CHAPTER V
GOG AND MAGOG
"Scarce stand the vessels hauled upon the beach, And bent on marriages the young men vie To till new settlements, while I to each Due law dispense and dwelling place supply, When from a tainted quarter of the sky Rank vapours, gathering, on my comrades seize, And a foul pestilence creeps down from high." --VIRGIL, _The Æneid._
The British Chronicles relate that when Brute and his companions reached these shores the island was then uninhabited, save only for a few giants. Seemingly these natives did not oppose the Trojan landing, for the story runs that "Nought gave Corineus (Brute's second-in-command) greater pleasure than to wrestle with the giants of whom there was a greater plenty in Cornwall than elsewhere". On a certain day, however, the existing relations ceased, owing to an obnoxious native named Goemagog, who, accompanied by a score of companions, interrupted a sacred function which the Trojans were holding. From the recommendations of the pious Æneas, it would seem that the Trojans had suffered similarly in other directions:--
When thy vessels, ranged upon her shore, Rest from the deep, and on the beach ye light The votive altars, and the gods adore, Veil then thy locks, with purple hood bedight, And shroud thy visage from a foeman's sight, Lest hostile presence, 'mid the flames divine, Break in, and mar the omen and the rite. This pious use keep sacred, thou and thine, The sons of sons unborn, and all the Trojan line.[193]
The graceless Goemagog and his ruffianly crew did passing cruel slaughter on the British, howbeit at the last the Britons, rallying from all quarters, prevailed against them and slew all save only Goemagog. Him, Brute had ordered to be kept alive as he was minded to see a wrestling bout betwixt him and Corineus, "who was beyond measure keen to match himself against such a monster". Corineus, all agog and o'erjoyed at the sporting prospect, girded himself for the encounter, and flinging away his arms challenged Goemagog to a bout at wrestling. After "making the very air quake with their breathless gaspings," the match ended by Goemagog being lifted bodily into the air, carried to the edge of the cliff, and heaved over.[194]
One cannot read Homer without realising that this alleged incident was in closest accord with the habits and probabilities of the time. Alike among the Greeks and the Trojans wrestling was as popular and soul-absorbing a pastime as it is to-day, or was until yesterday, among Cornishmen:--
Tired out we seek the little town, and run The sterns ashore and anchor in the bay, Saved beyond hope and glad the land is won, And lustral rites, with blazing altars, pay To Jove, and make the shores of Actium gay With Ilian games, as, like our sires, we strip And oil our sinews for the wrestler's play, Proud, thus escaping from the foeman's grip, Past all the Argive towns, through swarming Greeks, to slip.[195]
The untoward Goemagog was probably one of an elementary big-boned tribe whose divinities were Gog and Magog, and there are distinct traces, at any rate, of Magog in Ireland. According to De Jubainville, "the various races that have successively inhabited Ireland trace themselves back to common ancestors descended from Magog or Gomer, son of Japhet, so that the Irish genealogy traditions are in perfect harmony with those of the Bible".[196]
The figures of Gog and Magog used until recently to be cut into the slope of Plymouth Hoe: in Cambridgeshire, are the Gogmagog hills; at the extremity of Land's End are two rocks known respectively as Gog and Magog, and there is an unfavourable allusion to the same twain in _Revelation_.[197] Gog and Magog are the "protectors" of London, and at civic festivals their images used with pomp and circumstance to be paraded through the City.
In some parts of Europe the civic giants were represented as being _eight_ in number, and the Christian Clergy inherited with their office the incongruous duty of keeping them in good order. One of these ceremonials is described by an eye-witness writing in 1809, who tells us that in Valencia no procession of however little importance took place, without being preceded by eight statues of giants of a prodigious height. "Four of them represented the four quarters of the world, and the other four their husbands. Their heads were made of paste-board, and of an enormous size, frizzled and dressed in the fashion. Men, covered with drapery falling on the ground, carried them at the head of the procession, making them dance, jump, bow, turn, and twist about. The people paid more attention to these gesticulations than to the religious ceremony which followed them. The existence of the giants was deemed of sufficient importance to require attention as to the means of perpetuating them; consequently there was a considerable foundation in Valencia for their support. They had a house belonging to them where they were deposited. Two benefices were particularly founded in honour of them; and it was the duty of the Ecclesiastics who possessed these benefices to take care of them and of their ornaments, particular revenues being assigned for the expense of their toilettes."[198]
Four pairs of elemental gods were similarly worshipped in Egypt, each pair male and female, and these _eight_ primeval Beings were known as the Ogdoad or Octet. In Scotland, the Earth Goddess who is said to have existed "from the long eternity of the world," is sometimes described as being the chief of _eight_ "big old women," at other times as "a great big old wife," and with this untoward Hag we may equate the English "Awd Goggie" who was supposed to guard orchards.
The London figures of Gog and Magog--constructed of wicker work--had movable eyes which, to the great joy of the populace, were caused to roll or _goggle_ as the images were perambulated. Skeat thinks the word _gog_ is "of imitative origin," but it is more likely that _goggle_ was originally Gog _oeuil_ or Gog Eye. The Irish and Gaelic for Goggle-eyed is _gogshuileach_, which the authorities refer to _gog_, "to move slightly" and _suil_, "an eye".
At Gigglewick or Giggles-fort in Yorkshire (anciently _Deira_), there is a celebrated well of which the famed peculiarity is its eightfold flow, and it was of this Giggle Well that Drayton wrote in _Polyolbion_:--
At Giggleswick where I a fountain can you show, That _eight_ times a day is said to ebb and flow.
In Cornwall at St. Isseys there used to be a sacred fountain known as St. Giggy's Well, and as every stream and fount was the supposed home of jinns or genii it is possible that "_Saint_ Giggy" may be equated with _igigi_, a word meaning in Babylonian mythology "_the spirits of Heaven_". Jinn or Genie may also be connoted with a well near Launceston known as Joan's Pitcher, the pitcher or vase whence the living waters were poured being a constantly recurring emblem of Mother Nature. It will be noticed in Fig. 25, p. 142, and in Fig. 256, p. 428.
The French have an expression _a gogo_ ("origin unknown") which means at one's ease, or in clover; in old French _gogue_ ("origin unknown") meant pleasantry or fun, and _goguenard_ a funmaker, or a jester. All these and kindred terms are probably correlate to the jovial Gogmagog carnivals and festivals. In London the house of Gog and Magog is the Guildhall in Aldermanbury: if born within the sound of the bells of the neighbouring St. Mary-le-Bow a Londoner is entitled to be termed a _cockney_; Cockayne is an old and romantic term for London, and it would therefore seem likely that among the cluster of detached _duns_ which have now coalesced into London, the followers of Gog and Magog had a powerful and perhaps aboriginal footing. Around Londonderry in Ireland are the memories of a giant Gig na Gog, and at Launceston in Cornwall there used to be held a so-called Giglot Fair. At this _a gogo_ festival every wench was at liberty to bestow the eye of favour, _ogle_, or look _gougou_, on any swain she fancied: whence obviously the whole village was agog, or full of eagerness, and much ogling, giggling, goggling, and gougounarderie.
In Cornwall _googou_ means a cave, den, souterrain, or "giants holt," and there are several reasons to suppose that the Gogmagogei or gougouites were troglodytes. "Son of Man," said Ezekiel, "set thy face against Gog the Land of Magog," and to judge from similar references, it would seem that the followers of Gogmagog were ill-favoured and unloved. Sir John Maundeville (1322) mentions in his Travels, that in the Land of Cathay towards Bucharia, and Upper India, the Jews of ten lineages "who are called Gog and Magog" were penned up in some mountains called Uber. This name Uber we shall show is probably the same as _obr_, whence the Generic term _Hebrew_, and it is said by Maundeville that between those mountains of Uber were enclosed twenty-two kings, with their people, that dwelt between the mountains of Scythia.[199] Josephus mentions that the Scythians were called Magogoei by the Greeks: by some authorities the Scythians are equated with the Scotti or Scots. There are still living in Cornwall the presumed descendants of what have been termed the "bedrock" race, and these people still exhibit in their physiognomies the traces of Oriental or Mongoloid blood. The early passage tombs of Japan are, according to Borlase, (W. C.), literally counterparts in plan and construction of those giant-graves or passage-tombs which are prevalent in Cornwall, and, speaking of the inhabitants of Cornwall and Wales, Dr. Beddoe says: "I think some reason can be shown for suspecting the existence of traces of some Mongoloid race in the modern population of Wales and the West of England. The most notable indication is the oblique or Chinese eye. I have noted thirty-four persons with oblique eyes. Their heads include a wide range of relative breadth. In other points the type stands out distinctly. The cheek bones are almost always broad: the brows oblique, in the same direction as the eyes; the chin as a rule narrow and angular; the nose often concave and flat, seldom arched; and the mouth rather inclined to be prominent.... The iris is usually hazel or brown, and the hair straight, dark-brown, black, or reddish." "It is," he adds, "especially in Cornwall that this type is common."
Our British Giants, Gog, Magog, Termagol, and the rest of the terrible tribe, sprang, according to Scottish myth, from the _thirty-three_ daughters of Diocletian, a King of Syria, or Tyria. These _thirty-three_ primeval women drifted in a ship to Britain, then uninhabited, where they lived in solitude, until an order of demons becoming enamoured of them, took them to wife and begot a race of giants. Anthropology and tradition thus alike refer the Magogoei to Syria, or Phoenicia, and there would seem to be numerous indications that between these people and the ethereal, romantic, and artistic Cretans there existed a racial, integral, antipathy.
The Gogonians may be connoted with the troglodyte Ciconians, or Cyclops, to whom Homer so frequently and unfavourably alludes, and the one-eyed Polyphemus of Homer is obviously one and the same with Balor, the one-eyed giant of Tory Isle in Ireland. This Balor or Conann the Great, as he is sometimes termed, was cock-eyed, one terrible eye facing front, the other situated in the back of his head facing to the rear. To this day the fateful eye of Balor is the Evil Eye in Ireland, whence anyone is liable to be o'erwished. Ordinarily the dreadful optic was close shut, but at times his followers raised the eyelid with an iron hook, whereupon the glance of Baler's eye blasted everything and everybody upon whom it fell. On one occasion the fateful eye of Balor is said to have overflowed with water, causing a disastrous flood; whence, perhaps, why a watery eye is termed a "Balory" or "_Bleary_ eye". That Balor was Gog may be inferred from Belerium or Bolerium, being the name applied by Ptolemy to the Land's End district where still stand the rocks called Gog and Magog. That Balor was Polyphemus, the Cyclopean Ciconian, is probable from the fact that he was blinded by a spear driven into his ill-omened eyeball, precisely as Polyphemus was blinded by a blazing stake from Ulysses. Did the unlettered peasantry of Tory Isle derive this tale from Homer, or did Homer get the story from Ogygia, a supposedly ancient name for Erin? Not only is there an identity between the myth of Balor and Polyphemus, but, further--to quote D'arbois de Jubainville--"As fortune strangely has it the Irish name _Balor_ has preserved its identity with _Belleros_, whom the poems of Homer and Hesiod and many other Greek writers have handed down to us in the compound _Bellero-phontes_, 'slayer of Belleros'".[200]
The author of _The Odyssey_ describes the Ciconians as a race endued with superior powers, but as troubling their neighbours with frequent wrongs:--
... o'er the Deep proceeding sad, we reach'd The land at length, where, giant-sized and free From all constraint of law, the Cyclops dwell They, trusting to the Gods, plant not, or plough
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
No councils they convene, no laws contrive But in deep caverns dwell, found on the heads Of lofty mountains.
Apparently some of these same lawless and predatory troglodytes were at one time dwelling in Wales, for a few miles further north of Aberystwith we find the place-name Goginan there applied to what is described as "a locality with extensive lead-mines". The Welsh for cave is _ogof_, or _gogof_, and in Cornish not only _gougou_, but also _ugo_, or _hugo_ meant the same: thus _og_ and _gog_ would seem to have been synonymous, a conclusion confirmed in many other directions, such as _goggle_ and _ogle_. In Hebrew, _og_ meant gigantic, mighty, or long-necked, which evidently is the same word as the British _uch_, German _hoch_, meaning _high_; whence, there is every probability that _Og_, or _Gog_, meant primarily _High-High_, or the _Most High_, and Magog, _Mother Most High_.
Okehampton, on the river Okement in Devonshire, held, like Launceston, a giglet fair, whence it is probable that Kigbear, the curious name of a hamlet in Okehampton, took its title from the same _Kig_ as was responsible for _giglet_. There are numerous allusions in the classics to a Cyclopean rocking-stone known as the Gigonian Rock, but the site of this famous oracle is not known. Joshua refers to the coast of Og, King of Bashan, which was of the remnant of the giants, and that this obnoxious ruler was a troglodyte is manifest from his subterranean capital at Edrei, which is in existence to this day, and will be described later. That at one time Og was a god of the ocean may be deduced from the Rabbinic tradition that he walked by the side of the ark during the flood, and the waters came up only to his knees. From the measurements of Og's famous bedstead it has been calculated that Og himself "was about _nine_ feet high".[201]
In Hebrew _og_ is also understood to mean _he who goes in a circle_, which is suggestive of the Sun or Eye of Heaven. That the sun was the mighty, all-seeing _ogler_ or _goggler_ of the universe is a commonplace among the poets, whence Homer, alluding to the Artist of the World, observes: "His spy the Sun had told him all". To the jocund Sun, which on Easter Day in particular was supposed to dance, may be referred the joyful _gigues_, or _jigs_ of our ancestors. Gig also meant a boy's top, and to the same source may be assigned whirli_gig_. Shec is the Irish form of Jack, and _gigans_ or _gigantic_ are both radically Jack or Jock. In English, Jack means many things, from a big fresh-water fish to a jack pudding, and from Jack-in-Green to Jack-a-lanthorn: Skeat defines it, _inter alia_, as a saucy fellow, and in this sense it is the same as a young cock. Among the characteristics of Mercury--the Celtic Ogmius, or Hercules--were versatility, fascination, trickery, and cunning: sometimes he is described as "a mischievous young thief," whence, perhaps, the old word _cog_, which meant cheating, or trickery.
The names Badcock, Adcock, Pocock, Bocock, Meacock, and Maycock, as also Cook and Cox, are all familiar ones in London or Cockayne. As Prof. Weekley observes, "many explanations have been given to the suffix _cock_, but I cannot say that any of them have convinced me. Both Cock and Cocking are found as early personal names."[202] In London or Cockaigne, coachmen used to swear, "By Gog and Magog,"[203] and it may prove that "By _Gosh_" is like the surnames Goodge and Gooch, an inflection of Gog.
Cogs are the teeth or rays upon a wheel, and that cog meant sun or fire is implied by the word _cook_, _i.e._, baked or fried. _Coch_ is Welsh for _red_, _kakk_ was the Mayan for fire; in the same language _kin_ meant _sun_ and _oc_ meant head, and among the Peruvians _Mama Cocha_ was the title of the Mother of all Mankind. As _coke_ is cooked coal, one might better refer that term to _cook_, than, as officially at present, to _colk_, the core of an apple. It is difficult to appreciate any marked resemblance between coke and the core of an apple.
The authorities connote Cockayne with _cookery_, and there is undoubtedly a connection, but the faerie Cockayne was more probably the Land of All Highest Ayne. The German for cock is _hahn_, and the cock with his jagged scarlet crest was pre-eminently the symbol of the good Shine. Chanticleer, the herald of the dawning sun, was the cognisance of Gaul, and East and West he symbolised the conqueror of darkness:--
Aurora's harbinger--who Scatters the rear of darkness thin.
The Cockayne of London, France, Spain and Portugal was a degraded equivalent to the Irish Tir nan Og, which means the Land of the Young, and the word Cockayne is probably cognate with Yokhanan, the Hebrew form of John, meaning literally, "God is gracious". According to Wright, "the ancient Greeks had their Cockaigne. Athenæus has preserved some passages from lost poets of the best age of Grecian literature, where the burlesque on the golden age and earthly paradise of their mythology bears so striking a resemblance to our descriptions of Cockaigne, that we might almost think, did we not know it to be impossible, that in the one case whole lines had been translated from the other."[204] The probability is, that the poems, like all ancient literature, were long orally preserved by the bards of the two peoples.
In Irish mythology, it is said of Anu, the Great Mother, that well she used to cherish the circle of the Gods; in England Ked or Kerid was "the Great Cherisher," and her symbol as being _perpetual love_ was, with great propriety, that ideal mother, the hen. The word _hen_, according to Skeat, is from the "Anglo-Saxon _hana_, a cock," literally "a singer from his crowing". But a crowing _hen_ is notoriously a freak and an abomination.
In Lancashire there is a place called Ainsworth or Cockey: in Yorkshire there is a river Cock, and near Biggleswade is a place named Cockayne Hatley: the surname Cockayne is attributed to a village in Durham named Coken. In Northumberland is a river Cocket or Coquet, and in this district in the parish of St. John Lee is Cocklaw. Cockshott is an eminence in Cumberland and Cocks Tor--whereon are stone circles and stone rows--is a commanding height in Devon. In Worcestershire is Cokehill, and it is not improbable that Great and Little Coggeshall in Essex, as also the Oxfordshire place-name Coggo, Cogges, or Coggs, are all referable to Gog.
In Northamptonshire is a place known as _Cogenhoe_ or _Cooknoe_, and in seemingly all directions Cook, Cock, and Gog will be found to be synonymous. The place-name Cocknage is officially interpreted as having meant "hatch, half-door, or wicket gate of the cock," but this is not very convincing, for no cock is likely to have had sufficient prestige to name a place. The Cornish place-name Cogynos, is interpreted as "cuckoo in the moor," but cuckoos are sylvan rather than moorland birds: the word _cuckoo_, nevertheless, may imply that this bird was connected with Gog, for the Welsh for cuckoo is _cog_, and in Scotland the cuckoo is known as a _gauk_ or _gowk_. These terms, as also the Cornish _guckaw_, may be decayed forms of the Latin _cuculus_, Greek _kokkuz_, or there are equal chances that they are more primitive. In Cornwall, on 28th April, there used to be held a so-called Cuckoo Feast.[205]
There is an English river Cocker: a _cocker_ was a prize fighter, and it is possible that the expression, "not according to cocker," may contain an allusion older than popularly supposed. There are rivers named _Ock_, both in Berks and Devon, and at Derby there is an Ockbrook: there is an Ogwell in Devon, a river Ogmore in Glamorganshire, and a river Ogwen in Carnarvon. In Wiltshire is an Ogbourne or river Og, and on the Wiltshire Avon there is a prehistoric British camp called Ogbury. This edifice may be described as _gigantic_ for it covers an area of 62 acres, is upwards of a mile in circuit, and has a rampart 30 to 33 feet high.[206] The number 33 occurred in connection with the original British giants, said to be 33 in number, and we shall meet with 30 or 33 frequently hereafter. _Ogre_ (of unknown origin), meaning a giant, may be connoted with the Iberian _ogro_, and with _haugr_ the Icelandic word for hill, with which etymologers connect the adjective _huge_: the old Gaulish for a hill was _hoge_ or _hogue_,[207] and the probability would seem to be that Og and _huge_ were originally the same term. There is a huge earthwork at Uig in Scotland, the walls of which, like those at Ogbury in Wiltshire, measure 30 feet in height.
The surname Hogg does not necessarily imply a swinish personality: more probably the original Hoggs were like the Haigs, followers of the Hagman, who was commemorated in Scotland during the Hogmanay festivities. In Turkey _aga_ means _lord_ or _chief officer_, and in Greece _hagia_ means holy, whence the festival of Hogmanay has been assumed to be a corruption of the Greek words _hagia mene_, in _holy month_. If this were so it would be interesting to know how these Greek terms reached Scotland, but, as a matter of fact, Hogmanay does not last a month: at the outside it was a fête of three weeks, and more particularly three nights.
_Three weeks_ before the day whereon was borne the Lorde of Grace, And on the Thursdaye boyes and girls do runne in every place, And bounce and beate at every doore, with blowes and lustie snaps, And crie, the Advent of the Lord not borne as yet perhaps, And wishing to the neighbours all, that in the houses dwell, A happie yeare, and every thing to spring and prosper well: Here have they peares, and plumbs, and pence, ech man gives willinglee, For these three nightes are alwayes thought unfortunate to bee; Wherein they are affrayde of sprites and cankred witches spight, And dreadful devils blacke and grim, that then have chiefest might.[208]
During Hogmanay it was customary for youths to go in procession from house to house singing chants of heroic origin:--
As we used to do in old King Henry's day, Sing fellows, sing Hagman heigh!
The King Henry here mentioned is probably not one of the Tudors, but the more primitive Nick or Old Harry, and the percipient divine who thundered against the popular festival: "Sirs, do you know what Hagmane signifies? It is _the Devil be in the house_! That's the meaning of its _Hebrew original_," had undoubtedly good grounds for his denunciation.
But the still more original meaning of Hagman was in all probability the _uchman_, or high man, or giant man. According to Hellenic mythology Hercules was the son of Jove and Alcmena: the name Alcmena is apparently the feminine form of _All_ or _Holy Acmen_--whence indirectly the word _acumen_ or "sharp mind"--the two forms _mena_ and _man_ seemingly figure in Scotch custom as _Hogmanay_, and as the _Hagman_ of "Sing Hagman heigh!"[209]
One of the great Roman roads of Britain is known as Akeman Street, and as it happens that this prehistoric highway passes Bath it has been gravely suggested that it derived its title from the gouty, aching men who limped along to Bath to take the waters. But as _man_ is the same word as _main_ the word Akeman Street resolves more reasonably into _High Main_ Street, which is precisely what it was.
In some parts of England fairy-rings are known as Hag-tracks, whence seemingly fairies were sometimes known as hags: at Lough Crew in Ireland, there is a cabalistically-decorated stone throne known as "the Hag's Chair".
In Mid-Wales _ague_ is known as _y wrach_, which means the hag or the old hag; the notion being that _ague_ (and all _aches_?) were smitings of the ugly old Hag, or "awd Goggie". Various indications seem to point to the conclusion that the aboriginal "bedrock" Og or Gog was a Tyrian or Turanian Deity, and that in the eyes of the Hellenes and Trojans anything to do with Og was _ug_ly, _i.e._, Ug-like and _ug_some.
In the county of Fife the last night of the dying year used to be known as Singin-e'en, a designation which is connected with the carols sung on that occasion. But _Singin_ may, and in all probability did, mean Sinjohn, for the Celtic _Geon_ or _giant_ was Ogmius the Mighty Muse, and _chant_ing was attributed to this world-enchanter. As already seen he was pictured leading the children of men tongue-tied by his eloquence, and it is not improbable that Ogmius is equivalent to Mighty Muse, for _muse_ in Greek is _mousa_. According to Assyrian mythology the God of wondrous and enchanting Wisdom rose daily from the sea and was named Oannes--obviously a Hellenised form of John or Yan. Among the Aryan nations _an_ meant mind, and this term is clearly responsible for _inane_ or without _ane_. The dictionaries attribute _inane_ to a "root unknown," but the same root is at the base of _anima_, the soul, whence _animate_ or living. Oannes, who was evidently the Great Acumen or Almighty Mind is said to have emerged daily from the ocean in order to instruct mankind, and he may be connoted with the Hebridian sea-god Shony. In the image of the benevolent Oannes reproduced overleaf it will be noted he is crowned with the cross of Allbein or All Well.
In Brittany there are legends of a sea-maid of enchanting song, and wondrous acumen named Mary Morgan, and this _incantatrice_ corresponds to Morgan le fay or Morgiana. The Welsh for Mary is Fair, and the fairies of Celtic countries were known as the Mairies,[210] whence "Mary Morgan" was no doubt "Fairy Morgan". In Celtic _mor_ or _mawr_ also meant big, whence Morgan may be equated with _big gan_ and Morgiana with either Big Jane or Fairy Giana. This fairy Big _gyne_ or Big _woman_ was known alternatively in the East as _Merjan Banou_ and in Italy as Fata or Maga.
It is authoritatively assumed that the word _cogitate_ is from _co_ "together" and _agere_ "to drive," but "driving together" is not cogitation. The root _cog_ which occurs in _cogent_, _cogitate_, _cognisance_, and _cognition_ is more probably an implication that Gog like Oannes was deemed to be the Lord of the Deep wisdom: Gog, in fact, stands to Oannes or Yan in the same relation as Jack stands to John: the one is seemingly a synonym for the other.
The word _magic_ implies a connection with Maga or Magog: in Greek _mega_ means great, and the combined idea of great and wise is extended into _magus_, _magister_, and _magician_. The Latin _magnus_ and _magna_ are respectively Mag Unus and Mag Una: Mogounus was one of the titles applied to St. Patrick, and it was also a sobriquet of the Celtic Sun God.[211]
One of the stories of the Wandering Jew represents him as benevolently assisting a weaver named _Kokot_ to discover treasure, and in an Icelandic legend of the same Wanderer he is entitled Magus. On Magus being interrogated as to his name he replied that he was called "Vidforull," which looks curiously like "Feed for all," or "Food for all". The story relates that Magus possessed the marvellous capability of periodically casting his skin, and of becoming on each occasion younger than before. The first time he accomplished this magic feat he was 330 years old--a significant age--and in face of an astonished audience he gave a repetition of the wonderful performance. Baring his head and stroking himself all over the body, he rolled together the skin he was in and lay down before a staff or post muttering to himself: "Away with age, that I may have my desire". After lying awhile motionless he suddenly worked himself head foremost into the post, which thereupon closed over him and became again solid. Soon, however, the bemazed onlookers heard a great noise in the post, which began gradually to bulge at one end, and after a few convulsive movements the feet of Magus appeared, followed in due course by the rest of his body. After this bewildering feat Magus lay for awhile as though dead, but when the beholders were least expecting it he sprang suddenly up, rolled the skin from off his head, saluted the King, and behold "they saw that he was no other than a beardless youth and fair faced".[212]
This magic change is not only suggestive of the two-faced Janus, but also of Aeon, one of the British titles for the Sun:--
Aeon hath seen age after age in long succession roll, But like a serpent which has cast its skin, Rose to new life in youthful vigour strong.
Commenting on this passage Owen Morgan observes: "The expression 'cast his skin' alluded to the idea that the Sun of the old year had his body destroyed in the heavens at noon on each 20th December, by the Power of Darkness".[213] The Gnostics considered there were thirty divine Powers or Rulers, corresponding obviously to the days of the month, and these Powers they termed Aeons: among the Greeks _aeon_ meant an enormously vast tract of time; in Welsh _Ion_ means Leader or Lord.
The story of Vidforull or Magus gains in interest in view of his mystic age of 330, or ten times 33, and the emerging-ex-post incident may have some connection with the nomenclature of the flame-flowered staff or post now termed a Hollyhock, or _Holy Hock_. One of the miracles attributed to St. Kit--a miracle which we are told was the means of converting _eight_ thousand men to Christianity--was the budding of his staff. "Christopher set his staff in the earth, and when he arose on the morn he found his staff like a palmier bearing flowers, leaves, and dates." Kit or Kate is the same word as "Kaad," and there is a serpent represented on the post or staff at St. Alban's Kaadman, figured on p. 110. The serpent was universally the symbol of subtlety and deep wisdom, and among the Celts it was, because it periodically sloughed its skin, regarded as the emblem of regeneration and rejuvenescence.[214]
The _Hawk_, which is the remaining symbol of the Kaadman (Fig. 16), was the _uch_ or high-flying bird, which soared sun-wise and hovered overworld eyeing or ogling the below with penetrating and all-seeing vision. It is difficult to see any rational connection between _hawk_ and _heave_--a connection which for some mysterious reason the authorities connote--but the hawk was unquestionably an emblem of the Most High. A hawker is a harokel, Hercules, or merchant, and with _Maga_ may be connoted _magazine_, which means storehouse. In Celtic _mako_ or _maga_ means "I feed"; in Welsh _magu_ means _breed_, and to _nurse_; in Welsh _magad_ is _brood_. It is to this root that obviously may be assigned the Gaelic Mac or Mc, which means "breed of" or "children of". In the Isle of Man, the inhabitants claimed to be descended from the fairies, whence perhaps the MacAuliffes of Albany originally claimed to be children of the Elf. Among the Berbers of Africa _Mac_ has precisely the same meaning as among the Gaels, and among the Tudas of India _mag_ also means _children of_. "Surely after this," says a commentator, "the McPhersons and McGregors of our Highland glens need not hesitate to claim as Scotch cousins the inhabitants of the Indian peninsula."[215]
There are many tales current in Cornwall of a famous witch known as "Maggie Figgie," and a particular rock on one of the most impressive headlands of the Duchy is entitled "Maggy Figgie's Chair". Here, it is said, Maggie was wont to seat herself when calling to her aid the spirits of the storm, and upon this dizzy height she swung to and fro as the storms far below rolled in from the Atlantic. Just as _Maggie_ is radically _make_, so is _figgy_ related to _fake_. The many-seeded _fica_ or _fig_ was the symbol of the Mother of Millions, and the same root is responsible for _fecund_, and probably for _phooka_, which is the Irish for Fairy or Elf. _Feckless_ means without resource, shiftless, incompetent, and incapable; _vague_ means wandering, and the word vagabond is probably due to the beneficent _phooka_ or Wanderer. That Pan was not only a hill and wood deity, but also a sea-vagabond is implied by the invocation:--
Io! Io! Pan! Pan! Oh Pan thou _ocean Wanderer_.[216]
In Northumberland among the Fern Islands is a rock known as the Megstone, and in Westmorland is the famous megalithic monument, known as Long Meg and her Daughters. The daughters were here represented by seventy-two stones placed in a circle (there are now only sixty-seven), and Long Meg herself, who is said to have been the last of the Titans, is identified with an outstanding rock, which is recorded as measuring 18 feet in height, and 15 feet in circumference. The monument is situated on what is called The Maiden Way, and the measurement 15 is therefore significant, for the number 15 was peculiarly the Maiden's number, and "when she was fifteen years of age" is almost a standard formula in the lives of the Saints. We shall meet with fifteen in connection with the Virgin Mary, who, we shall note, was reputed to have lived to the age of seventy-two. The circle of "the Merry Maidens" near St. Just is 72 feet in diameter, and the Nine Maidens near Penzance is also 72 feet in diameter.[217] Christ the Corner Stone is said to have had seventy-two disciples, and the seventy-two stones of Long Meg's circle have probably some relation to the seventy-two dodecans into which the Chaldean and Egyptian Zodiac was divided. In connection with _magu_, the Welsh for nurse, it is worth noting that St. Margaret, or St. Meg, is said to have been delivered to a nurse to be kept, but on a certain day, when she was fifteen years of age and kept the sheep of her nurse, her circumstances took a sudden change for the worse.
The Parthenon, or Maiden's House, at Athens was supported by fifteen pairs of columns; the number eighteen is twice nine, and in all probability stood for the divine twain, Meg and Mike, Michal and St. Michael. The duality of St. Michael which is portrayed in Fig. 200, page 363, was no doubt also symbolised by the two rocks, which, according to _The Golden Legend_, Michael removed and replaced by a single piece of stone of marble. A second apparition recorded of St. Michael states that the saint stood on a stone of marble, and anon, because the people had great penury and need of water, there flowed out so much water that unto this day they be sustained by the benefit thereof.[218] This is evidently the same miracle as that illustrated in Fig. 21, on page 130, and in this connection it is noticeable that in the neighbourhood of Mickleham (Surrey) are Margery Hall, Mogadur, and Mug's well.
Meg is a primitive form of Margaret, and in Art St. Margaret is always represented as the counterpart of St. Michael with a vanquished dragon at her feet. To account for this emblem the hagiographers relate that St. Margaret was swallowed by a dragon, but that the cross which she happened to be holding caused the creature to burst, whereupon St. Margaret emerged from its stomach unscathed.
There is a counterpart to Maggie Figgie's chair at St. Michael's Mount, but in the latter case "Kader Migell" was a hallowed site. "Who knows not Mighell's Mount and chair, the pilgrims Holy vaunt?" According to Carew this original "chair," outside the castle, was a bad seat in a craggy place, somewhat dangerous of access.
St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall used to be known as Dinsul, which the authorities suggest was _dun sol_, or the Sun Hill. Very probably this was so, and there is an equal probability that it meant also _din seul_, _i.e._, the hill of _Le Seul_ or _La Seule_, the Solitary or Alone.[219] In the Old Testament Michal figures as the daughter of King _Saul_, which is curious in view of St. Michael's Mount being named Din_seul_. St. Michael's in Brittany and St. Michael's elsewhere are dedicated _ad duas tumbas_, which means the two tumuli or tumps.[220] At St. Albans, the sacred processions started from two tumps or _toot_ hills, and it may be suggested these symbolised the two _teats_ of the primeval parent. In Ireland at Killarney are two mounts now termed The Paps, but originally known as The Paps of Anu, _i.e._, the Irish _Magna Mater_. Similar "Paps" are common in other parts of Britain, and there is little doubt that _mam_, the Welsh for a gently rising hill, has an intimate relation to mammal or teat. The Toothills were where _tout_ or _all_ congregated together in convocation, and in all probability every toot hill originally represented the teat of Tad, or Dad, the Celtic _tata_, or daddy. Toot hills are alternatively known as moot hills, and this latter term may be connoted with _maeth_, the Welsh for _nourishment_: near Sunderland are two round-topped rocks named Maiden Paps.
Mickleham in Surrey is situated at the base of Tot Hill: Tothill Street at Westminster marks the locality of an historic toot hill standing in Tothill Fields, and at Westminster the memory of St. Margaret has seemingly survived in dual form--as the ecclesiastical St. Margaret whose church nestles up against the Abbey of St. Peter, and as the popular giantess Long Meg. This celebrated heroine "did not only pass all the rest of her country in the length of her proportion, but every limbe was so fit to her talnesse that she seemed the picture and shape of some tall man cast in a woman mould". In times gone by a "huge" stone in the cloisters of Westminster used to be pointed out to visitors as the very gravestone of Long Meg,[221] and this "long, large, and entire" piece of rock may be connoted with the Megstone of the Fern Islands and the Long Meg of Cumberland. In 1635 there was published _The Life of Long Meg of Westminster_, containing the mad merry pranks she played in her lifetime, not only in performing sundry quarrels with divers ruffians about London, but also how valiantly she behaved herself in the "Warres of Bolloinge".
This allusion to Bolloinge suggests that the chivalrous and intrepid Long Meg was famous at Bulloigne, and that the name of that place is cognate with Bellona, the Goddess of War. That the valiant St. Margaret was as unconquerable as Micah was _invictus_, may be judged from the sacred legend that the devil once appeared before her in the likeness of a man, whereupon, after a short parley, "she caught him by the head and threw him to the ground, and set her right foot on his neck saying: 'Lie still, thou fiend, under the feet of a woman'. The devil then cried: 'O Blessed Margaret, I am overcome'".
As St. Michael was the Leader of All Angels, so St. Margaret was the Mother of All Children, and the circle of Long Meg was evidently a mighty delineation of the Marguerite, Marigold, or Daisy. The Celts, with their exquisite imagination, figured the daisy or marguerite as the symbol of innocence and the newly-born. There is a Celtic legend to the effect that every unborn babe taken from earth becomes a spirit which scatters down upon the earth some new and lovely flower to cheer its parents. "We have seen," runs an Irish tale, "the infant you regret reclining on a light mist; it approached us, and shed on our fields a harvest of new flowers. Look, oh, Malvina! among these flowers we distinguish one with a golden disc surrounded by silver leaves: a sweet tinge of crimson adorns its delicate rays; waved by a gentle wind we might call it a little infant playing in a green meadow, and the flower of thy bosom has given a new flower to the hills of Cromla. Since that day the daughters of Morven have consecrated the Daisy to infancy. It is called the flower of innocence; the flower of the new-born."[222]
The Scotch form of Margaret is Maisie, and from the word _muggy_, meaning a warm, light mist, it would seem that Maisie or Maggy was the divinity of mists and moisture. It was widely supposed that the mists of Mother Earth, commingling with the beams of the Father Sun, were together the source of all juvenescence and life. According to Owen Morgan, "Ked's influence from below was supposed to be exercised by exhalations, the breathings as it were of the Great Mother,"[223] and it is still a British belief that--
Mist in spring is the source of wine, Mist in summer is the source of heat, Mist in autumn is the source of rain, Mist in winter is the source of snow.
Maggie or Maisie being thus probably the Maid of the Mist, or Mistress of the Moisture, and there being no known etymology for _fog_, the unpopular Maggie Figgie who sat in her chair charming the spirits of the ocean, was perhaps the ill-omened Maggie _Foggy_.
It is a world-wide characteristic of the Earth Mother to appear anon as a baleful hag, anon as a lovely maid, and in all probability to "Maid Margaret that was so meeke and milde," may be attributed the adjective _meek_. In London an ass, in Cockney parlance, is a _moke_; Christ was said to ride upon an ass as symbolic of his meekness, and as already noted Christ by the Gnostics was represented as ass-headed. The worship of the Golden Ass persisted in Europe until a comparatively late period; a _jenny_ is a female moke, a jackass is the masculine of Jenny.
At St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall is a Jack the Giant-Killer's Well. The French name Michelet means "little Michael," and that Great Michael was Cain the Wandering One is implied by the tradition that St. Kayne visited St. Michael's Mount, and conferred certain powers upon the stone seat or Kader Mighel situated so dizzily amid the crags. The orthodoxy of this St. Kayne--who appears again at Keynsham--was evidently more than suspect, and according to Norden "this Kayne is said to be a woman-saynte, but it better resembleth _kayne_, the devil who had the shape of a man". At Keynsham St. Kayne is popularly supposed to have turned serpents into stone, and there is no doubt that his or her name was intimately associated with the serpent. The Celtic names Kean and Kenny are translated to mean _vast_, but in Cornish _ken_ meant pity, and _ken_, _cunning_, and _canny_ all imply knowledge and deep wisdom. In Welsh, _cain_ means _sun_ and also _fair_; _candere_, to glow, is, of course, connected with _candescent_, _candid_, and _candour_.
The seat on St. Michael's Tower is the counterpart to Maggie Figgie's Chair, which is near the village of St. Levan, and in the previous chapter it was seen that _Levan_ or _Elvan_ was a synonym for _elban_ or _Alban_. The family name at St. Michael's Mount is St. Levan, and the usual abode of Maggie Figgie is assigned to the adjacent village of St. Levan. The chief fact recorded of St. Levan is his cell shown at Bodellen, near which is his seat--a rock split _in two_. He is also associated with a chad fish, entitled "chuck child," to account for which a ridiculous story has been concocted to the effect that St. Levan once caught a chad, which _choked_ a child. Like the cod the chad was perhaps so named because of its amazing fecundity, and the term _chuck child_ was probably once Jack, the child Michael, or the giant-killing Jack, whose well stands on St. Michael's Mount. It is not improbable that "chuck," like Jack, is an inflexion of Gog, and that it is an almost pure survival of the British _uch uch_ or _high high_. The great festival of Gog and Magog in Cockaigne was unquestionably on Lord Mayor's Show Day, and this used originally to fall--or rather the Lord Mayor was usually chosen--on Michaelmas Day.[224]
In addition to associating St. Levan with the chad or "chuck child," legend also connects St. Levan with a woman named Johanna. W. C. Borlase observes that Carew calls him St. Siluan, and that this form is still retained in the euphonious name of an estate Selena. Selena was a title under which the Mother of Night, the consort of Cain, the Man in the Moon, was worshipped by the Greeks. With regard to the _Sel_ of Selena or Silenus it will be seen as we proceed that _silly_, _Seeley_, etc., did not imply idiocy, but that _silly_, as in Scotland where it meant _holy_, and as in the German _selig_, primarily meant _innocent_. We speak to-day of "silly sheep"; in the Middle Ages Christ was termed the silly Babe, and the county of Suffolk still vaunts itself as Silly Suffolk. Silene or Selina would thus imply the Innocent or Holy Una: her counterpart Silenus was usually represented as a jovial, genial, and merry patriarch. Selenus, like Janus, was apparently the Old Father Christmas, and Selena or _Cyn_thia seemingly the maiden Cain, Kayne, St. Kenna, or Jana.
At Treleven, the _tre_ or the Home of Leven, there is a Lady's Well said to possess exceptional healing properties, and the power of conferring great vigour and might to the constitution. _Levin_ in Old English meant the lightning flash, _Levant_ was the uprising, the Orient, or the East, and _levante_ is Italian for the wind. According to Etruscan mythology, there were _eleven_ thunderbolts or _levins_ wielded by Nine Great Gods,[225] and that the number eleven was associated with Long Meg of Westmorland, would appear from the fact that her circle measured "about 1100 feet in circumference". With this measurement may be connoted the British camp on Herefordshire Beacon, "which takes the form of an irregular oval 1100 yards in length,"[226] and that 1100 implied some special sanctity may be gathered from the bardic lines--
The age of Jesus, the fair and energetic Hu In God's Truth was eleven hundred.[227]
The more usually assumed age of Jesus, _i.e._, thirty-three, may be connoted with the persistent thirty-threes elsewhere considered. The diameter of the circle of Long Meg and her Daughters is stated as 330 feet,[228] a measurement which seemingly has some relation to the 330 years of age assigned to Magus when he accomplished his magic change.
Christianity has retained the memory of a St. Ursula and 11,000 virgins, but it has been a puzzle to hagiographers to account for the "11" or 11,000 so persistently associated with her. In his essay on the legend, Baring-Gould refers to it as being "generated out of worse than nothing," lamenting this and kindred stories. "Alas! too often they are but apples of Sodom, fair-cheeked, but containing the dust and ashes of heathenism". But the story of St. Ursula is essentially beautiful; moreover, it is essentially British. _The Golden Legend_ tells us that Ursula was a British princess, and Cornwall claims, with a probability of right, that she was Cornish. Her mother was named Daria, her cousin Adrian, and there is a clear memory of the Darian, Adrian, Droian, or Trojan games perpetrated in the incident which _The Golden Legend_ thus records: "By the counsel of the Queen the Virgins were gathered together from diverse realms, and she was leader of them, and at the last she suffered martyrdom with them. And then the condition made, all things were made ready. Then the Queen shewed her counsel to the Knights of her Company, and made them all to swear this new chivalry, and then began they to make diverse plays and games of battle as to run here and there, and feigned many manners of plays. And for all that they left not their purpose, and sometimes they returned from this play at midday, and sometimes unnethe at evensong time. And the barons and great lords assembled them to see the fair games and disports, and all had joy and pleasure in beholding them, and also marvel."[229]
From this account it would appear that twice a day the followers of St. Ursula joyed themselves and the onlookers by a sacred ballet, which no doubt symbolised in its convolutions the ethereal Harmony and the ordered movements of the Stars. Her consort's name is given as Ethereus, whence Ursula herself must have been Etherea, the Ethereal maid, conceived in all likelihood at the idyllic island Doliche, Idea, Aeria, Candia, or Crete. The name Ursula means _bear_, and it was supposed that around the seven stars of Arcturus, the immovable Great Bear, all the lesser stars wheeled in an everlasting procession. Of this giant's wheel or marguerite, Margaret, or Peggie, was seemingly deemed to be the axle, _peg_, or Golden Eye, and this idea apparently underlies Homer:--
... the axle of the Sky, The Bear revolving points his _Golden Eye_.
Having quitted Britain, St. Ursula and her train of 11,000 maidens underwent various vicissitudes. Eventually circumstances took them to Cologne, whereupon, to quote _The Golden Legend_, "When the Huns saw them they began to run upon them with a great cry and araged like wolves on sheep, and slew all this great multitude".[230] From time to time the monks of Cologne have unearthed large deposits of children's bones which have piously been claimed to be authentic relics of the 11,000 martyrs.
In China and Japan the Great Mother is represented pouring forth the bubbling waters of creation from a vase, and in every bubble is depicted a small babe. This Goddess Kwanyon, known as the _eleven faced_ and _thousand handed_, is represented at the temple of San-ju-San-gen-do by 33,333 images, and her name resolves, as will be seen, into Queen Yon. The name China, French Chine, is John, and Japon or Yapon, the land of the Rising Sun, whose cognisance is the Marguerite or Golden Daisy, whose priests are termed _bonzes_, and whose national cry is _banzai_, is radically the same as the British _Eubonia_ or Hobany, La Dame Abonde, the Giver of _Abundance_.
Among the megalithic remains in Brittany there have been found ornaments of jade, a material which, until recently, was supposed not to exist except in China or Japan. At Carnac, near the town of Elven, is the world-famed megalithic ruin now consisting of eleven rows of rocks, said to number "somewhere between nine and ten thousand". As for many years these relics have been habitually broken up and used for building and road-making purposes, it is not unlikely that originally there were 1000 rocks in each of the eleven rows, totalling in all to the mystic 11,000. We shall see in a later chapter that _Elphin_ stones were frequently _eleven_ feet high: our word _eleven_ is _elf_ in Dutch, _ellifir_ in Icelandic, _ainlif_ or _einlif_ in Gothic; but why this number should thus have been associated with the elves I am unable to decide, nor can I surmise why the authorities connote the word _eleven_ with _lika_, which means "remaining," or with _linguere_, which means "to leave". In modern Etruria it is believed by the descendants of the Etruscans that the old Etruscan deities of the woods and fields still live in the world as spirits, and among the ancient Etrurians it was held that in the spiritual world the rich man and the poor man, the master and the servant, were all upon one level or all _even_.[231] Our word _heaven_ is radically _even_ and _ange_, the French for _angel_ is the same word as _onze_ meaning _eleven_.
_The Golden Legend_ associates St. Maur with the Church of St. Maurice, where a blind man named Lieven is said to have sat for eleven years.[232] This marked connection between Maurice and eleven renders it probable that St. Maurice was the same King Maurus of Britain as was reputed to be the father of St. Ursula. The precise site of the monarch's domain is not mentioned, but as Cornwall claims him the probabilities are that his seat was St. Levan. St. Maurus of the Church Calendar is reputed to have walked on the waters, and he is represented in Art as holding the weights and measures with which he is said to have made the correct allotment of bread and wine to his monks. These supposed "measures" are tantamount to St. Michael's scales, which were sometimes assigned by Christianity to God the Father.
Ursula, as the daughter of Maurus, would have been Maura, and in face of the walking-on-the-sea story she was, no doubt, the Mairymaid, Merrowmaid, or Mermaid. Of St. Margaret we read that after her body had been broiled with burning brands, the blessed Virgin, without any hurt, issued out of the water. That St. Michael was associated in Art with a similar incident is evident from his miraculous preservation of a woman "wrapped in the floods of the sea". St. Michael "kept this wife all whole, and she was delivered and childed among the waves in the middle of the sea".[233] The Latin word _mergere_, _i.e._, Margery, means to sink into the sea, and _emerge_ means to rise out of the sea. In Cornwall Margery Daw is elevated into _Saint_ Margery Daw, and we may assume that her celebrated see-saw was the eternal merging and emerging of the Sun and Moon.
The Cornish pinnacle associated with Maggie Figgy of St. Levan may be connoted with a monolith overlooking Loch Leven and entitled, "Carlin Maggie" or "Witch Maggie". This precipitous rock is precisely the same granite formation as is Maggie Figgy's Chair, and legend says that it originated from Maggie "flyting" the devil who turned her into stone.[234] The Scotch Loch Leven is known locally as Loch Eleven, "because it is eleven miles round, is surrounded by eleven hills, is fed or drained by eleven streams, has eleven islands, is tenanted by eleven kinds of fish".[235] It was also said to have been surrounded by the estates of eleven lairds.
At Dunfermline is St. Margaret's Stone, "probably the last remnant of a Druid circle or a cromlech".[236]
The megalithic Long Meg in Westmorland, standing by what is termed the "Maiden Way," is in close proximity to Hunsonby. The Dutch for _sun_ is _zon_, the German is _sonne_, whence Hunsonby in all probability was once deemed a _by_ or _abode_ of _Hunson_ the _ancient sun_ or _zone_.
The circle of Long Meg is an _enceinte_, _i.e._, an _incinctus_, circuit or enclosure; that St. Margaret of Christendom was the patroness of all _enceinte_ women is obvious from Brand's reference to St. Margaret's Day, as a time "when all come to church that are, or hope to be, with child that year". _Sein_ is the French for bosom, and that Ursula of the 11,000 virgins was a personification of the Good Mother of the Universe or Bosom of the World may be further implied by the fact that she corresponds, according to Baring-Gould, with the Teutonic Holda. Holda or Holle (the Holy), is a gentle Lady, ever accompanied by the souls of maidens and children who are under her care. Surrounded by these bright-eyed followers she sits in a mountain of crystal, and comes forth at times to scatter the winter snow, vivify the spring earth, or bless the fruits of autumn.
The kindly Mother Holle was sometimes entitled Gode,[237] whence we may connote Margot, Marghet, or Marget with Big Good, or Big God. In Cornwall the Holly tree is termed Aunt Mary's tree, which, I think, is equal to Aunt Maura's tree, St. Maur being tantamount to St. Fairy or St. Big.
According to Sir John Rhys, Elen the Fair of Britain figures like St. Ursula as the leader of the heavenly virgins; St. Levan's cell is shown at Bodellen in St. Levan, and as in Cornwall _bod_--as in Bodmin--meant _abode of_, one may resolve Bodellen into the _abode of Ellen_, and equate Ellen or Helen with Long Meg or St. Michael.
We may recognise St. Kayne in the Kendale-Lonsdale district of North Britain, where also in the neighbourhood of the rivers Ken or Can, and Lone or Lune is a maiden way and an Elen's Causeway.[238] On the river Can is a famous waterfall at Levens, and in the same neighbourhood a seat of the ancient Machel family. In 1724 there existed at Winander Mere "the carcass of an ancient city,"[239] and it is not improbable that the _ander_ of Winander is related to the divine Thorgut, whose effigy from a coin is reproduced in a later chapter (Fig 422, p. 675). Kendal or Candale has always been famous for its British "cottons and coarse cloaths".
In Etruria and elsewhere good genii were represented as winged elves--old plural _elven_--and the word _mouche_ implies that not only butterflies and moths, but also all winged flies were deemed to be the children of Michael or Michelet. According to Payne Knight, "The common Fly, being in its first stage of existence a principal agent in dissolving and dissipating all putrescent bodies, was adopted as an emblem of the Deity".[240] Thus it would seem that not only the _mouches_, but likewise the _maggots_ were deemed to be among Maggie's millions, fighting like the Hosts of Michael against filth, decay, and death.
The connection between flies or mouches, and the elves or elven, seems to have been appreciated in the past, for _The Golden Legend_ likens the lost souls of Heaven, _i.e._, the elven of popular opinion, to flies: "By the divine dispensation they descend oft unto us in earth, as like it hath been shewn to some holy men. They fly about us as flies, they be innumerable, and like flies they fill the air without number."[241] Even to-day it is supposed that the spirits of holy wells appear occasionally in the form of flies, and there is little doubt that Beelzebub, the "Lord of flies," _alias_ Lucifer, whose name literally means "Light Bringer," was once innocuous and beautiful.
In Cornwall flies seem to have been known as "Mother Margarets" (a fact of which I was unaware when equating _mouche_ with Michelet or Meg), for according to Miss Courtney, "Three hundred fathoms below the ground at Cook's Kitchen Mine, near Cambourne, swarms of flies may be heard buzzing, called by the men for some unknown reason 'Mother Margarets'".[242] Whether these subterranean "Mother Margarets" are peculiar to Cook's Kitchen Mine, and whether Cook has any relation to Gog and to the Cocinians who in deep caverns dwelt, I am unable to trace.
That St. Michael was Lord of the Muckle and the Mickle, is supported in the statement that "he was prince of the synagogue of the Jews".[243] The word _synagogue_ is understood to have meant--a bringing together, a congregation; but this was evidently a secondary sense, due, perhaps, to the fact that the earliest synagogues were not held beneath a roof, but were congregations in sacred plains or hill-sides. It may reasonably be assumed that synagogues were prayer meetings in honour primarily of San Agog, St. Michael, or the Leader and Bringer together of all souls.
By the Greeks the sobriquet Megale was applied to Juno the pomegranate--holding Mother of Millions, and the bird pre-eminently sacred to Juno was the Goose. The cackling of Juno's or Megale's sacred geese saved the Capitol, and the Goose of Michaelmas Day is seemingly that same sacred bird. In Scotland St. Michael's Day was associated with the payment of so-called cane geese, the word _cane_ or _kain_ here being supposed to be the Gaelic _cean_, which meant _head_, and its original sense, a duty paid by a tenant to his landlord in kind. The word _due_ is the same as _dieu_, and the association of St. Keyne with Michael renders it probable that the cane goose was primarily a _dieu_ offering or an offering to the Head King Cun, or Chun. Etymology would suggest that the cane goose was preferably a _gan_der.
Even in the time of the Romans, the Goose was sacred in Britain, and East and West it seems to have been an emblem of the Unseen Origin. In India, Brahma, the Breath of Life, was represented riding on a goose, and by the Egyptians the Sun was supposed to be a Golden Egg laid by the primeval Goose. The little yellow egg or _goose_berry was seemingly--judged by its otherwise inexplicable name--likened to the Golden Egg laid by Old Mother Goose. Among the symbols elsewhere dealt with were some representative of a goose from whose mouth a curious flame-like emission was emerging. I am still of the opinion that this was intended to depict the Fire or Breath of Life, and that the hissing habits of the Swan and Goose caused those birds to be elevated into the eminence as symbols of the Breath. The word _goose_ or _geese_ is radically _ghost_, which literally means spirit or breath; it is also the same as _cause_ with which may be connoted _chaos_. According to Irish mythology that which existed at the beginning was Chaos, the Father of Darkness or Night, subsequently came the Earth who produced the mountains, and the sea, and the sky.[244]
In this emblem here reproduced Chaos or Abyssus is figured as the youthful apex of a primeval peak; at the base are geese, and the creatures midway are evidently seals. The _seal_ is the silliest of gentle creatures, and being amphibious was probably the symbol of _Celi_, the Concealed One, whose name occurs so frequently in British Mythology. To _seal_ one's eyelids means to close them, and the blind old man named Lieven, who sat in the porch of St. Maurice's for eleven years, may be connoted with Homer the blind and wandering old Bard, who dwelt upon the rocky islet of Chios, query _chaos_? Among the Latins _Amor_ or Love was the oldest of the gods, being the child of Nox or Chaos: Love--"this senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid"[245]--is proverbially blind, and the words Amor, Amour, are probably not only Homer, but likewise St. Omer. The British (Welsh) form of Homer is Omyr: the authorship of Homer has always been a matter of perplexity, and the personality of the blind old bard of Chios will doubtless remain an enigma until such time as the individuality of "Old Moore," "Aunt Judy," and other pseudonyms is unravelled. It has always been the custom of story-tellers to attribute their legends to a fabulous origin, and the most famous collection of fairy-tales ever produced was published in France under the title _Contes de la Mere Oie_--"The Tales of Mother Goose". Goose is radically the same word as _gas_, a term which was coined by a Belgian chemist in 1644 from the Greek _chaos_: the Irish for swan is _geis_, and all the geese tribe are gassy birds which gasp.
In a subsequent chapter we shall analyse _goose_ into _ag'oos_, the Mighty _Ooze_, whence the ancients scientifically supposed all life to have originated, and shall equate _ooze_ with _hoes_, the Welsh word for _life_, and with _Ouse_ or _Oise_, a generic British river name. In _huss_, the German for _goose_, we may recognise the _oose_ without its adjectival '_g_'.
With the Blind Old Bard of Chios may be connoted the Cornish longstone known as "The Old Man,"[246] or "The Fiddler," also a second longstone known as "The Blind Fiddler".[247] In _because_ or _by cause_ we pronounce _cause_ "_koz_," and in Slav fairy-tales as elsewhere there is frequent mention of an Enchanter entitled _Kostey_, whose strength and vitality lay in a monstrous egg. The name _Kostey_ may be connoted with _Cystennyns_,[248] an old Cornish and Welsh form of Constantine: at the village of Constantine in Cornwall there is what Borlase describes as a vast egg-like stone placed on the points of two natural rocks, and pointing due North and South. This Tolmen or Meantol--"an egg-shaped block of granite _thirty-three_ feet long, and _eighteen_ feet broad, supposed by some antiquaries to be Druidical, is here on a barren hill 690 feet high".[249] The Greek for egg is _oon_, and our _egg_ may be connoted not only with _Echo_--the supposed voice of Ech?--but also with _egg_, meaning to urge on, to instigate, to vitalise, or render agog.
The acorn is an egg within a cup, and the Danish form of _oak_ is _eeg_ or _eg_: the oak tree was pre-eminently the symbol of the Most High, and the German _eiche_ may be connoted with _uch_ the British for high. The Druids paid a reverential homage to the oak, worshipping under its form the god Teut or Teutates: this latter word is understood to have meant "the god of the people,"[250] and the term _teut_ is apparently the French _tout_, meaning _all_ or the total. The reason suggested by Sir James Frazer for oak-worship is the fact that the Monarch of the Forest was struck more frequently by lightning than any meaner tree, and that therefore it was deemed to be the favoured one of the Fire god. But to rive one's best beloved with a thunderbolt is a more peculiar and even better dissembled token of affection than the celebrated kicking-down-stairs. According to the author of _The Language and Sentiment of Flowers_[251] the oak was consecrated to Jupiter because it had sheltered him at his birth on Mount Lycaeus; hence it was regarded as the emblem of hospitality, and to give an oak branch was equivalent to "You are welcome". That the oak tree was originally a Food provider or _Feed for all_ is implied by the words addressed to the Queen of Heaven by Apuleus in _The Golden Ass_: "Thou who didst banish the savage nutriment of the ancient acorn, and pointing out a better food, dost, etc."
It has already been suggested that _derry_ or _dru_, an oak or tree, was equivalent to _tre_, an abode or Troy, and there is perhaps a connection between this root and _tere_binth, the Tyrian term for an oak tree. That the oak was regarded as the symbol of hospitality is exceedingly probable, and one of the earliest references to the tree is the story of Abraham's hospitable entertainment given underneath the Oak of Mamre. The same idea is recurrent in the legend of Philemon and Baucis, which relates that on the mountains of Phrygia there once dwelt an aged, poor, but loving couple. One night Jupiter and Mercury, garbed in the disguise of two mysterious strangers who had sought in vain for hospitality elsewhere, craved the shelter of this Darby and Joan.[252] With alacrity it was granted, and such was the awe inspired by the majestic Elder that Baucis desired to sacrifice a goose which they possessed. But the bird escaped, and fluttering to the feet of the disguised gods Jupiter protected it, and bade their aged hosts to spare it. On leaving, the Wanderer asked what boon he could confer, and what gift worthy of the gods they would demand. "Let us not be divided by death, O Jupiter," was the reply: whereupon the Wandering One conjured their mean cottage into a noble palace wherein they dwelt happily for many years. The story concludes that Baucis merged gradually into a linden tree, and Philemon into an oak, which two trees henceforward intertwined their branches at the door of Jupiter's Temple.
The name Philemon is seemingly _philo_, which means _love of_, and _mon_, man or men, and at the time this fairy-tale was concocted _Love of Man_, or hospitality, would appear to have been the motif of the allegorist.
We British pre-eminently boast our ships and our men as being Hearts of Oak: the Druids used to summon their assemblies by the sending of an oak-branch, and at the national games of Etruria the diadem called _Etrusca Corona_, a garland of oak leaves with jewelled acorns, was held over the head of the victor.[253] There is little doubt that Honor Oak, Gospel Oak, Sevenoaks, etc., derived their titles from oaks once sacred to the _Uch_ or High, the _Allon_ or Alone, who was alternatively the Seven Kings or the Three Kings. "It is strange," says Squire, "to find Gael and Briton combining to voice almost in the same words this doctrine of the mystical Celts, who while still in a state of semi-barbarism saw with some of the greatest of ancient and modern philosophers the One in the Many, and a single Essence in all the manifold forms of life."[254]
FOOTNOTES:
[193] Virgil, _The Æneid_, Bk. III., c. liii.
[194] _Cf._ Geoffrey's _Histories of the Kings of Britain_ (Everyman's Library), p. 202.
[195] Virgil, _The Æneid_, Bk. III., 37.
[196] _Irish Mythological Cycle_, p. 50.
[197] xx. 8.
[198] Wood, E. J. _Giants and Dwarfs_, p. 54.
[199] Chap. xxvi.
[200] _The Irish Mythological Cycle_, p. 116.
[201] Wood, E.J., _Giants and Dwarfs_, p. 5.
[202] _The Romance of Names_, p. 65.
[203] Hone, W., _Ancient Mysteries_, p. 264.
[204] Wright, T., _Patrick's Purgatory_, p. 56.
[205] Courtney, Miss M. L., _Cornish Feasts and Folklore_, p. 28.
[206] Bartholomew, J. G., _A Survey Gazetteer of the British Islands_, I. 612.
[207] The duplication _cock_, as in _haycock_, also meant a hill.
[208] Quoted from Brand's _Antiquities_, p. 42.
[209] _Cf._ Urlin, Miss Ethel, _Festivals, Holydays, and Saint Days_, p. 2.
[210] Anwyl, E., _Celtic Religion_.
[211] Anwyl, E., _Celtic Religion_, p. 40.
[212] _Curious Myths of the Middle Ages_, pp. 637-40.
[213] "Morien" _Light of Britannia_, p. 262.
[214] The phallic symbolism of the serpent has been over-stressed so obtrusively by other writers, that it is unnecessary here to enlarge upon that aspect of the subject.
[215] Baldwin, J. D., _Prehistoric Nations_, p. 240.
[216] Sophocles, _Ajax_, 694-700.
[217] Windle, Sir B. C. A., _Remains of the Prehistoric Age in Britain_, p. 198.
[218] _The Golden Legend_, V. 182-3.
[219] The ancient name "hoar rock," or white rock in the wood, may have referred to the white god probably once there worshipped, for actually there are no white rocks at St. Michael's, or anywhere else in Cornwall.
[220] _The Golden Legend_ records an apparition of St. Michael at a town named Tumba.
[221] Wood, E. J., _Giants and Dwarfs_, p. 91.
[222] _Cf._ Friend, Rev. Hilderic, _Flowers and Folklore_, II., p. 455.
[223] "Morien," _Light of Brittania_, p. 27.
[224] Anon, _A New Description of England and Wales_ (1724), p. 121.
[225] Dennis, G., _Cities and Centuries of Etruria_, p. 31.
[226] Munro, R., _Prehistoric Britain_, p. 223.
[227] _Barddas_, p. 222.
[228] Kains-Jackson, _Our Ancient Monuments_, p. 112. Fergusson states "about 330 feet".
[229] Vol. vi., p. 64.
[230] Vol. vi., p. 66.
[231] Gray, Mrs. Hamilton, _Sepulchres of Etruria_.
[232] Vol., iii., p. 73.
[233] _Golden Legend_, vol. v., p. 184.
[234] Simpkins, J. E., _Fife_, p. 4; _County Folklore_, vol. vii.
[235] Simpkins, J. E., _Kinross-shire_, p. 377.
[236] _Ibid._, p. 241.
[237] _Curious Myths of the Middle Ages_, p. 336.
[238] I am unable to lay my hand on the reference for this Elen's Causeway in Westmoreland.
[239] Anon., _A New Description of England_, 1724, p. 318.
[240] _Symbolical Language_, p. 37.
[241] _Golden Legend_, vol. v., p. 189.
[242] _Cornish Feasts and Folklore_, p. 131.
[243] _Golden Legend_, vol. v., p. 181.
[244] Jubainville, D'arbois de, _Irish Mythological Cycle_, p. 140.
[245] Shakespeare, _Love's Labour's Lost_, iii., 1.
[246] Ossian, the hero poet of Gaeldom, is represented as old, blind, and solitary.
[247] _Cf._ Windle, Sir B.C.A., _Remains of the Prehistoric Age_, pp. 197-8.
[248] Salmon, A.L., _Cornwall_, p. 88.
[249] Wilson, J.M., _The Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales_, i., p. 484.
[250] Anwyl, E., _Celtic Religion_, p. 39.
[251] "L.V.," London (undated).
[252] I do not think this proverbially loving couple were exclusively Scotch. The _darbies_, _i.e._, handcuffs or clutches of the law may be connoted with Gascoigne's line (1576): "To bind such babes in _father Darbie's_ bands". "_Old Joan_" figures as one of the characters in the festivities of Plough Monday, and in Cornwall any very ancient woman was denominated "_Aunt Jenny_".
[253] Gray, Mrs. Hamilton, _Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria_, p. 131.
[254] _The Mythology of the British Islands_, p. 125.