analogous to Penton of Pentonville.

The memory of our ancestors dwelling habitually in either pen pits, dene holes, or cole pits, has been preserved in Layamon's _Brut_, where it is recorded: "At Totnes, Constantin the fair and all his host came ashore; thither came the bold man--well was he brave!--and with him 2000 knights such as no king possessed. Forth they gan march into London, and sent after knights over all the kingdom, and every brave man, that speedily he should come anon. The Britons heard that, _where they dwelt in the pits_, in earth and in stocks they hid them (like) badgers, in wood and in wilderness, in heath and in fen, so that well nigh no man might find any Briton, except they were in castle, or in burgh inclosed fast. When they heard of this word, that Constantin was in the land, _then came out of the mounts_ many thousand men; they leapt out of the wood as if it were deer. Many hundred thousand marched toward London, by street and by weald all it forth pressed; and the brave women put on them men's clothes, and they forth journeyed toward the army."

It has been assumed that the means of exit from the dene holes, and from the subterranean city with which they communicated, was a notched pole, and it is difficult to see how any other method was feasible: in this connection the Mandan Indians of North America have a curious legend suggestive of the idea that they must have sprung from some troglodite race. The whole Mandan nation, it is said, once resided in one large village underground near a subterranean lake; a grape-vine extended its roots down to their habitation and gave them a view of the light. Some of the most adventurous climbed up the vine and were delighted with the sight of the earth which they found covered with buffalo and rich with every kind of fruit: men, women, and children ascended by means of the vine (the notched pole?), but when about half the nation had attained the surface of the earth a big or buxom woman, who was clambering up the vine, broke it with her weight and closed upon herself and the rest the light of the Sun. There is seemingly some like relation between this legend and the tradition held by certain hill tribes of the old Konkan kingdom in India, who have a belief that their ancestors came out of a cave in the earth. In connection with this Konkan tale, and with the fact that the Concanii of Spain fed on horses, it may here be noted that not only do traces of the horse occur in the most ancient caves, but that vast deposits of horse bones point to the probability that horses were eaten sacrificially in caves.[950] In the Baron's Cave at Reigate, "There are many bas relief sculptures, Roman soldiers' heads, grotesque masks of monks, horses' heads and other subjects which can only be guessed at":[951] these idle scribblings have been assigned to the Roman soldiery, who are supposed at one time to have garrisoned the castle, and the explanation is not improbable: the favourite divinity of the Roman soldiery was Mithra, the Invincible White Horse, and several admittedly Mithraic Caves have been identified in Britain.[952] It has always been supposed that these were the work of Roman invaders, and in this connection it should be noted that deep in the bowels of the Chislehurst labyrinth there is a clean-cut well about 70 feet deep lined with Roman cement: but granting that the Romans made use of a ready-made cave, it is improbable that they were responsible for the vast net-work of passages which are known to extend under that part of Kent. There is--I believe--a well in the heart of the Great Pyramid; a deep subterranean well exists in one of the series of caves at Reigate.

In his article on the Chislehurst Caves Mr. Nichols inquires, "might not the shafts of these dene holes have lent themselves to the study of the heavenly bodies?" That the Druids were adepts at astronomy is testified by various classical writers, and according to Dr. Smith there are sites in Anglesey still known in Welsh as "the city of the Astronomers," the Place of Studies, and the Astronomers' Circle.[953] There was a famous Holy Well in Dean's Yard, Westminster, and it would almost seem that a well was an integral adjunct of the sacred duns: according to Miss Gordon "there is a well of unknown antiquity at Pentonville under Sadlers Wells Theatre (Clerkenwell), lined with masonry of ancient date throughout its entire depth, similar to the prehistoric wells we have already mentioned in the Windsor Table Mound, on the Wallingford Mound, and the Well used by the first Astronomer Royal at Greenwich".[954] But masonry-lined wells situated in the very bowels of the earth as at Chislehurst and Reigate cannot have served any astronomic purpose; they must, one would think, have been constructed principally for ritualistic reasons. At Sewell, near Dunstable, immediately next to Maiden Bower there once existed a very remarkable dene hole: this is marked on the Ordnance Maps as "site of well," but in the opinion of Worthington Smith, "this dene hole was never meant for a well". It was recently destroyed by railway constructors who explored it to the depth of 116 feet; but, says Worthington Smith, "amateur excavators afterwards excavated the hole to a much greater depth and found more bones and broken pots. The base has never been reached. The work was on the top of a very steep and high bank."[955] On Mount Pleasant at Dunstable was a well 350 feet deep,[956] and any people capable of sinking a narrow shaft to this depth must obviously have been far removed from the savagery of the prime.

In 1835 at _Tin_well, in Rutlandshire, the singular discovery was made of a large subterranean cavern supported in the centre by a stone pillar: this chamber proved on investigation to be "an oblong square extending in length to between 30 and 40 yards, and in breadth to about 8 feet. The sides are of stone, the ceiling is flat, and at one end are two doorways bricked up."[957] About forty years ago, at Donseil in France--or rather in a field belonging to the commune of Saint Sulpice le _Don_seil[958]--a ploughman's horse sank suddenly into a hole: the grotto which this accident revealed was found to have been cut out from soft grey granite in an excellent state of preservation and is thus described: "After passing through the narrow entrance, you make your way with some difficulty down a sloping gallery some 15 yards in length, to a depth beneath the surface of nearly 20 feet; this portion is in the worst condition. Then you find yourself in a _circular gallery_ measuring about 65 feet in circumference, _with the roof supported by a huge pillar_, 18 feet in diameter. It is worth noticing that the walls, which are hewn out of the granite, are not vertical, but convex like an egg. At 19 feet to the left of the inclined corridor, and at an elevation of 30 inches above the level of the soil of the circular gallery, we come upon a small opening, through which it is just possible for a man to squeeze himself: it gives access to a gallery _thirty-three_ feet long, at the bottom of which a loftier and more spacious gallery has been begun, but, apparently, not completed."[959]

I invite the reader to note the significance of these measurements and to compare the general design of the Donseil _souterrain_ with the form of Fig. 474: this is the ground plan of a grotto which was accidentally discovered by some schoolboys in 1835, and exists to-day in the side of _Dane_ Hill, Margate. Its form is very similar to the apparent design of the great two-mile Sanctuary at Avebury, see page 351, and its situation--a dene or valley on the side of a hill--coincides exactly with that of the small Candian cave-shrines dedicated to the serpent goddess. In Candia no temples have been discovered but only small and insignificant household shrines: "It is possible," says Mr. Hall, "that the worship of the gods on a great scale was only carried out in the open air, or the palace court, or in a grave or cave not far distant. Certainly the sacred places to which pilgrimage was made and at which votive offerings were presented, were such groves, rocky gorges, and caves."[960]

The sanctity of Cretan caves is indisputably proved by the immense number of votive offerings therein found, in many cases encrusted and preserved by stalagmites and stalactites. Among the house shrines of the Mother Goddess and her Son remain pathetic relics of the adoration paid by her worshippers: one of these saved almost intact by Sir Arthur Evans is described as a small room or cell, smaller even than the tiny chapels that dot the hills of Crete to-day--a place where one or two might pray, leave an offering and enjoy community with the divinity rudely represented on the altar ... one-third of the space was for the worshipper, another third for the gifts, the last third for the goddess.[961]

There are diminutive _souterrains_ in Cornwall notably at St. Euny in the parish of Sancreed where the gift niches still remain intact: in many instances these "Giants Holts" are in serpentine form, and the serpentine form of the Margate Grotto is unmistakable. The Mother Goddess of Crete has been found figured with serpents in her hands and coiling round her shoulders: according to Mr. Mackenzie: "Her mysteries were performed in caves as were also the Paleolithic mysteries. In the caves there were sacred serpents, and it may be that the prophetic priestesses who entered them were serpent charmers: cave worship was of immense antiquity. The cave was evidently regarded as the door of the Underworld in which dwelt the snake-form of Mother Earth."[962]

It has been seen that the serpent because of sloughing its skin was the emblem of rejuvenescence, regeneration, and New Birth; it is likely that the word _sanctus_ is radically the same as _snag_, meaning a short branch, and as _snake_, which in Anglo-Saxon was _snaca_: it is certain that the _snake trou_ or snake cave was one of the most primitive _sanctuaries_.[963] Not only is the Margate Grotto constructed in serpentine form, but upon one of the panels of its walls is a Tree of Life, of which two of the scrolls consist of horned serpents: these are most skilfully worked in shells, and from the mouth of each serpent is emerging the triple tongue of Good Thought, Good Deed, Good Word.

The word dean, French _doyen_, is supposed to be the Latin _decanum_ the accusative of decanus, one set over ten soldiers or ten monks: it is, as already suggested, more probable that the original deans were the priests of Diane, and that they worshipped in dene holes, in dens, in denes, on downs, and at dunhills. The word _grot_ is probably the same as _kirit_, the Turkish form of Crete, and as the _Keridwen_ or _Kerid Holy_ of Britain. The ministers of the Cretan Magna Mater were entitled _curetes_, and the modern curate may in all likelihood claim a verbal descent from the Keridwen or Sancreed whose name is behind our _great, crude_, and _cradle_. The Magna Mater of Kirid or Crete was sometimes as already mentioned depicted with a cat upon her head: I have equated the word _cat_ with Kate, Kitty, or Ked, and in all probability the catacombs of Rome anciently Janicula were originally built in her honour. In Scotland _souterrains_ are termed _weems_, a word which is undoubtedly affiliated both in form and idea with womb, tomb, and coombe: the British bards allude frequently to the grave as being the matrix or womb of Ked; as archæologists are well aware, primitive burials frequently consisted of contracting the body into the form of the foetus, depositing it thus in a stone cist, chest, or "coty": and there is little doubt that the St. Anne who figures so prolifically in the catacombs of Janicula, was like St. Anne of Brittany the pre-Christian Anne, Jana, or Diane.

At Caddington by Dunstable there is a Dame Ellen's Wood; Caddington itself is understood to have meant--"the hill meadow of Cedd or Ceadda," and among the prehistoric tombs found in this neighbourhood was the interment illustrated on page 64. It has been cheerily suggested that "the child may have been buried alive with its mother": it may, but it equally may not; the pathetic surround of sea-urchins or popularly-called fairy loaves points to sentiment of some sort, particularly in view of the tradition that whoso keeps a specimen of the fairy loaf in his house shall never lack bread.[964] _Echinus_, the Latin for sea-urchin, is radically the same word as Janus; in the Margate grotto an echinus forms the centre of most of the conchological suns or stars with which the walls are decorated, and a large echinus appears in each of the four top corners of the oblong chamber.

I have suggested that the Kentish Rye, a town which once stood on a conical islet and near to which is an earthwork known nowadays as Rhee wall, was once dedicated to Rhea or Maria, and that Margate owes its designation to the same Ma Rhea or Mother Queen. According to "Morien" _Rhi_ was a Celtic title of the Almighty, and is the root of the word _rhinwedd_ (Virtue): according to Rhys _rhi_ meant _queen_, and was a poetic term for a lady: according to Thomas _Rhea_ is the feminine noun of _rhi_, prince or king; it would thence follow that _regina_, like the French name Rejane, meant originally Queen Gyne, either Queen Woman or Royal Jeanne. There are numerous Ryhalls, Ryhills, and in Durham is a Ryton which figured anciently as Ruyton, Rutune, and _Ruginton_: near Kingston is Raynes Park, and at Hackney, in the neighbourhood of the Seven Sisters and Kingsland Roads, is Wren's Park.

That the Candians colonised the North of Africa is generally supposed, whence it becomes likely that the marvellous excavations at _Rua_ were related to the worship of the serpentine _Rhea_: these are mentioned by Livingstone who wrote: "Tribes live in underground houses in Rua. Some excavations are said to be 30 miles long, and have running rills in them; a whole district can stand a siege in them. The 'writings' therein, I have been told by some of the people, are drawings of animals and not letters, otherwise I should have gone to see them."[965]

The word grotesque admittedly originated from the fantastic designs found so frequently within grottos or grots, and if the natives of Rua could construct a _souterrain_ 30 miles in extent, I see no reason to doubt the accuracy of the tradition that the natives of Reigate had run a tunnel towards Rye which is within a few miles of St. Clement's Caves at Hastings. The _gate_ of Margate and Reigate means _opening_; _wry_ means awry or twisting, and we may probably find the original name of Reigate in the neighbouring place-name Wray Common.

The Snake grotto at Margate, which is situated almost below a small house named "Rosanna Lodge," is decorated throughout with a most marvellous and beautiful mosaic of shellwork, the like of which certainly exists nowhere else in Britain: the dominant notes of this decoration are roses or rosettes, and raisins or grapes; over the small altar in the oblong chamber, at the extremity, are rising the rays of the Sun. The shells used as a groundwork for this decorative scheme were the yellow periwinkle now naturally grey with antiquity but which, when fresh, must, when illuminated, have produced an effect of golden and surpassing beauty. In the shrines of Candia large numbers of sea-shells, artificially tinted in various colours, have come to light:[966] that the altar at the Cantian Margate grotto was constructed to hold a lamp or a candle cannot be doubted, in which connection one may connote a statement by "Morien" that "All shell grottos with a candle in it (_sic_) were a symbol of the cave of the sun near the margin of the ocean with the soul of the sun in it".[967] There is indeed little doubt that the snake trou under Rosanna Lodge was, like the grotto at St. Sulpice le Donseil, dedicated to le Donseil or _donna sol_. At the mouth of the shrine is a figurine seated, of which, unfortunately, the head is missing, but the right hand is still holding a cup: in Fig. 44 _ante_, page 167, Reason is holding a similar cup into which is distilling _la rosee_, or the dew of Heaven--doubtless the same goblet as was said to be offered to mortals by the fairy Idunns; their earthly representatives, the Aeddons, may be assumed once to have dwelt in the Dane Park or at Addington Street, now leading to Dane Hill where the grotto remains.

We have connected the Cup of Reason with the mystic Cauldron of Keridwen, or "cauldron of four spaces," and have noted among the recipe "the liquor that bees have collected _and resin_," to be prepared "when there is a calm dew falling": another Bard alludes to "the gold-encircled liquor contained in the golden cup," and I have little doubt that resin, rosin, or rosine was valued and venerated as being, like amber, the petrified tears of Apollo. I do not suggest that the Rosanna Lodge in the dene at Margate has any direct relation to the grotto of Reason beneath, but there is evidently a close connection with the small figurine holding a cup and the Lady Rosamond of Rosamond's Well at Woodstock. "There was," says Herbert, "a popular notion of an infernal maze extending from the bottom of Rosamond's Well": this labyrinth almost certainly once existed, for as late as 1718 there were to be seen by the pool at Woodstock the foundations of a very large building which were believed to be the remains of Rosamond's Labyrinth.[968]

The story of Fair Rosamond being compelled to swallow poison is precisely on a par with the monkish legend that St. George was "tortured by being forced to drink a poisoned cup," and how the Rosamond story originated is fairly obvious from the fact that on her alleged tombstone, "among other fine sculptures was engraven the figure of a cup. This, which perhaps at first was an accidental ornament (perhaps only the chalice), might in aftertimes suggest the notion that she was poisoned; at least this construction was put upon it when the stone came to be demolished after the nunnery was dissolved." The above is the opinion of an archæologist who died in 1632, and it is in all probability sound: the actual site of Rosamond's Bower at Woodstock seems to have been known as Godstone, and it was presumably the ancient Ked Stone that gave birth to the distorted legend. According to the Ballad of Fair Rosamond, that maiden was a ladye brighte, and most peerlesse was her beautye founde:--

Her crisped locks like threads of gold Appeared to each man's sighte, Her sparkling eyes like Orient pearls Did cast a heavenlye light.

The blood within her crystal cheekes Did such a colour drive As though the lillye and the rose For mastership did strive.

The ballad continues that the enamoured King--

At Woodstock builded such a bower The like was never seene, Most curiously that bower was built Of stone and timber strong An hundered and fifty doors[969] Did to this bower belong, And they so cunninglye contrived With turnings round about, That none but with a clue of thread Could enter in or out.

According to Drayton, Rosamond's Bower consisted of vaults underground arched and walled with brick and stone: Stow in his _Annals_ quotes an obituary stone reading, _Hic jacet in tumba Rosa Mundi; non Rosa Munda, non redolet sed olet_, which may be Anglicised into, Here lies entombed a mundane Rosa not the Rose of the World; she is not redolent, but "foully doth she stinke". I am inclined, however, to believe that the traditional Rosamond was really and indeed the "cleane flower" and that the ignorant monks added calumny to their other perversions. History frigidly but very fortunately relates that "the tombstone of Rosamond Clifford was taken up at Godstone and broken in pieces, and that upon it were interchangeable weavings drawn out and decked with roses red and green and the picture of the cup, out of which she drank the poison given her by the Queen, carved in stone".[970] At the Cornish village of Sancreed, _i.e._, San Kerid or St. Ked, engraved upon the famous nine foot cross is a similar cup or chalice, out of which rises a tapering fleur de lys: with the word _creed_ may be connoted the fact that the artist of Kirid or Crete, "with a true instinct for beauty, chose as his favourite flowers the lovely lily and iris, the wild gladiolus and crocus, all natives of the Mediterranean basin, and the last three, if not the lily, of his own soil".[971] Opinions differ as to whether the Sancreed lily is a spear head or a fleur de lys: they also differ as to the precise meaning of the cup: in the opinion of Mr. J. Harris Stone, "the vessel or chalice is roughly heart-shaped--that is the main body of it--and the head of the so-called spear is distinctly divided and has cross-pieces which, being recurved, doubtless gave rise to the lily theory of the origin. Now there was an ancient Egyptian cross of the Latin variety rising out of a heart like the mediæval emblem of _Cor in Cruce, Crux in Corde_, and this is irresistibly brought to my mind when looking at this Sancreed cross. The emblem I am alluding to is that of Goodness."[972]

With this theory I am in sympathy, and it may be reasonably suggested that the alleged "tombstone" of Rosamond at Godstone was actually a carved megalith analogous to that at Sancreed: the carving on the latter may be comparatively modern, but in all probability the rock itself is the original _crude_ Creed stone, Ked stone, or Good stone, touched up and partly recut.

The Rose is the familiar emblem of St. George or Oros who, according to some accounts, was the son of Princess Sophia the Wise: his legs were of massive silver up to the knees, and his arms were of pure gold from the elbows to the wrists. According to other traditions George was born at Coventry, and "is reported to have been marked at his birth (forsooth!) with a red bloody cross on his right hand".[973] The first adventure of St. George was the salvation of a fair and precious princess named Sabra from a foul dragon who venomed the people with his breath and this adventure is located at Silene: with this Silene may be connoted the innocent Una, who in some accounts occupies the position of the Lady Sabra: Sabra is suggestive of Sabrina, the little Goddess of the river Severn, whose name we have connected with the soft, gentle, pleasing and propitious Brina: that St. Burinea, the pretty daughter of Angus whose memory is sanctified as the patron of St Burian's or Eglos_berrie_, was originally _pure_ Una is more likely than that this alleged Maiden was an historic personage of the sixth century.

The series of excavations at Reigate, of which the principal is the Baron's Cave, extends to a Red Cross Inn which marks the vicinity where stood the chapel of the Holy Cross, belonging to the Priory of the Virgin and Holy Cross: about a mile from Reigate in a little brook (the Bourne Water) used to stand a great stone stained red by the victims of a water Kelpie, who had his lair beneath. The Kelpie was exorcised by a vicar of Buckland: nevertheless the stone remained an object of awe to the people, which, says Mr. Ogilvie, "was regarded as a vile superstition by a late vicar who had the stone removed to demonstrate to his parishioners that there was nothing under it, but some of the old folks remember the story yet".[974] Part of Reigate is known as Red Hill, obviously from the red sandstone which abounds there: at Bristol or Bristowe, _i.e_., the Stockade of Bri, the most famous church is that of St. Mary Redcliffe: the Mew stone off Devonshire is red cliff, the inscriptions at Sinai are always on red stone, and there is little doubt that red rock was particularly esteemed to be the symbol of gracious Aine, the Love Mother. In Domesday the Redcliff of St. Mary appears as Redeclive,[975] and may thus also have meant Rood Cleeve: in London we have a Ratcliffe Highway, and in Kensington a Redcliffe Square.

In what is now the Green Park, Mayfair, used to be a Rosamond's Pool: with Rosamond, the Rose of the World, and Rosanna--whose name may be connoted with the inscription RU NHO or QUEEN NEW,[976] which occurs on one of the Sancreed crosses may also be connoted St. Rosalie of Sicily or Hypereia, whose grotto and fete still excite "an almost incredible enthusiasm". The legend of St. Rosalie represents her as--

Something much too fair and good For human nature's daily food,

and her mysterious evanishment is accounted for by the tradition that, disgusted by the frivolous life and empty gaiety of courts, she voluntarily retired herself into an obscure cavern, where her remains are now supposed to be buried under wreaths of imperishable roses which are deposited by angels.[977]

According to ecclesiastical legend the beloved St. Rosalie--whose fete is celebrated in Sicily on the day of St. Januarius--was the daughter of a certain Tancred, the first King of Sicily: it is not unlikely that this Tancred was Don Cred or Lord Cred, a relation of the Cornish Sancreed.[978] Sancreed is supposed to derive its name as being "an abstract dedication to the Holy Creed": but it is alternatively known as San_cris_: the Cretans, or Kiridians, or Eteocretes claimed Cres the Son of Jupiter by the nymph Idea as their first King, and they traced their descent from Cres. In a subsequent volume we shall consider this Cres at greater length, and shall track him to India in the form of Kristna, to whose grace the subterranean cross at Madura seems to have been dedicated. In Celtic _cris_ meant pure, holy; _crios_ meant the Sun:[979] the principal site of Apollo-worship was the island of Crissa; in England Christy[980] is a familiar surname, and I am convinced that the Christ tradition in Britain owed little to the Roman mission of Augustine, but was of far older origin. We may perhaps trace the original transit of Cris to Sancris at Carissa, now Carixa, in Spain: among the numerous coins of this district some as figured herewith bear the legend Caris, some bear the head of the young Hercules, others a female head.[981] As in classic Latin _C_ was invariably pronounced hard, it is probable that the maiden Caris was Ceres, and that the Cretan pair are responsible for Kerris Roundago, an egg-like monument near Sancreed; also for Cresswell in Durham where is the famous Robin Hood Cave:[982] one may further trace Caris at Carisbrook near Ryde, at the diminutive Criss Brook near Maidstone, and at the streamlet Crise in Santerre.

The town of Carissa, now Carixa, may be connoted with the synonymous _cross_ or _crux_: the Cornish for _cross_ was _crows_, and at Crows-an-Rha, near St. Buryans, there is a celebrated wayside cross or crouch.[983] That Caris was _carus_ or _dear_, and that he was the inception of _charis_ or charity will also eventually be seen: I have elsewhere suggested that _charis_, or _love_, was originally 'k Eros or Great Eros; in the Christian emblem here illustrated Christ is associated with a rose cross, which is fabricated from the four hearts, and thus constitutes the _Rosa mystica_. At Kerris Roundago are four megaliths.

The Sancris cup or chalice[984] might legitimately be termed a _cruse_: Christ's first miracle was the conversion of a cruse or can of water into wine, and the site of this miracle was Cana. The _souterrain_ of St. Sulpice le Donseil is situated in a district known as La Creuse, and the solitary pillar in the heart of this grotto, as also that in the Margate grotto, and that in the _souterrain_ at Tinwell, were probably symbols of what the British Bard describes as "Christ the concealed pillar of peace". The Celtic Christs here reproduced from an article in _The Open Court_ by Dr. Paul Carus are probably developments of ancient Prestons or Jupiter Stones: the connection between these crude Christs and Cres, the Son of Jupiter, by the nymph Idea, is probably continuous and unbroken.

A cruse corresponds symbolically to a cauldron or a cup: according to Herbert, "The Cauldron of the Bards was connected by them with Mary in that particular capacity which forms the portentous feature in St. Brighid (_viz._, her _being Christ's Mother_) to the verge of identification. The reason was that divine objects considered by them essentially, and, as it were, sacramentally as being Christ, were prepared within and produced out of that sacred and womb-like receptacle." He then quotes two bardic extracts to the following effect:--

(1) The One Man and our Cauldron, And our deed, and our word, With the bright pure Mary daughter of Anne.

(2) Christ, Creator, Emperor and our Mead, Christ the Concealed, pillar of peace, Christ, Son of Mary and of my Cauldron, a pure pedigree![985]

The likelihood is that the solitary great Jasper stone in the roof of the four-columned hall at Edrei, the Capital of King Og, was similarly a symbol of the ideal Corner Stone or the Concealed Pillar of Peace.

At Mykenae the celebrated titanic gateway is ornamented by two lions guarding or supporting a solitary pillar or numeral 1: at other times a figure of the Magna Mater takes the place of this ONE, and it is probable that the Io of Mykenae was originally My Kene, _i.e._, Mother Queen or, more radically, Mother Great One. That Io was represented by the horns or crescent moon is obvious from the innumerable idols in the form of cows horns found at Mykenae: we have already connected Cain, Cann, and Kenna with the moon or _choon_, Latin _luna_, French _lune_, otherwise Cynthia or Diana.

Not only was Crete or Candia essentially an island of caves, but the district of the British Cantii seems if anything to have been even more riddled: _canteen_ is a generic term for cellar or cool cave, and the origin of this word is not known. In Mexico _cun_ meant _pudenda muliebris_, in London _cunny_ and _cunt_ carry the same meaning, and with _cenote_, the Mexican for _cistern_, may be connoted our English rivers Kennet and Kent. Dr. Guest refers to the cauldron of _Cend_wen (Keridwen): according to Davidson the magic cup of the Cabiri corresponded to the _Condy_ Cup[986] of the Gnostics which is the same as that in which _Guion_ (Mercury) made his beverage--the beverage of knowledge or divine Kenning, the philosophical Mercury of the mediæval alchemists. Sometimes the Egg or Cup was encircled by two serpents said to represent the Igneous and Humid principles of Nature in conjunction: it is not improbable that the spirals found alike at Mykenae and New Grange represented this dual coil, spire, or maze of Life, and the Coil Dance or the Snail's Creep, which was until recently executed in Cornwall, may have borne some relation to this notion.[987]

In the neighbourhood of Totnes and the river Teign is the world-famous Kent's Cavern,[988] whence has emanated evidence that man was living in what is now Devonshire, contemporaneously with the mammoth, the cave-lion, the woolly rhinoceros, the bison, and other animals which are now extinct. Kent's Cavern is in a hill, _dun_, _tun_, or what the Bretons term a _torgen_, and the _torgen_ containing Kent's Cavern is situated in the Manor of Torwood in the parish of Tor, whence Torbay, Torquay, etc.: in Cornwall _tor_, or _tur_, meant belly, and _tor_ may be equated with _door_, Latin _janua_.

The entrance to Kent's Hole is in the face of a cliff, and the people mentioned in the Old Testament as the _Kenites_ were evidently cliff-cave dwellers, for it is related that Balaam looked on the Kenites and said: "Strong is thy dwelling-place, and thou puttest thy nest in a rock":[989] Kent is the same word as _kind_, meaning _genus_; also as _kind_, meaning affectionate and well-disposed, and it is worthy of note that the cave-dwelling Kenites of the Old Testament were evidently a kindly people for the record reads: "Saul said unto the Kenites 'Go, depart, get you down from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them: for _ye shewed kindness to all the children of Israel when they came up_ out of Egypt'.[990] So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites."[991]

There is evidence that Thor's Cavern in Derbyshire was inhabited by prehistoric troglodites; the most high summit in the Peak District is named Kinder Scout, and in the southern side of Kinder Scout is the celebrated Kinderton Cavern: at Kinver in Staffordshire there are prehistoric caves still being lived in by modern troglodites, and at Cantal in France there are similar cave dwellings.

In Derbyshire are the celebrated Canholes and at Cannes, by Maestricht, is an entrance to the amazing grottos of St. Peter: this subterranean quarry is described as a succession of long horizontal galleries supported by an immense number of square pillars whose height is generally from 10 to 20 feet: the number of these vast subterranean alleys which cross each other and are prolonged in every direction cannot be estimated at less than 2000, the direct line from the built up entrance near Fort St. Peter to the exit on the side of the Meuse measures one league and a half. That these works were at one time in the occupation of the Romans, is proved by Latin inscriptions, but evidently the Romans did not do the building for, "underneath these inscriptions you can trace some ill-formed characters traditionally attributed to the Huns; which is ridiculous since the Huns did not build, and therefore had no need of quarries, and moreover were ignorant of the art of writing".[992] In view of the fact that the gigantic cavern farther up the Meuse, is entitled the Han Grotto, this tradition of Hun "writing" is not necessarily ridiculous: the Huns in question, whoever they were, probably were the people who built the Hun's beds and were worshippers of "the One Man and our Cauldron".

The Peter Mount now under consideration does not appear to have been such a Peter's Purgatory as found on "the island of the tribe of Oin": on the contrary its galleries, based on pillars about 16 feet high, are traced on a regular plan. These cross one another at right angles, and their most noticeable feature is the extreme regularity and perfect level of the roof which is enriched with a kind of cornice--a cornice of the severest possible outline, but with a noble simplicity which gives to the galleries a certain monumental aspect.

Within the criss-cross bowels of the Peter Mount is another very remarkable curiosity--a small basin filled with water called Springbronnen ("source of living water") which is incessantly renewed, thanks to the drops falling from the upper portion of a fossil tree fixed in the roof.[993] The modern showman does not vaunt among his attractions a "source of living water," and we may reasonably assume that this appellation belongs to an older and more poetic age: the Hebrew for "fountain of living waters" is _ain_, a word to be connoted with Hun, Han, and St. Anne of the Catacombs: St. Anne is the patron of all springs and wells; at Sancreed is a St. Eunys Well, and the word _aune_ or _avon_ was a generic term for any _gentle flowing_ stream.

It is reasonable to equate St. Anne of the Catacombs with "Pope Joan" of Engelheim, and it is probable that the original Vatican was the terrestrial seat of the celestial Peter, the Fate Queen or Fate King: with St. Peter's Mount may be connoted the Arabian City of Petra which is entirely hewn out of the solid rock. The connection between the Irish Owen, or Oin, and the Patrick of Patrick's Purgatory has already been considered, and that Janus or Janicula was the St. Peter of the Vatican is very generally admitted: we shall subsequently consider Janus in connection with St. Januarius or January; at Naples there are upwards of two miles of catacombs, and the Capo di _Chino_, under which these occur, may probably be identified with the St. Januarius whose name they bear.

That Janus, the janitor of the Gates of Heaven and of all other gates, was a personification of immortal Time is sufficiently obvious from the attributes which were assigned to him; that the Patrick of Ireland was also the Lord of the 365 days is to be implied from the statement of Nennius that St. Patrick "at the beginning" founded 365 churches and ordained 365 bishops.[994] I was recently accosted in the street by a North-Briton who inquired "what _dame_ is it?": on my failure to catch his meaning his companion pointed to my watch chain and repeated the inquiry "what _time_, is it"; but even without such vivid evidence it is clear that _dame_ and _time_ are mere variants of the same word. It is proverbial that Truth, _alias_ Una, _alias_ Vera, is the daughter of Time: that Time is also the custodian of Truth is a similar commonplace: Time is the same word as Tom, and Tom is a contracted form of Thomas which the dictionaries define as meaning _twin, i.e., twain:_ Thomas is the same name as Tammuz, a Phrygian title of Adonis, and in Fig. 404 (_ante_, p. 639), Time was emblemised as the Twain or Pair; in Fig. 483, Father Time is identified with Veritas or Truth, for the legend runs, "Truth in time brings hidden things to light".[995] The Lady Cynethryth, who dwells proverbially at the bottom of a well, is, of course, daily being brought to light; it is, however, unusual to find her thus depicted clambering from a dene hole or a den. In all probability the "Sir Thomas" who figures in the ballad as Fair Rosamond's custodian was originally Sir Tammuz, Tom, or Time--

And you Sir Thomas whom I truste To bee my loves defence, Be careful of my gallant Rose When I am parted hence.

The relentless Queen who appears so prominently in the story may be connoted with the cruel Stepmother who figures in the Cinderella cycle of tales--a ruthless lady whom I have considered elsewhere. The silken thread by which the Queen reached Rosamond--to whose foot, like Jupiter's chain, it was attached--is paralleled by the thread with which Ariadne guided the fickle Theseus. In an unhappy hour the Queen overcomes the trusty Thomas, and guided by the silken thread--

Went where the Ladye Rosamonde Was like an Angel sette.

But when the Queen with steadfast eye Beheld her beauteous face She was amazed in her minde At her exceeding grace.

The word _grace_ is the same as _cross_, and grace is the interpretation given by all dictionaries of the name John or Ian: the red cross was originally termed the Jack, and to the Jack, without doubt, was once assigned the meaning "Infinite in the East, Infinite in the West, Infinite in the South. Thus it is said, He who is in the fire, He who is in the heart, He who is in the Sun, they are _One_ and the same:" in _China_ the Svastika is known as the _Wan_.

FOOTNOTES:

[905] Walford, E., _Greater London_, ii., 95.

[906] Mottingham, anciently Modingham, is supposed to be from Saxon _modig_, proud or lofty, and _ham_, a dwelling. Johnstone derives it as, "Enclosure of Moding," or "of the Sons of Mod or Mot". We may assume these people were followers of the Maid, and that Mottingham was equivalent to Maiden's Home.

[907] Mackenzie, D. A., _Myths of Crete_, p. xlvi.

[908] Borlase, Wm., _Antiquities of Cornwall_, p. 296.

[909] _Cliff Castles_, p. 33.

[910] _Cf._ Baring-Gould, _Cliff Castles_.

[911] Chislehurst is supposed to mean the pebble hurst or wood, but Chislehurst is on chalk and is less pebbly than many places adjacent: at Chislehurst is White Horse Hill: Nantjizzel or _jizzle valley_, in Cornwall, is close to Carn Voel, _alias_ the Diamond House, and thus, I am inclined to think that Chislehurst was a selhurst or selli's wood sacred to Chi the great Jehu.

[912] Adams, W. H. A., _Famous Caves and Catacombs_, p. 90.

[913] Spence L., _Myths of Mexico and Peru_, p. 293.

[914] In 1867 Mr. Roach Smith published the following description: "The ground plan of the caves was like a six-leaved flower diverging from the central cup which is represented by the shaft. The central cave of each three is about 14 yards long and about 6 yards high. The side caves are smaller, about 7 yards long and 2 yards wide. The section is rather singular: taken from end to end the roof line is horizontal: but the floor rises at the end of the cave so that a sketch of the section from end to end of the two principal caves is like the outline of a boat, the shaft being in the position of the mainmast. The section across the cave is like the outline of an egg made to stand on its broader end. They are all hewn out of the chalk, the tool marks, like those which would be made by a pick, being still visible."--_Archæologia_, i., 32.

Dr. Munro states: "They are usually found on the higher ground of the lower reaches of the Thames ... in fact, North Kent and South Essex appear to be studded with them."--_Prehistoric Britain_, p. 222.

[915] _Nat. Hist._, lib. xvii., cap. viii.

[916] Part I.

[917] One of the most characteristic symbols of the Ægean is St. Andrew's Cross: I have suggested that the Scotch Hendrie meant _ancient drie_ or _drew_, and it is not without significance that tradition closely connects St. Andrews in Scotland with the Ægean. The legend runs that St. Rule arrived at St. Andrews bringing with him a precious relic--no less than Sanct Androwis Arme. "This Reule," continues the annalist, "was ane monk of Grece born in Achaia and abbot in the town of Patras"--Simpkins, J. E., _Fife_, Country Folklore, vol. vli., p. 243.

[918] _The Gnostics and their Remains_, p. 72.

[919] "It is certain that ancient caves do exist in Palestine which in form and circumstance, and to some extent also in decoration, approximate so nearly to the Royston Cave that if any historical connection could be established between them, it would scarcely seem doubtful that the one is a copy of the other."--Beldam, J., _The Royston Cave_, p. 24. According to the same authority there are indications at the Royston Cave "of an extreme and primeval antiquity," and he adds, "it bears, indeed, a strong resemblance in form and dimension to the ancient British habitation; and certain marks and decorations in its oldest parts such as indentations and punctures, giving a diapered appearance to the surface, are very similar to what is seen in confessedly Druidical and Phoenician structures," p. 22.

[920] Beldam, J., _The Royston Cave_, p. 24.

[921] In Caledonia dovecots or _doocats_ are still superstitiously maintained: there may be a connection between _doocat_ and the "Dowgate" Hill which neighbours the present Cathedral of St. Paul.

[922] Nichols, W. J., _The Chislehurst Caves and Dene Holes_, p. 5.

[923] Walford, E., _Greater London_, ii., 127.

[924] _Ibid._, p. 131.

[925] Goddard, A. R., _Essex Archæological Society's Transactions_, vol. vii., 1899.

[926] Courtois, _Dictionaire Geographique de l'Arrondissement de Saint Omer_, p. 156.

[927] Wilson, J. G., _Gazetteer_, i., 1044.

[928] Eckenstein, L., _Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes_, p. 154.

[929] Dan or Don is one of the main European root river names; it occurs notably in the story of the _Dan_aides who carried water in broken urns to fill a bottomless vessel, and again in _Dan_aus who is said to have relieved Argos from drought.

[930] P. 242.

[931] Herbert, A., _Cyclops_, p. 154.

[932] Wright, T., _Patrick's Purgatory_, p. 162.

[933] _Ibid._, p. 231.

[934] _Travels in the East_, p. 2.

[935] "This was the _round_ church of St. Mary, divided into two stories by slabs of stone; in the upper part are four altars; on the eastern side below there is another, and to the right of it an empty tomb of stone, in which the Virgin Mary is said to have been buried; but who moved her body, or when this took place, no one can say. On entering this chamber, you see on the right-hand side a stone inserted in the wall, on which Christ knelt when He prayed on the night in which He was betrayed; and the marks of His knees are still seen on the stone, as if it had been as soft as wax."

[936] Wright comments upon this: "Dr. Clarke is the only modern traveller who has given any notice of these subterranean chambers or pits, which he supposes to have been ancient places of idolatrous worship".

[937] _Cf._ Baring-Gould, _Curious Legends_, p. 238.

[938] _Mysteries of the Cabiri_, ii., 393.

[939] _Cf._ Herbert, A., _Cyclops_, p. 155.

[940] _Ibid._, p. 154.

[941] It is not improbable that the Pied Piper incident was actually enacted annually at the Koppenburg, and that the children of Hamelyn were given the treat of being taken through some brilliantly lit cavern "joining the town and close at hand". Whether the Koppenburg contains any grottos I am unable to say.

[942] _Cyclops_, p. 156.

[943] The authorities connect the surnames Kettle and Chettle with the Kettle or Cauldron of Norse mythology, whence Prof. Weekley writes: "The renowned Captain Kettle, described by his creator as a Welshman, must have descended from some hardy Norse pirate". Why Norse? The word _kettle_, Gaelic _cadhal_, is supposedly borrowed from the Latin _catillus_, a small bowl: the Greek for cup is _kotulos_, and it is probable that _kettle_ and _cotyledon_ are alike radically Ket, Cot, or Cad. In Scotland _adhan_ meant cauldron, whence Rust thinks that Edinbro or Dunedin was once a cauldron hill.

[944] Sandringham, near King's Lynn, appeared in Domesday as Sandersincham: upon this Johnston comments, "Curious corruption. This is 'Holy Dersingham,' as compared with the next parish Dersingham. French _saint_, Latin _sanctus_, Holy."

[945] Ogilvie, J. S., _A Pilgrimage in Surrey_, ii., 183.

[946] _Ibid._, p. 166.

[947] _Ibid._, p. 167. The italics are mine.

[948] "The old Bourne stream, generally known as the 'Surrey Woe Water,' has already commenced to flow through Caterham Valley, and at the moment there is quite a strong current of water rushing through an outlet at Purley.

"There are also pools along its course through Kenley, Whyteleafe, and Warlingham, which suggest that the stream is rising at its principal source, in the hills around Woldingham and Oxted, where it is thought there exists a huge natural underground reservoir, which, when full, syphons itself out at certain periods about every seven years.

"Tradition says that when the Bourne flows 'out of season' or at irregular times it foretells some great calamity. It certainly made its appearance in a fairly heavy flow in three of the years of the war, but last year, which will always be historical for the declaration of the armistice and the prelude of peace, there was no flow at all."--_The Star_, 15th March, 1919.

[949] "Archæologia" (from _The Gentleman's Magazine_), i., 283.

[950] _Cf._ Johnson, W., _Byeways_, pp. 411, 417.

[951] Ogilvy, J. S., _A Pilgrimage in Surrey_, ii., 164.

[952] That the solar horse was sacred among the Ganganoi of Hibernia is probable, for: "On that great festival of the peasantry, St. John's Eve, it is the custom, at sunset on that evening, to kindle immense fires throughout the country, built like our bonfires, to a great height, the pile being composed of turf, bogwood, and such other combustibles as they can gather. The turf yields a steady, substantial body of fire, the bogwood a most brilliant flame: and the effect of these great beacons blazing on every hill, sending up volumes of smoke from every part of the horizon, is very remarkable. Early in the evening the peasants began to assemble, all habited in their best array, glowing with health, every countenance full of that sparkling animation and excess of enjoyment that characterise the enthusiastic people of the land. I had never seen anything resembling it: and was exceedingly delighted with their handsome, intelligent, merry faces; the bold bearing of the men, and the playful, but really modest deportment of the maidens; the vivacity of the aged people, and the wild glee of the children. The fire being kindled, a splendid blaze shot up; and for a while they stood contemplating it, with faces strangely disfigured by the peculiar light first emitted when the bogwood is thrown on. After a short pause, the ground was cleared in front of an old blind piper, the very beau-ideal of energy, drollery, and shrewdness, who, seated on a low chair, with a well-plenished jug within his reach, screwed his pipes to the liveliest tunes and the endless jig began.

"But something was to follow that puzzled me not a little. When the fire burned for some hours, and got low, an indispensable part of the ceremony commenced. Every one present of the peasantry passed through it, and several children were thrown across the sparkling embers; while a wooden frame of some 8 feet long, with a horse's head fixed to one end, and a large white sheet thrown over it, concealing the wood and the man on whose head it was carried, made its appearance. This was greeted with loud shouts as the '_white horse_'; and having been safely carried by the skill of its bearer several times through the fire with a bold leap, it pursued the people, who ran screaming and laughing in every direction. I asked what the horse was meant for, and was told it represented all cattle.

"Here was the old pagan worship of Baal, if not of Moloch too, carried on openly and universally in the heart of a nominally Christian country, and by millions professing the Christian name! I was confounded; for I did not then know that Popery is only a crafty adaptation of pagan idolatries to its own scheme; and while I looked upon the now wildly excited people, with their children and, in a figure, all their cattle passing again and again through the fire, I almost questioned in my own mind the lawfulness of the spectacle, considered in the light that the Bible must, even to the natural heart, exhibit it in to those who confess the true God."--Elizabeth, Charlotte, _Personal Recollections_, quoted from "S. M." _Sketches of Irish History_, 1845.

[953] _The Religion of Ancient Britain_, p. 28.

[954] _Prehistoric London_, p. 137.

[955] _Man the Primeval Savage_, p. 328.

[956] _Ibid._, p. 66.

[957] _Archæologia_, i., 29.

[958] _Le donseil_ probably here means _donsol_, or _lord sun_. Adonis and all the other Sun lords were supposed to have beep born in a cave on 25th December. We have seen that Michael's Mount (family name St. Levan), was known alternatively as _dinsol_.

[959] Adams, W. H. D., _Famous Caves and Catacombs_, p. 183.

[960] _Ægean Archæologia_, p. 156.

[961] Mr. and Mrs. Hawes, _Crete the Forerunner of Greece_, p. 65.

[962] _Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe_, p. 183.

[963] "Herodotus in _Book VIII_. says that the ancients worshipped the Gods and Genii of any place under the form of serpents. 'Set up,' says some one in Persius' _Satires_ (No. 1), 'some marks of reverence such as the painting of two serpents to let boys know that the place is sacred.'"--Seymour, F., _Up Hill and Down Dale in Ancient Etruria_, p. 237.

[964] Johnson, W., _Byways_, p. 304.

[965] _Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society_, 1869.

[966] MacKenzie, D. A., _Myths of Crete_, p. 138.

[967] _Light of Britannia_, p. 200.

[968]_Cf._ _Percy Reliques_ (Everyman's Library), p. 21.

[969] The Baron's Cave at Reigate is "about 150 feet long" (_ante_, p. 799).

[970] _Percy Reliques_, p. 20.

[971] Hawes, _Crete the Forerunner of Greece_, p. 125.

[972] _The Cornish Riviera_, p. 265.

[973] H. O. F., _St. George for England_, p. 15.

[974] _A Pilgrimage in Surrey_, ii., 177.

[975] At Bristol is White Lady's Road.

[976] The curious name Newlove occurs as one of the erstwhile owners of the Margate grotto: the Lovelace family, for whose name the authorities offer no suggestions except that it is a corruption of the depressing Loveless, probably either once worshipped or acted the Lovelass. This conjecture has in its favour the fact that "many of our surnames are undoubtedly derived from characters assumed in dramatic performances and popular festivities".--Weekley, A. B., _The Romance of Names_, p. 197. "To this class belong many surnames which have the form of abstract nouns, _e.g._, _charity_, _verity_, _virtue_, _vice_. Of similar origin are perhaps, _bliss, chance, luck_, and _goodluck_."--_Ibid._, p. 197.

[977] With the old English custom of burying the dead in roses, and with the tradition that at times a white lady with a red rose in her mouth used to appear at Pen_deen_ cave (Courtney, Miss M. L., _Cornish Feasts and Folklore_, p. 9), in Cornwall may be connoted the statement of Bunsen: "The Phoenicians had a grand flower show in which they hung chaplets and bunches of roses in their temples, and _on the statue of the goddess Athena_ which is only a feminine form of Then or Thorn" (_cf._ Theta, _The Thorn Tree_, p. 40). The probability is that not only was the rose sacred to Athene but that Danes Elder (_Sambucus ebulus_), and Danes flower (_Anemone pulsutilla_) had no original reference to the Danes, but to the far older Dane, or donna, the white Lady. Both _don_ and _dan_ are used in English, as the equivalent of _dominus_, whence Shakespeare's reference to Dan Cupid.

[978] Adams, W. H. D., _Famous Caves and Catacombs_, p. 177.

[979] Davidson, P., _The Mistletoe and its Philosophy_, p. 51.

[980] The term Christ is interpreted as "the anointed".

[981] Akerman, J. Y., _Ancient Coins_, p. 25.

[982] We shall consider Robin Hood whom the authorities already equate with Odin in a subsequent chapter. In Robin Hood's Cave have been discovered remains of paleolithic Art representing a horse's head. In Kent the ceremony of the Hooden Horse used until recently to survive, and the same Hood or Odin may possibly be responsible for "_Wood_stock".

[983] Crutched Friars in London marks the site of a priory of the freres of the Crutch or Crouch.

[984] The San_creed_ chalice may be connoted ideally and philologically with the San_graal_, Provençal _gradal_: the apparition of a child in connection with the graal or gradal also permits the equation _gradal_ = _cradle_. At Llandudno is the stone entitled _cryd Tudno, i.e._, the cradle of Tudno.

[985] _Cyclops_, p. 137

[986] _The Mistletoe and its Philosophy_, p. 31.

[987] "The young people being all assembled in a large meadow, the village band strikes up a simple but lively air, and marches forward, followed by the whole assemblage, leading hand-in-hand (or more closely linked in case of engaged couples) the whole keeping time to the tune with a lively step. The band or head of the serpent keeps marching in an ever-narrowing circle, whilst its train of dancing followers becomes coiled around it in circle after circle. It is now that the most interesting part of the dance commences, for the band, taking a sharp turn about, begins to retrace the circle, still followed as before, and a number of young men with long, leafy branches in their hands as standards, direct this counter-movement with almost military precision."--_Cf._ Courtney, Miss M. L., _Cornish Feasts and Folklore_, p. 39.

[988] The name Kent here appears to be of immemorial antiquity, and was apparently first printed in a 1769 map which shows "Kent's Hole Field".

[989] Num. xxiv. 21.

[990] In modern Egyptian _kunjey_ means _kinship_.

[991] 1 Sam. xv. 6.

[992] Adam, W. H. D., _Famous Caves and Catacombs_, p. 167.

[993] Adams, W. H. D., _Famous Caves and Catacombs_, p. 163.

[994] Usher, Dr. J., _A Discourse on the Religion Anciently Professed by the Irish and British_, p. 77.

[995] At the foot of this emblem the designer has introduced an intreccia or Solomon's knot between his initials R. S.

CONCLUSIONS

"I can affirm that I have brought it from an utter darknesse to a thin mist, and have gonne further than any man before me."--JOHN AUBREY.

"But for my part I freely declare myself at a loss what to say to things so much obscured by their distant antiquity; and you, when you read these conjectures, will plainly perceive that I have only groped in the dark."--CAMDEN.

One may perhaps get a further sidelight on the marvellous labyrinthic cave temples of the ancients by a reference to the so-called worm-knots or cup-and-ring markings on cromlechs and menhirs. With regard to these sculptures Mr. T. W. Rolleston writes: "Another singular emblem, upon the meaning of which no light has yet been thrown, occurs frequently in connection with megalithic monuments. The accompanying illustrations show examples of it. Cup-shaped hollows are made in the surface of the stone, these are often surrounded with concentric rings, and from the cup one or more radial lines are drawn to a point outside the circumference of the rings. Occasionally a system of cups are joined by these lines, but more frequently they end a little way outside the widest of the rings. These strange markings are found in Great Britain and Ireland, in Brittany, and at various places in India, where they are called _mahadeos_. I have also found a curious example--for such it appears to be--in Dupaix' _Monuments of New Spain_. It is reproduced in Lord Kingsborough's _Antiquities of Mexico_, vol. lv. On the circular top of a cylindrical stone, known as the Triumphal Stone, is carved a central cup, with nine concentric circles round it, and a duct or channel cut straight from the cup through all the circles to the rim. Except that the design here is richly decorated and accurately drawn, it closely resembles a typical European cup-and-ring marking. That these markings mean something, and that wherever they are found they mean the same thing, can hardly be doubted, but what that meaning is remains yet a puzzle to antiquarians. The guess may perhaps be hazarded that they are diagrams or plans of a megalithic sepulchre. The central hollow represents the actual burial-place. The circles are the standing stones, fosses, and ramparts which often surrounded it: and the line or duct drawn from the centre outwards represents the subterranean approach to the sepulchre. The apparent avenue intention of the duct is clearly brought out in the varieties given herewith, which I take from Simpson. As the sepulchre was also a holy place or shrine, the occurrence of a representation of it among other carvings of a sacred character is natural enough; it would seem symbolically to indicate that the place was holy ground. How far this suggestion might apply to the Mexican example I am unable to say."[996]

Mr. Rolleston is partially right in his idea that the designs are as it were ground plans of monuments, but that theory merely carries the point a step backward and the question remains--Why were monuments constructed in so involved and seemingly absurd a form? I hazard the conjecture that the Triumphal Stone with its central cup and _nine_ concentric circles was a symbol of Life, and of the _nine_ months requisite for the production of Human Life; that the duct or channel straight from the cup through all the circles to the rim implied the mystery of creation; and that the seemingly senseless meander of long passages was intended as a representation of the maw or stomach. That the Druids were practised physiologists is deducible from the complaint made against one of them, that he had dissected 600 bodies: the ancient anatomists might quite reasonably have traced Life to a germ or cell lying within a mazy and seemingly unending coil of viscera: we know that auguries were drawn from the condition of the entrails of sacrificial victims, whence originally the entrails were in all probability regarded as the seat of Life. _Mahadeo_, the Indian term for a worm-knot or cup-marking, resolves as it stands into _maha_, great; and _deo_, Goddess: our English word _maw_, meaning stomach, is evidently allied to the Hebrew _moi_, meaning bowels; with _moeder_, the Dutch for womb, may be connoted Mitra or Mithra, and perhaps Madura. It is well known that the chief Festival celebrated in the Indian cave temples at Madura and elsewhere is associated with the _lingam_, or emblem of sex, and it may be assumed that the invariable sixfold form of the Kentish dene holes was connected in some way with sex worship. The word _six_ is for some reason, which I am unable to surmise, identical with the word _sex_: the Chaldees--who were probably not unconnected with the "pure Culdees" of Caledonia--taught that Man, male and female, was formed upon the _sixth_ day: Orpheus calls the number _six_, "Father of the celestial and mortal powers," and, says Davidson, "these considerations are derived from the doctrine of Numbers which was highly venerated by the Druids".[997] Six columbas centring in the womb of the Virgin Mary were illustrated on page 790, and it will probably prove that _columba_ meant holy womb, just as _culver_ seemingly meant holy ovary.

The sixfold marigold or wheel was used not infrequently as an emblem during the Middle Ages: in Fig. 504--a mediæval paper-mark--this design is sanctified by a cross, and the centre of Fig. 486 consists of the circle and Serpent. Figs. 492 to 502 exhibit further varieties of this circle and Serpent design--the symbol of fructifying Life--and some of these examples bear a curious resemblance to the twists and convolutions of the entrails. In Egypt, Apep, the Giant Serpent, was said to have--"resembled the intestines":[998] the word Apep is apparently related to _pepsis_, the Greek for _digestion_, as likewise to our _pipe_, meaning a long tube.

Prof. Elliot Smith, who has recently published some lectures entitled _The Evolution of the Dragon_, sums up his conclusions as follows: "The dragon was originally a concrete expression of the divine powers of life-giving; but with the development of a higher conception of religious ideals it became relegated to a baser rôle, and eventually became the symbol of the powers of evil".[999] I have elsewhere illustrated a mediæval dragon-mark which was sanctified by a cross, and it is a highly remarkable fact that the papermakers of the Middle Ages were evidently _au fait_ with the ancient meaning of this sign. Several of their multifarious serpent designs are associated with the small circle or pearl, in which connection it is noteworthy that not only had pearls the reputation of being givers of Life, but that _margan_, the ancient Persian word for pearl, is officially interpreted as meaning _mar_, "giver," and _gan_, "life". This word, says Prof. Elliot Smith, has been borrowed in all the Turanian languages ranging from Hungary to Kamchatka, also in the non-Turanian speech of Western Asia, thence through Greek and Latin (_margarita_) to European languages.[1000] The Persian _gan_, in Zend _yan_, seeming corresponds to the European John, or Ian; and it is evident that Figs. 486 to 491 might justly be termed marguerites.

One of the most favourite decorations amongst Cretan artists is the eight-limbed octopus, and it is believed that the Mykenian volute or spiral is a variant of this emblem. According to Prof. Elliot Smith the evidence provided by Minoan paintings, and Mykenian decorative art, demonstrates that the spiral as a symbol of life-giving was definitely derived from the octopus.[1001] Other authorities believe that the octopus symbolised "the fertilising watery principle," and that the svastika is a conventionalised form of this creature. In the light of these considerations it would thus seem highly probable that the knot, maze, Troy Town, or trou town, primarily was emblematic of the Maze or Womb of Life, conceived either physically or etherially in accord with the spirit of the time and people.

There is a certain amount of testimony to the fact that the Druids taught and worshipped within caves, and there is some reason to suppose that the Druids had a knowledge, not only of the lense, telescope, or Speculum of the Pervading Glance, but also of gunpowder, for Lucan, writing of a grove near Marseilles, remarks: "There is a report that the grove is often shaken and strangely moved, and that dreadful sounds are heard from its caverns; and that it is sometimes in a blaze without being consumed". That abominations were committed in these eerie places I do not doubt: that animals were maintained in them there is good reason to suppose; and in all probability the story of the Cretan Minotaur, to whom Athenian youths were annually sacrificed, was based on a certain amount of fact. The Bull being the symbol of life and fecundity, there would have been peculiar propriety in maintaining a bull or _toro_, Celtic _tarw_, within the _trou_, labyrinth, or maze of life: upon two of the British coins here illustrated the Mithraic Bull appears in combination with an intreccia. The colossal labyrinths built in Egypt to the honour of the sacred toro are well known: in Europe remains of the horse are constantly discovered within caves,[1002] and it is a cognate fact that in Mexico a tapir--the nearest approach Mexico could seemingly show to a horse--was maintained in the subterranean temple of the god Votan.

This Votan of South America is an interesting personality: according to the native traditions of the Chiapenese Indians--there was once a man named Votan, who was the grandson of the man who built the ark to save himself and family from the Deluge. Votan was ordered by the Lord to people America and "He came _from the East_" bringing with him seven families: Votan, we are further told, was of the race of Chan, and built a city in America named Nachan, after Chan his family name. The name Votan is seemingly a variant of Wotan, the Scandinavian All Father, and also of Wootton, which is a common Kentish family name: Wotan of _Wednesday_ was, it is believed, once widely worshipped in Kent, notably at _Woodnes_borough, which is particularly associated with the tradition: on Christmas Eve Thanet used to celebrate a festival called _Hooden_ing which consisted of decorating either the skull of a horse, or the wooden figure of a horse's head, which then was perambulated on a pole by a man hidden beneath a sheet.[1003]

In Central America _chan_ meant serpent, in which connection it is noteworthy that in Scandinavian mythology Wotan presides over the great world snake coiled at the roots of the mighty Ash Tree, named Iggdrasil. This word may, I think, be resolved into _igg dra sil_, or High Tree Holy, and the Ash of our innumerable Ashdowns, Ashtons, Ashleys, Ashursts, etc., may in all probability be equated not only with _aes_, the Welsh for _tree_, but also with _oes_, the Welsh for _life_. That Janus, whose coin was entitled the _as_, was King As has already been suggested, and that As or Ash[1004] was Odin is hardly open to doubt. According to Borlase (W. C.): "There is reason to believe that the Sun was a principal divinity worshipped under the name of Fal, Phol, Bel, Beli, Balor, and Balder, all synonymous terms in the comparative mythology of the Germanic peoples whether Celtic or Teutonic in speech. A curious passage in Johannes Cornubiensis permits us to equate this deity with Asch or As, one name of Odin. The more deeply we study this portion of the subject the more certain becomes the identity of the members of the pantheon of the two western branches of the Aryan-speaking peoples."[1005]

The word _Kent_ or Cantium is, I think, connected with Candia, but whether Votan of the race of Chan came from Candia, Cantium, or Scandinavia is a discussion which must be reserved for a subsequent volume: it is sufficient here to note in passing that one-third of the language of the Mayas is said to be pure Greek, whence the question has very pertinently been raised, "Who brought the dialect of Homer to America? or who took to Greece that of the Mayas?"

It is now well known that there was communication between the East and West long before America was rediscovered by Columbus, and there is nothing therefore improbable in the Chiapenese tradition that their Votan, after settling affairs in the West, visited Spain and Rome. The legend relates that Votan "went by the road which his brethren, the Culebres, had bored," these Culebres being presumably either the inhabitants of Calabar in Africa now embraced in the Niger Protectorate, or of Calabria, the southernmost province of Italy. The allusion to a road which the Culebres had bored might be dismissed as a fiction were it not for the curious fact mentioned by Livingstone that tribes lived underground in Rua: "Some excavations are said to be thirty miles long and have running rills in them; a whole district can stand a siege in them. The 'writings' therein I have been told by some of the people are drawings of animals and not letters, otherwise I should have gone to see them." The primitive but, in many respects, advanced culture of Mykenae and of Troy does not seem to have possessed the art of writing, and contemporary ideas must thus necessarily have been expressed by symbols akin to the multifarious animal-hieroglyphics of ancient Candia: it would even seem possible that the writings of underground Rua were parallel to the records of Egypt alleged in the following passage: "It is affirmed that the Egyptian priests, versed in all the branches of religious knowledge, and apprised of the approach of the Deluge, were fearful lest the divine worship should be effaced from the memory of man. To preserve the memory of it, therefore, they dug in various parts of the kingdom subterranean winding passages, on the walls of which they engraved their knowledge, under different forms of animals and birds, which they call hieroglyphics, and which are unintelligible to the Romans."[1006]

The existence of underground ways seems to be not infrequent in Africa, for Captain Grant, who accompanied Captain Speke in his exploration for the source of the Nile, tells of a colossal tunnel or subway bored under the river Kaoma. Grant asked his native guide whether he had ever seen anything like it elsewhere and the guide replied, "This country reminds me of what I saw in the country to the south of Lake Tanganyika": he then described a tunnel or subway under another river named also Kaoma, a tunnel so lengthy that it took the caravan from sunrise to noon to pass through. This was said to be so lofty that if mounted upon camels the top could not be touched: "Tall reeds the thickness of a walking-stick grew inside; the road was strewed with white pebbles, and so wide--400 yards--that they could see their way tolerably well while passing through it. The rocks looked as if they had been planed by artificial means." The guide added that the people of Wambeh Lake shelter in this tunnel,[1007] and live there with their families and cattle.[1008]

In view of these Rider-Haggard-like facts it is unnecessary to discredit the tradition that the South American Votan of the tribe of Chan visited his kinsmen the Culebres, by the road which the Culebres had bored. The journey is said to have taken place in the year 3000 of the world or 1000 B.C., and among the spots alleged to have been visited was the city of Rome where Votan "saw the house of God building". It is well known that great cities almost invariably exhibit traces of previous cities on the same site: Schliemann's excavations at Troy proved the pre-existence of a succession of cities on the site of Troy, and the same fact has recently been established at Seville and elsewhere. The city of Rome is famous for a labyrinth of catacombs, the building of which has always been a mystery: the catacombs abound in pagan emblems, and it is, I believe, now generally supposed that they are of pre-Christian origin.

A correspondent of _Notes and Queries_ suggested in 1876 that the Roman Catacombs were the work of the prehistoric Cimmerii who notoriously dwelt _in subterraneis domiciliis_. The rocks of the Crimea, notably at Inkerman, are honeycombed with caverns; in fact the burrowing proclivities of the Kymbri are proverbialised in the expression "Cimmerian darkness". The same correspondent of _Notes and Queries_[1009] further drew attention to the remarkable fact that in the year 1770 coal mining operations in Ireland, at Fair Head, near The Giant's Causeway, disclosed prehistoric quarryings together with stone hammers "of the rudest and most ancient form". It is difficult to believe that prehistoric man, surrounded by inexhaustible supplies of fuel in the form of forest and peat, found it necessary to mine, with his poor implements, for coal fuel, and the description of the supposedly prehistoric mine--"wrought in the most expert manner, the chambers regularly dressed and pillars left at proper intervals to support the roof"--arouses not only a strong suspicion that the _souterrain_ in question was actually a shrine, but also that the place-name Antrim--where these quarryings occur--may be connected with _antre_, a cave. When the Fair Head labyrinth was accidentally disclosed we are told that two lads were sent forward who soon found themselves in "numerous apartments in the mazes and windings of which they were completely bewildered and were finally extricated, not without some difficulty".

With Joun of Etruria, and Janus of Janicula may be connoted the Ogane of Africa, whose toe, like that of Peter, was reverently kissed: that Northern Africa, Etruria, and Dodona were once peopled by a kindred race is one of the commonplaces of anthropology, and these Iberian people are, I think, traceable not only in Britain and Hibernia, but in the actual names _Berat_, _Bri_tain, _Aparica_ (now Africa), _Barbary_, _Berber_ or _Barabbra_, _Epirus_, _Hebrew_, _Culebre_, _Calabria_, and _Celtiberia_. Tacitus, who describes the ancient Britons as being dark complexioned and curly haired, adds: "that portion of Spain in front of Britain encourages the belief that the ancient Iberians had come over and colonised this district--the Gauls took possession of the adjacent coast". According to Huxley and Laing the aboriginal inhabitants of Caledonia were from--"the great Iberian family, the same stock as the Berbers of North Africa":[1010] the prehistoric inhabitants of Wales similarly belonged to the Iberian stock and--"no other race of men existed in Wales until the neolithic period".[1011]

In Cornwall the persisting Iberian type is popularly supposed to be the offspring of Spanish sailors wrecked at the time of the Armada, but this theory is not countenanced by anthropologists. Speaking of the short natives of the Hebridean island of Barra--a significant name--Campbell, in his _West Highland Tales_, observes: "Behind the fire sat a girl with one of these strange foreign faces which are occasionally to be seen in the Western Isles, a face which reminded me of the Nineveh sculptures, and of faces seen in St. Sebastian. Her hair was as black as night, her clear eyes glittered through the peat smoke. Her complexion was dark and her features so unlike those who sat about her, that I asked if she were a native of the island, and learned that she was a Highland girl."

Whether this Barra maiden was a persistent type of Hebrew may be questioned: she was certainly not Mongolian, the other great family whose traces still persist here. The Hebrews traditionally came from Candia, and the Candians or Cretans are universally described as diminutive and dark-haired: according to Prof. Keith the typical Bronze Age man was narrow-faced, round-headed, handsome, and about 5 feet 8 inches in height. "It is curious," he says, "that men of this type are playing leading parts in large proportion to the number living."

The antithesis to the round-headed Gael, and the oval-headed Cynbro is the square-headed Teuton, Finn, or Mongol. While the Cretan was essentially creative and artistic, we are told on the other hand that "it must always be remembered that the Phoenicians were only intermediaries and created no art of their own".[1012] The same verity is still curiously true of the modern Jew who almost invariably is an intermediary, rarely if ever a producer: neither in Caledonia, Cambria, or Hibernia does one often find a Jewish nose, and the craftsmen-artists of the primeval world were, I think, not the Jews of Tyre, but the older Jous of Candia or Crete. In the name Drew, translated to have meant _skilful_, we have apparently a true tradition of the Jous of Cornwall and the Jous of Droia, or Troy.

It is presumably the Mongolian influence in Prussia, the home of the square-headed, that justified Matthew Arnold in writing: "The universal dead-level of plainness and homeliness, the lack of all beauty and distinction in form and feature, the slowness and clumsiness of the language, the eternal beer, sausages, and bad tobacco, the blank commonness everywhere pressing at last like a weight on the spirits of the traveller in Northern Germany, and making him impatient to be gone--this is the weak side, the industry, the well-doing, the patient, steady elaboration of things, the idea of science governing all departments of human activity--this is the strong side; and through this side of her genius, Germany has already obtained excellent results."

The unimaginative and plodding German is the antithesis to the impressionable, poetic, and romantic Celt, as probably were the loathed Magogei to the chic Cretans whose national characteristics are commemorated in their frescoes and vases. I have already suggested that the same antipathies existed between the ugsome Mongolians and the swarthy slim Iberians of Epirus or Albania. Descendants of both Mongolians and Jous undoubtedly exist to-day in Britain, particularly in Cornwall, where Dr. Beddoe notes and comments upon the slanting Ugrian or Mongolian eye. The same authority observes that anthropologists had long been calling out for the remains of an Iberian, or pre-Celtic, language in the British Isles before their philological brethren awoke to the consciousness of their existence. "Mongolian or Ugrian types have been recognised though less distinctly; and now Ugrian grammatical forms are being dimly discerned in the Welsh and Irish languages."[1013] In Ireland only two Iberian words are known to have survived, one of which, as we have seen, was _fern_, meaning _anything good_. In view of the fact that the Celtiberians were also known as Virones,[1014] and as the Berones (these last named neighbouring the Pyrenees), it would seem possible that the Iberians were the Hibernians, and had originally a first-class reputation. As already noted our records state of Prydain, the son of Aedd, that before his advent there was little gentleness in Britain, and only a superiority in oppression.

It is probable that the Iberians were the original builders of _barrows_, and the excavators of the stupendous _burrows_, found from Burmah to Peru, and from Aparica to Barra: in which direction the Iberian culture flowed it would be premature at present to discuss, but the question will ultimately be settled by an exercise of the perfectly sound canon of etymology, that in comparing two words _a_ and _b_ belonging to the same language, of which _a_ contains a lesser number of syllables, _a_ must be taken to be a more original word unless there be evidence of contractions or other corruption. The theory of a generation ago that our innumerable British monosyllables are testimonies of phonetic decay is probably as false as many similar notions that have recently been relegated to limbo. In a paroxysm of enthusiasm for the German-made Science of Language, and for the theory that sound etymology has nothing to do with sound, one of the disciples of Max Müller has observed that unless _every letter_ in a modern word can be scientifically accounted for according to rule the derivation and definition cannot be accepted. The Dictionaries now prove that spelling was a whimsical, temporary, shallow thing, and it will, I am confident, be an accepted axiom in the future that "Language begins with voice, language ends with voice". If the present book fails to add any weight to this dictum of Latham the evidence is none the less everywhere, and is merely awaiting the shaping hand of a stronger, more competent, and more influential workman than the present writer.

Whether or not the radicals I have used will prove to be chips of Iberian speech remains to be further tested, but in any case, the official contention that the language we speak to-day is, "of course, in no sense native to England but was brought thither by the German tribes who conquered the island in the fifth and sixth centuries"[1015] may be confidently impugned: Prof. Smith is, however, doubtless correct in his statement that when our Anglo-Saxon ancestors came first to ravage Britain, and finally to settle there, they found the island inhabited by a people "weaker, indeed, but infinitely more civilised than themselves".

The present essay will not have been published in vain if to any extent it discredits the dull contempt in which our traditions and ancient coinage are now held; still less if it negatives the offensive supposition that England was "the one purely German nation which arose out of the wreck of Rome," and that practically all our English place-names are of German origin.

On re-reading my MSS. in as far as possible a detached and impartial spirit, there would appear to be much _prima facie_ evidence in favour of the traditional belief that these islands once possessed a very ancient culture, and that the Kimbri, or followers of Brute, were originally pirates or adventurers who reached these shores "over the hazy sea from the summer country which is called Deffrobani, that is where Constantinoblys now stands".[1016] Constantinople--originally the Greek colony of Byzantium--is the city nearest the site of Troy; Ægean influences have long been recognised in Britain, and the accepted theory is that these influences penetrated overland via Gaul. This supposition seems, however, to be strikingly negatived in a fact noted recently by Prof. Macalister, who, speaking of the spiral decoration found alike at Mykenae and New Grange, observes: "But spirals cannot travel through the air; they must be depicted on some portable object in order to find their way from Orchomenos to the neighbourhood of Drogheda. The lines of the trade routes connecting these distant places ought to be peppered with objects of late Minoan Art-bearing spirals. Even a few painted potsherds would be sufficient. But there is no such thing. The media through which the spiral patterns were _ex hypothesi_ carried to the north have totally disappeared."[1017] We have seen a similar lack of connective evidence in the case of the British spearhead, which seemingly either evolved independently in this country, or was brought hither by sea from the Ægean.

With regard to Celtic and Ægean spiral decoration, Prof. Macalister writes: "People in the cultural stage of the builders of New Grange do not cultivate Art for Art's sake. Some simple religious or magical significance must lie hidden in these patterns.... Therefore, if we are to suppose that the barbarians acquired the spiral patterns from the Ægean merchants we must once more postulate the enthusiastic trading missionary who taught them how to draw spirals in the intervals of business. I, for one, cannot believe in that engaging altruist. I prefer to believe that the spirals at New Grange are not derived from the Ægean at all, but that they are an independent growth."[1018]

The Trojans were proverbially a pious race, and personally I should prefer the theory of enthusiastic (sea) trading missionaries to the painfully overworked hypothesis of independent growth.

According to Mr. Donald A. Mackenzie the process of developing symbols from natural objects can be traced even in the Paleolithic Age:[1019] the earliest town at Troy which was built in the Neolithic Age existed on a hillock and has been likened to the ubiquitous hill fort of Caledonia; seemingly Troy was originally a Dunhill and it was not until about 2500 B.C. that the original hillock, dunhill, or Athene Hill,[1020] was levelled. It is a most remarkable fact that, according to Prof. Virchow, "the few skulls which were saved out of the lower cities have this in common, that without exception they present the character of a more civilised people: all savage peculiarities in the stricter sense are entirely wanting in them".[1021] So far, then, as the testimony of anthropology carries weight, the Trojan fell from a high state of grace, and neolithic Man was quite as capable of the fair humanities as any modern Doctor of Divinity.

If, as I now suggest, the Iberians, the Hebrews, and the British or Kimbry were originally one and the same race, and if, as I further suggest, fragments of the "British" language are recoverable, it follows that the same words will unlock doors in every direction where Iberian or Kimbrian influence permeated: this in a subsequent volume I shall endeavour to show is actually the case, from Burmah to Peru.[1022]

Schliemann mentions in connection with Mykenae a small stream known nowadays as the Perseia, and as Mykenae was said to have been founded by Perseus, the stream Perseia was presumably connected with the ancient pherepolis. The survival of this fairy name is the more remarkable as Mykenae itself was utterly destroyed, buried, and lost sight of, yet the title of this rivulet survived: is there any valid reason to deny a similar vitality and antiquity to the brook- and river-names of Britain? Most of these have been complacently ascribed to German settlers, others to Keltic words, but some are admittedly pre-Keltic. Amongst the group of "rare insolubles" occurs the river Kennet which flows past Abury, and may be connoted with the river Kent in the Kendal district. Apart from the Kentish Cantii Herodotus speaks of a race called Kynetes or Kynesii, both of which terms, as Sir John Rhys says, "have a look of Greek words meaning dogmen": according to Herodotus, "the Celts are outside the Pillars of Hercules and they border on the Kynetii, who dwell the farthest away towards the west of the inhabitants of Europe". Ancient writers locate the Kynetes in the west of Spain which, according to Rhys, "suggests a still more important inference--namely, that there existed in Herodotus' time a continental people of the same origin and habits as the non-Celtic aborigines of these islands".[1023] _Kennet_, as we have seen, was a British word meaning Greyhound; I think the Kynetes were probably worshippers of every variety of _chien_, and that dog-headed St. Christopher, the kindly giant of Canaan, was the jackal-headed "Mercury" of the track-making merchants of Candia.[1024] In Ireland there figures in the Pantheon a Caindea, whose name is understood to mean the _gentle goddess_: the fact of the dove being held in such high estimation in Candia,[1025] as elsewhere, is presumptive evidence of the Candian goddess being fundamentally regarded as gentle, and that Candian adventurers were gentlemen. That Crete or Candia was an Idaeal, Idyllic, and an Aerial island is implied not only by its titles Idaea, Doliche, and Aeria, but also by the characteristics of its Art.

Etymology--by which I mean a Science that does not quibble at everything beyond the view of Mrs. Markham as being out of bounds--permits us to assume that the faith of the Iberii was belief in the Iberian _peyrou_, the Parthian _peri_, the British _perry_, _phairy_, or _fairy_. Anthropologists patronisingly describe the creed of primitive man as being animism by which they mean that an anima or soul was attributed to everything on earth: this may be a credulous and degraded faith, or it may be sublimated into the conception of the Egyptian philosophers of whom it has been said: "In their view the earth was 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."

Speaking of the fairy tales of Ireland W. B. Yeats characterises them as full of simplicity and musical occurrences: "They are," he adds, "the literature of a class for whom every incident in the old rut of birth, love, pain, and death, has cropped up unchanged for centuries; who have steeped everything in the heart _to whom everything is a symbol_". It is generally supposed that fairy tales are of a higher antiquity than cromlechs and stone avenues, and anthropologists have not hesitated to extract from them incidents of crude character as evidence of the barbarous and objectionable period in which they originated. With a curious perversity Anthropology has, however, ignored the fair humanities of phairie, while eagerly seizing upon its crudities: in view of the prophet Micah's environment there seems to me to be no justification for such prejudice, and if fairy-tale is really archaic its beauties may quite well be coeval with its horrors.

In his booklet on _Folklore_ Mr. Sydney Hartland observes: "Turning from savage nations to the peasantry of civilised Europe, you will be still more astonished to learn that up to the present time the very same conditions of thought are discernible wherever they are untouched by modern education and the industrial and commercial revolution of the last hundred years. There can only be one interpretation of this. The human mind, alike in Europe and in America, in Africa and in the South Seas, works in the same way, according to the same laws." This one and only permissible theory of independent evolution is daily losing ground, and in any case it can hardly be pushed to such extremes as identity of words and place-names.

But while I am convinced that Crete was a culture-centre of immense importance, this bright and particular star, was, one must think, too small a place to account for the vast influence apparently traceable to it. Schliemann, whom nobody now ridicules, claimed to have discovered at Troy a bronze vase inscribed in Phoenicean characters with the words: "From King Chronos of Atlantis," and in a paper opened after his death he expressed his belief: "I have come to the conclusion that Atlantis was not only a great territory between America and the West Coast of Africa, but the cradle of all our civilisation as well". The anonymous suggestion which appeared a few years ago in the columns of _The Times_, that Crete was the reality of the wonderful island "fabled" by Plato, seems to me to have nothing to support it, and I would commend to the attention of those interested the facts collected by Ignatius Donnelly in _Atlantis_, and by others elsewhere. Personally I incline to the opinion that Plato's story was well founded, and that the identities found in Peru and Mexico, Britain, the Iberian Peninsula, and Northern Africa are due to these countries, like the Isles of the Mediterranean, being situated in the full sweep of Atlantean influence.

According to Plato, the inhabitants of Atlantis ("an island situated in front of the straits which you call the columns of Hercules: the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together and was the way to other islands") were not only highly civilised, but they "despised everything but virtue not caring for their present state of life and thinking lightly on the possession of gold and other property". It is thus quite possible that the Atlanteans and not the pious Trojans were the enthusiastic and altruistic missionaries who carried the spiral ornament to Mykenae as to New Grange. Prof. Macalister finds it difficult to believe in the existence of such a frame of mind, but it seems to accord very closely to that of the hypothetical peace-loving Aryans or "noble nations" which etymologists have already been compelled to postulate, and which my own findings both herein and elsewhere endorse: the semi-supernaturalness of the Idaens has already been noted, as likewise has that of the ancient Britons and of the modern Bretons.

In the year 1508 a French vessel met with a boat full of American Indians not far from the English coast,[1026] and there is thus one historic warrant for the possibility of very ancient maritime contact between Europe and America. The Maoris of New Zealand emigrated from Polynesia in frail canoes during the historic period, and I have little doubt that the Maoris of to-day, who tattoo themselves with spirals similar to those found upon the prehistoric monuments of Britain, were cognate with the woad-tattoed Britons, who opposed their naked bodies to the invincible legends of Cæsar. One can best account for the many and close connections between the South Sea islands and elsewhere by the supposition that some of these islands were colonised by Atlantis, Lyonesse, or whatever the traditional lost island was entitled: and as many of the maritime Atlanteans must have been at sea when the alleged catastrophe occurred, these survivors would have carried the dire news to many distant lands: whence perhaps the almost universal tradition of a Flood, and the salvation of only one boat load of people.

It has been said that the chief thing which makes Japan so fascinating a land to dwell in is the consciousness that you are there living in an atmosphere of universal kindliness and courtesy. There are still to-day races in Polynesia who display the same kindly and almost angelic dispositions,[1027] whence there is nothing ridiculous in the supposition that Peru, whose natives claimed to be children of the Sun, was associated with peyrou, the Iberian for phairy, or that the original Angles were deemed to be angels, and England or Inghilterra their country.

One of the most noted beliefs of all races, whether civilised or savage, is the erstwhile existence of a Golden Age when all men were well happified, and if existence to primitive man was merely the hideous and protracted nightmare which anthropologists assume, it is difficult to see at what period of his upward climb this curiously idyllic story came into existence: it would be simpler to assume that the tradition had some foundation in fact, and was not merely the frenzied invention of a dreamer. No race possesses more beautiful traditions of the Adamic Age than the British, and I have little doubt that the four quarters of the Holy Rood or Wheel are connected with the four fabulous Cities of Enchantment which figure in Keltic imagination. According to Irish MSS. the Tuatha de Danaan, or Tribe of the Children of Don, after suffering a terrible defeat at the hands of the Fomorians, quitted Ireland, returned to Thebes, and gave themselves up to the study of Magic: leaving Greece they next went to Denmark (named after them) where they founded four great schools of diabolical learning--the Four Cities of Keltic imagination. It would thus seem possible that the Children of Don were the fabricators of the Eden, or Adam, tradition, and that they may be connoted with the Danoi under which name Homer habitually refers to the Greeks: with these Danoi or Danaia, Dr. Latham connotes the Hebrew tribe of Dan, supposing that both these peoples traced their origin to the same culture-hero.[1028] That Gardens of Eden were frequent in these islands has been evidenced in a preceding chapter, and in Asia the custom of constructing Edens or Terrestrial Paradises was equally prevalent: Maundeville and other travellers have left detailed accounts of these _abris_, all of which seem to have been constructed more or less to the standard design of the Garden of Eden, watered by four rivers, with a Tree or Fountain in the midst.

It is supposed that the celebrated Epistle of Prester John was a malicious antepapal concoction of the Gnostic Troubadours, or Servants of Love: these were certainly the shuttles that disseminated it over Europe. I have elsewhere endeavoured to show the role played in mediæval Europe by the Troubadours and Minnesingers (_Love Singers_), and the subject might be infinitely extended. The derivation of _trouvere_, or _troubadour_, from _trouver_ to find, is probably too superficial, and if the matter were more fully investigated it is probable that, like the Merry Andrew, these mystic singers and philanderers originated from some Troy or Ancient Troy. Whether the _drui_ or _druids_ are similarly traceable to the same root is debatable, but that the bards of Britain were depositaries and disseminators of the Gnosis I do not doubt: the evidence on that point is not only the testimony of outsiders, but it is inherent in the literature itself, and whether this literature was committed to writing in the sixth, twelfth, or eighteenth century is immaterial. There are in existence many unquestionably prehistoric tales and ideas which have been handed down verbally, and committed to writing for the first time only within the past few years: many more are living _viva voce_, and are not yet registered. The Welsh bards, like the bards of other races, were a recognised class, graduates in a particular Art, and were strictly and definitely trained in the traditional lore of their profession. This hereditary order which was known to the Romans certainly as early as 200 B.C., like the bards of other countries, almost unquestionably transmitted an enormous literature solely by word of mouth.[1029] If the feats of even the modern human memory were not well vouched for they would not be credited: in the past, the Zend Avesta, the Kalevala, the Popul Vuh, Homer, much of the Old Testament, and in fact all very ancient literature has come down to us simply by memory alone.

To an inquirer such as myself, incompetent to criticise Welsh literature, yet hesitating to accept the once current theories of fabrication, forgery, and deception, it is peculiarly gratifying to find so distinguished a scholar as Sir John Morris-Jones vindicating at any rate some portion of the suspect literature. In his study _Taliesin_, Sir John grinds detractors past and present into as fine and small a powder as that to which Spedding imperturbably reduced the flashy superficialities of Macaulay,[1030] and I confess it has caused me most agreeable emotions to find Sir John alluding to a certain truculent D.Litt. as "that naïve type of mind which naturally assumes that what it does not understand is mere silliness":[1031] it is even more stimulating to witness the iconoclastic and dogmatic Nash rolled in the dust for his "unparalleled impudence" in laying down the law of antiquity in language.

Among the fragments of Welsh poetry occurs the claim "Bardism or Druidism originated in Britain--pure Bardism was never well understood in other countries--of whatever country they might be, they are entitled Bards according to the rights and institutes of the Bards of the Island of Britain."[1032] Before superciliously dismissing the high claims of British Bardism it would be well to consider not only the recent findings of Prof. Sir John Morris-Jones, but to bear steadily in mind the following points: (1) The cultured shape of the extraordinarily ancient British skull: (2) Avebury, the strangest megalithic monument in the world: (3) Stonehenge, a unique and most developed form of stone circle: (4) that England was the principal home of stone circles: (5) that England not only possessed the greatest earth-pyramid in the world, but that Britain was peculiarly the home of the barrow, and that there is no word _barrow_ in either Greek or Latin, thus seeming to have been essentially British: (6) that in Cæsar's time the youth of the Continent were sent to Britain to study the Druidic philosophy which was believed to have originated there: (7) the remarkable character of the English coinage which dates back admittedly to 200 B.C., and for aught one knows much earlier: (8) that the art of enamelling on bronze probably originated in Britain, and the craft of spear-making evolved there.

In _Earthwork of England_ Mr. Allcroft observes: "Of all the many thousands of earth-works of various kinds to be found in England, those about which anything is known are very few, those of which there remains nothing more to be known scarcely exist. Each individual example is in itself a new problem in history, chronology, ethnology, and anthropology; within every one lie the hidden possibilities of a revolution in knowledge. We are proud of a history of nearly twenty centuries: we have the materials for a history which goes back beyond that time to centuries as yet undated. The testimony of records carries the tale back to a certain point: beyond that point is only the testimony of archæology, and of all the manifold branches of archæology none is so practicable, so promising, yet so little explored, as that which is concerned with earthworks. Within them lie hidden all the secrets of time before history begins, and by their means only can that history be put into writing: they are the back numbers of the island's story, as yet unread, much less indexed."

The prehistoric building here illustrated might be any age: it is standing to-day in a remote corner of Britain, and, so far as I am able to trace, has been hitherto uncharted and unrecognised. Whether it were a temple or the compound of a chieftain, the authorities to whom it has been referred are unable to say: my brother, to whom its discovery was due, is of the opinion that it was a temple, and on a subsequent occasion we hope--after digging--to publish a more detailed account of it, merely now noting it as an example of the innumerable objects of interest which exist in this country at present unrecognised, unconsidered, and unvalued.

Evidence has been forthcoming that a cave in Oban was occupied by human beings, at an epoch when the sea was 30 feet higher than its present level, and it is now generally admitted that humanity existed in these islands prior to the Glacial Period. Archæology of the future will provide strong wine of astonishment to her followers: she will prove beyond question that mythology is not merely fossil philosophy, but is likewise to a large extent fossil history, and that the records may be pieced together from the traditionary blissful Tertiary Period to that time and onwards when a perilous torrent-fire struck the earth, resulting in sequent horrors, and the slow replenishment of the world.[1033] She will prove, I think, further that the land now called England possesses a documentary record, and an intellectual ancestry which is practically beyond computation, and if History shies at her findings she will instance Brandon as a typical example of continuous occupation and unbroken sequence from the Stone Age to to-day. Further, she will in all probability prove that in either Crete or England the main doctrines of Christianity were practically indigenous. The version of Christianity which returned to us about 1500 years ago is now generally attributed to the mystic Therapeuts of Egypt: from the time it was officially adopted by the temporal powers the materialising process seems almost steadily to have progressed, notwithstanding the allegorising teaching of the Troubadours and kindred Gnostics who claimed really to know.[1034] Happily petrifaction is a preservative, and it may be doubted whether when Comparative Archæology has finished her researches any of the prehistoric Christianity preached by the Celtic Christies will prove actually lost, and whether the supposedly impassable gulf of ages which separates the earliest literature from the testimony of the Stones may not practically be bridged. That our popular customs were the detrita of dramatised mythology, and that many of these customs evidence an astonishing beauty of imagination and depth of thought, will not be questioned except by those unfamiliar with English folklore. In many cases the quaint customs which still linger in the countryside, and the cults which underlie them are, as Dr. Rendel Harris has recently observed, those of misunderstood rituals and lost divinities, and thus embalmed like flies in the amber of unchanging habit turn out to be the very earliest beliefs and the most primitive religious acts of the human race: "Every surviving fragment of such a ritual is as valuable to us as a page of an early Gospel which time has blurred or whose first hand has been overwritten".[1035]

Few nowadays have any sympathy with the theories which a generation ago autocratically ascribed Myth to a Disease of Language; still less is it possible to accept the more modern supposition that Mythology is merely the gross growth of disgusting savagery! There is more truth in Bacon's dictum that in the first ages when such inventions and conclusions of the human reason as are now trite and common were new, and little known, all things abounded with fables, parables, similes, comparisons, and illusions which were not intended to conceal, but to inform and teach. Research tends more and more to justify Bacon in his penetrating judgment: "And this principally raises my esteem of these fables, which I receive not as the product of the age or invention of the poets, but as sacred relics, gentle whispers, and the breath of better times, that from the traditions of more ancient nations came at length into the flutes and trumpets of the Greeks". Whence these sacred relics came, whether from Atlantis, Crete, or Britain,[1036] we are not yet in a position to assert, but eventually the Comparative Method will decide this point. Dr. Rendel Harris who has, to quote his own words, "audaciously affirmed that Apollo was only our _apple_ in disguise,"[1037] further concludes: "It is tolerably certain that Apollo in the Greek religion is a migration from the more northerly regions and his mythical home is somewhere at the back of the north wind".[1038] While I am in sympathy with many of Dr. Harris' findings, it is, however, difficult to accept his conclusions that the Olympian divinities were merely "personifications of, or projections from the vegetable word": the greater probability seems to me that the Apple was named after Apollo rather than Apollo from the Apple: similarly the mandrake was in greater likelihood an emblem of Venus rather than Aphrodite a projection from the Mandrake. The Venus of the Gael was Bride or Brigit, "The Presiding Care," who was represented with a brat in her arms: there is an old Spanish proverb to the effect that "An ounce of Mother is worth a ton of Priest"; nowhere was Woman more devoutly idealised than among the Celts, and it is more probable that the conception of an immaculate Great Mother originated somewhere in Europe rather than in the sensuous and woman-degrading East. Of the legends of Ireland Mr. Westropp has recently observed: "When we have removed the strata of euhemerist fiction and rubbish from the ruin, the foundations and beautiful fragments of the once noble fane of Irish mythology will stand clear to the sun":[1039] "Whether," said Squire, "the great edifice of Celtic mythology will ever be wholly restored one can at present only speculate. Its colossal fragments are perhaps too deeply buried and too widely scattered. But even as it stands ruined it is a mighty quarry from which poets yet unborn will hew spiritual marble for houses not made with hands."

FINIS

FOOTNOTES:

[996] _Mythology of the Celtic Races,_ p. 68.

[997] _The Mistletoe_, p. 30.

[998] Budge, W., _Legends of the Gods_, lxxii.

[999] P. 234.

[1000] Smith, Prof. Elliot, _The Evolution of the Dragon_, p. 157.

[1001] _Ibid._, p. 176.

[1002] Notably at Solutre--_the Sol uter_?

[1003] Wright, Miss E. M., _Rustic Speech and Folklore_, p. 303.

[1004] Odin was essentially a _Wind_ God: in Rutlandshire gales are termed _Ash_ winds. _N. and Q._, 1876, p. 363.

[1005] _The Age of the Saints_, p. xxvii.

[1006] _Cf._ Christmas, H. C., _Universal Mythology_, p. 43.

[1007] In _Wambeh_ we again seem to detect _womb_.

[1008] Quoted from Donnelly, I., _Atlantis_.

[1009] Henry Kilgour, Notes and Queries, 8th January and 19th February, 1876.

[1010] _The Prehistoric Remains of Caithness_, pp. 70, 71.

[1011] Macnamara, N. C., _Origin and Character of the British People_, p. 179.

[1012] Read, Sir H., _A Guide to Antiquities of Bronze Age_, p. 17.

[1013] _Races of Britain_, p. 46.

[1014] _Strabo_, III., lv., 5.

[1015] Smith, L. P., _The English Language_, p. 1.

[1016] Triad, 4.

[1017] _Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy_, xxxiv., C. 10, 11, p. 387.

[1018] _Ibid._

[1019] _Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe_, p. 235.

[1020] _Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe_, p. 232.

[1021] _Ilios_, p. xii.

[1022] There were peoples in the Caucasus known as the Britani or Burtani.

[1023] _Celtic Britain_, p. 268.

[1024] In a subsequent volume I shall trace the Iberian _perro_ or dog to _Peru_, where the perro or dog was the supreme object of devotion.

[1025] The capital of old Ceylon was Candy: I am unable to trace the origin of the port of Colombo.

[1026] Baring-Gould, S., _Curious Myths_, p. 527.

[1027] The inhabitants of Tukopia are described as: "Tall, light-coloured men with thick manes of long, golden hair ... wonderful giants, with soft dark eyes, kind smiles, and child-like countenances". The surroundings of the villages of this Polynesian island were like well-tended parks, all brushwood having been carefully removed. "They presented sights so different in blissful simplicity from what were to be seen in Melanesia, they all looked so happy, gay, and alluring, that it hardly needed the invitations of the kind people, without weapons or suspicion, and with wreaths of sweet-scented flowers round their heads and bodies, to incline us to stay." This exquisite morsel of Arcadia was, like other parts of pure Polynesia, governed by a dynasty of hereditary chieftains, who were looked up to with the greatest respect, and to whom honours were paid almost as to demi-gods.--_Cf._ Sir Harry Johnston in _The Westminster Gazette_.

[1028] "I think that the Eponymus of the Argive Danaia was no other than that of the Israelite Tribe of Dan; only we are so used to confine ourselves to the soil of Palestine in our consideration of the Israelites that we treat them as if they were adscriptigleboe, and ignore the share they may have taken in the history of the world."--_Ethnology of Europe_, p. 137.

[1029] Cæsar says it took twenty years' study to acquire: other writers say the Druids taught 20,000 verses.

[1030] _Cf._ _Evenings with a Reviewer_.

[1031] _Y Cymmroder_, xxiii.

[1032] _Cf._ Davies, E., _Celtic Researches_, p. 183.

[1033] In _Ragnarok_ Donnelly argues that the glacial epoch and the "drift" were due to the earth's collision with one of the many million comets which are careering through the solar universe. It would certainly appear probable that such abnormous masses of ice as are evidenced by the Glacial Period, must have been the result of abnormous heat first sucking up the lakes and rivers, and then returning them in the form of clouds, rain, and snow. Practically all mythologies contain an account of some unparalleled catastrophe, and in the opinion of Donnelly the widespread story of man's progenitors emerging from a cave is based upon the literal probability of man--if he survived at all--surviving in caverns. Among the numerous myths which Donnelly cites in support of his ingenious theory is the following British one: "The profligacy of mankind had provoked the great Supreme to send a pestilential wind upon the earth. A pure poison descended, every blast was death. At this time the patriarch, distinguished for his integrity, was shut up, together with his select company, in the inclosure with the strong door (the cave?). Here the just ones were safe from injury. Presently a tempest of fire arose. It split the earth asunder to the great deep. The lake Llion burst its bounds, and the waves of the sea lifted themselves on high around the borders of Britain, the rain poured down from heaven, and the waters covered the earth." Donnelly believes that comets were the origin of the world-wide fiery-dragon myth. In support of this theory he might have instanced the following Scotch legend: "There lived once upon a time in Sutherland a great dragon, very fierce and strong. It was this dragon that burnt all the fir woods in Ross, Sutherland, and the Reay country, of which the remains charred, blackened, and half-decayed may be found in every moss. Magnificent forests they must have been, but the dragon set fire to them with his fiery breath and rolled over the whole land. Men fled from before his face and women fainted when his shadow crossed the sky-line. He made the whole land desert."--(Henderson, Dr. G. H., Intro. to _The Celtic Dragon Myth_, p. xxii.) The burnt forests found in Ireland were noted on p. 21.

[1034] All these "heretics" claimed to be the real possessors of the true Christian doctrine, and they charged Rome with being _Mère sotte_, an ignorant and blatant usurper: the incessant and insidious conflict which was carried on between Gnosticism and Rome has been considered in _A New Light on the Renaissance_, also in _The Lost Language of Symbolism_, and with the exception of a few surface errors there is little in those volumes which I should now rewrite. The murderous campaign which was launched against the Albigenses not only failed seemingly to stamp them out, but if Baring-Gould's opinion is valid the descendants of the Albigenses are even to-day not extinct. In _Cliff Castles_ he writes as follows: "There was a curious statement made in a work by E. Bose and L. Bonnemere in 1882, which if true would show that a lingering paganism is to be found among these people. It is to this effect: 'What is unknown to most is that at the present day there exist adepts of the worship (of the Celts) as practised before the Roman invasion, with the sole exception of human sacrifices, which they have been forcibly obliged to renounce. They are to be found on the two banks of the Loire, on the confines of the departments of Allier and Saone-et-Loire, where they are still tolerably numerous, especially in the latter department. They are designated in the country as Les Blancs, because that in their ceremonies they cover their heads with a white hood, and their priests are vested like the Druids in a long robe of the same colour. They surround their proceedings with profound mystery; their gatherings take place at night in the heart of large forests, about an old oak, and as they are dispersed through the country over a great extent of land, they have to start for the assembly from different points at close of day so as to be able to reach home again before daybreak. They have four meetings in the year, but one, the most solemn, is held near the town of La Clayette under the presidence of the high priest. Those who come from the greatest distance do not reach their homes till the second night, and their absence during the intervening day alone reveals to the neighbours that they have attended an assembly of the Whites. Their priests are known, and are vulgarly designated as the bishops or archbishops of the Whites; they are actually druids or archdruids.... We have been able to verify these interesting facts brought to our notice by M. Parent, and our personal investigations into the matter enable us to affirm the exactitude of what has been advanced.' If there be any truth in this strange story we are much more disposed to consider the Whites as relics of a Manichæan or Albigensian sect than as a survival of Druidism." P. 46.

[1035] _Origin and Meaning of Apple Cults._

[1036] "Lords and Commons of England--Consider what nation whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the Governors: a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit; acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to. Therefore, the studies of learning in her deepest sciences have been so ancient and so eminent among us, that writers of good antiquity and able judgment have been persuaded that the School of Pythagoras, and the Persian Wisdom, took beginning from the old philosophy of this Island, Britain."--Milton.

[1037] In _The Lost Language of Symbolism_ I anticipated this opinion.

[1038] Writing of the Pied Piper story Mr. Ernest Rhys observes: "There is every reason to believe that Hamelin was as near home as Newton, Isle of Wight, and that the Weser, deep and wide, was the Solent".--Preamble to _Fairy Gold_ (Ev. Library).

[1039] _Proc. of Royal Irish Academy_, xxxiv., C., No. 8, p. 140.

APPENDIX A.

IRELAND AND PHOENICIA.

The following extract is taken from _Britain and the Gael: or Notices of Old and Successive Races; but with special reference to the Ancient Men of Britain and its Isles_.--Wm. Beal, London, 1860.

Plautus, a dramatic writer, and one of the great poets of antiquity, who lived from one to two centuries before the Christian era; was mentioned in the last section. In his Pænulus, is the tale of some young persons said to have been stolen from Carthage, by pirates, taken to Calydonia, and there sold; one of these was Agorastocles, a young man; the others were two daughters of Hanno, and Giddeneme, their nurse. Hanno, after long search, discovered the place where his daughters were concealed, and by the help of servants who understood the Punic language, rescued his children from captivity. Plautus gives the supposed appeal of Hanno, to the gods of the country for help, and his conversations with servants in the Punic language, are accompanied with a Latin translation. The Punic, as a language, is lost, and those long noticed, but strange lines had long defied the skill of learned men. But at length, by attending to their vocal formation (and all language, Wills states, is addressed to the ear). It was discovered by O'Neachtan, or some Irish scholar, that they were resolvable into words, which exhibited but slight differences from the language of Keltic Ireland. The words were put into syllables, then translated by several persons, and these translations not only accorded with the drama, but also, with the Plautine Latin version. The lines were put to the test of more rigid examination, placed in the hands of different persons one of whom was Dr. Percy, bishop of Dromore. They were also given to different Irish scholars for translation, to persons who had no correspondence with each other on this subject, nor knew the principal object in view; and by the whole the same meaning was given.

Bohn's edition, by H. T. Riley, B.A., is before the writer; but from the edition used by the late Sir W. Betham, some few lines from Plautus, with the Gaelic or Irish underneath, are given, and the eye will at once perceive how closely the one resembles the other. Milphio, the servant of Agorastocles, addressed Hanno and his servants in Punic, and asked them "of what country are you, or from what city?"

The following is the reply, and the supposed appeal of Hanno to the god, or gods of the country:--

_Plautus._ { Hanno Muthumballe bi Chaedreanech. _Irish._ { Hanno Muthumbal bi Chathar dreannad. _English._ { I am Hanno Muthumbal dwelling at Carthage.

_Plautus._ { Nyth al O Nim ua-lonuth sicorathissi me com syth. _Irish._ { N'iaith all O Nimh uath-lonnaithe socruidhse me comsith. _English._ { Omnipotent much dreaded Deity of this country, assuage my troubled mind.

_Plautus._ { Chim lach chumyth mum ys tyal mycthi barii im schi. _Irish._ { Chimi lach chuinigh muini is toil miocht beiridh iar mo scith. _English._ { Thou the support of feeble captives, being now exhausted with fatigue, of thy free will guide me to my children.

_Plautus._ { Lipho can ethyth by mithii ad ædan binuthi. _Irish._ { Liomtha can ati bi mitche ad eadan beannaithe. _English._ { O let my prayers be perfectly acceptable in thy sight.

_Plautus._ { Byr nar ob syllo homal O Nim! Ubymis isyrthoho. _Irish._ { Bior nar ob siladh umhal O Nimh! ibhim A frotha. _English._ { An inexhaustible fountain to the humble; O Deity! Let me drink of its streams.

_Plautus._ { Byth lym mo thym noctothii nel ech an ti daise machon. _Irish._ { Beith liom mo thime noctaithe, neil ach tanti daisic mac coinne. _English._ { Forsake me not! my earnest desire is now disclosed, which is only that of recovering my daughters.

_Plautus._ { Uesptis Aod eanec Lic Tor bo desiughim lim Nim co lus. _Irish._ { Is bidis Aodh eineac Lic Tor bo desiussum le mo Nimh co lus. _English._ { And grateful Fires on Stone Towers will I ordain to blaze to Heaven.

_Plautus._ { Gau ebel Balsameni ar a san. _Irish._ { Guna bil Bal-samen ar a san. _English._ { O that the good Bal-samhen (_i.e._ Beal the sun) may favour them.