According to Gaelic mythology Brigit was the daughter of the supreme head of the Irish gods of Day, Life, and Light—whose name Dagda Mor, the authorities translate into Great Good Fire. Some accounts state there were three Brigits, but these three, like the three Gweneveres or Ginevras who were sometimes assigned to King Arthur, are evidently three aspects of the one and only Queen Vera, Queen Ever, or Queen Fair. Brigit’s husband was the celebrated Bress, after whom we are told every fair and beautiful thing in Ireland was entitled a “bress”.

Brigit and Bress were the parents of three gods entitled Brian, Iuchar, and Uar, and it looks as though these three were equivalent to the Persian trinity of Good Thought, Good Deed, and Good Word. The term word is derived by Skeat from a root wer, meaning to speak, whence Uar was seemingly werde or Good Word. Brian, I have already connoted with brain, whence Good Brian was probably equivalent to Good Thought, and Iuchar, the third of Bride’s brats, looks curiously like eu coeur, eu cor, or eu cardia, i.e., soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious heart, otherwise Kind Action or Good Deed.

These three mythic sons constitute the gods of Irish Literature and Art, and are said to have had in common an only son entitled Ecne,[400] whose name, according to De Jubainville, meant “knowledge or poetry”.[401] The legend Cuno which appears so frequently in British coins in connection with Pegasus—the steed of the Muses—or the Hackney, varies into Ecen, vide the examples herewith, and the palm branch or fern leaf constituting the mane points to the probability that the animal portrayed corresponds to “Splendid Mane,” the magic steed of three-legged Mona.

Mona was a headquarters of the British Druids by whom white horses were ceremoniously maintained. Speaking of the peculiar credulity of the German tribes Tacitus observes: “For this purpose a number of milk-white steeds unprophaned by mortal labour are constantly maintained at the public expense and placed to pasture in the religious groves. When occasion requires they are harnessed to a sacred chariot and the priest, accompanied by the king or chief of the state, attends to watch the motions and the neighing of the horses. No other mode of augury is received with such implicit faith by the people, the nobility, and the priesthood. The horses upon these solemn occasions are supposed to be the organs of the gods.”[402]

The horse is said to be exceptionally intelligent,[403] whence presumably why it was elevated into an emblem of Knowing, Kenning, Cunning, and ultimately of the Gnosis. That the Gnostics so regarded it is sufficiently evident apart from the collection of symbolic horses dealt with elsewhere.[404]

The old French for hackney was haquenee, the old Spanish was hacanea, the Italian is chinea, a contracted form of acchinea: jennet or Little Joan is connected with the Spanish ginete which has been connoted with Zenata, the name of a tribe of Barbary celebrated for its cavalry.

That Jeanette was worshipped in Italy sub rosa, would appear from the emblem here illustrated, which is taken from the title page of a work published in 1601.[405] The Hackney, the New-moon (Kenna?) and the Staff or Branch are emblems, which, as already seen, occur persistently on British coins, and the legend Philos ippon in dies crescit reading: “Love of the Horse; in time it will increase,” obviously applied to some philosophy, and not a material taste for stud farms and the turf.

In 1857, during some excavations in Rome in the palace of the CÆsars on the Palatine Hill, an inscription which is described as a “curious scratch on the wall” was brought to light. This so-called graffito blasfemo has been held to be a vile caricature of the crucifixion, some authorities supposing the head to be that of a wild ass, others that of a jackal: beneath is an ill-spelt legend in Greek characters to the effect: “Alexamenos worships his god,” and on the right is a meanly attired figure seemingly engaged in worship.[406]

I am unable to recognise either a jackal or a wild ass in the figure in dispute, which seems in greater likelihood to represent a not ill-executed horse’s head. Nor seemingly is the creature crucified, but on the contrary it is supporting the letter “T,” or Tau, an emblem which was so peculiarly sacred among the Druids that they even topped and trained their sacred oak until it had acquired this holy form.[407] The Tau was the sign mentioned by Ezekiel as being branded upon the foreheads of the Elect, and this “curious scratch” of poor Alexamenos attributed to the very early part of the third century was not, in my humble opinion, the work of some illiterate slave or soldier attached to the palace of the CÆsars, ridiculing the religion of a companion, but more probably the pious work of a Gnostic lover of philosophy: that the Roman church was honeycombed with Gnostic heresies is well known.

The word philosophy is philo sophy or the love of wisdom, but sophi, or wisdom, is radically ophi, or opi, i.e., the Phoenician hipha, Greek hippa, a mare: the name Philip is always understood as phil ip or “love of the horse,” and the hobby horse of British festivals was almost certainly the hippa or the hippo.

Of the 486 varieties of British coins illustrated by Sir John Evans no less than 360 represent a horse in one form or another, whence it is obvious that the hobby horse was once a national emblem of the highest import. In the opinion of this foremost authority all Gaulish and all British coins are contemptible copies of a wondrous Macedonian stater, which circulated at Marseilles, whence the design permeated Gaul and Britain in the form of rude and clownish imitations: this supposed model, the very mark and acme of all other craftsmen, is here illustrated, and the reader can form his own opinion upon its artistic merits. “It appears to me,” says Sir John Evans, “that in most cases the adjuncts found upon the numerous degraded imitations of this type are merely the result of the engraver’s laziness or incompetence, where they are not attributable to his ignorance of what the objects he was copying were originally designed to represent. And although I am willing to recognise a mythological and national element in this adaptation of the Macedonian stater which forms the prototype of the greater part of the ancient British series, it is but rarely that this element can be traced with certainty upon its numerous subsequent modifications.”[408]

The supposed modifications attributed to the laziness or incompetence of British craftsmen are, however, so astonishing and so ably executed that I am convinced the present theory of feeble imitation is ill-founded. The horses of Philippus are comparatively stiff and wooden by the side of the work of Celtic craftsmen who, when that was their intention, animated their creations with amazing verve and elan. Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, who regards our early coins as “deplorable abortions,” laments that one remarkable feature in the whole group of numismatic monuments of British and Celtic extraction is the spirit of servile imitation which it breathes, as well as the absence of that religious sentiment which confers a character on the Greek and Roman coinages.[409] How this writer defines religious sentiment I am unaware, but in any case it is difficult to square his assertion with Akerman’s reference to “the great variety of crosses and other totally uninteresting objects” found on the post-Roman coinage.[410]

We have already noted certain exquisitely modelled coins of Gaul and there are many more yet to be considered. Dr. Jewitt concedes that the imitations were not always servile “having occasionally additional features as drapery, a torque round the neck, a bandlet or what not,” but this writer obsequiously follows Sir John Evans in the opinion that the stater of Philip was “seized on by the barbarians who came in contact with Greek civilisation as an object of imitation. In Gaul this was especially the case, and the whole of the gold coinage of that country may be said to consist of imitations more or less rude and degenerate of the Macedonian Philippus.”[411]

In 1769 a hoard of 371 gold British coins was discovered on the Cornish hill known as Carn Bre, near Cambourne, in view of which (and many other archÆological finds) Borlase entertained the notion that Carn Bre was a prehistoric sanctuary. This conclusion is seemingly supported by the near neighbourhood of the town Redruth which is believed to have meant—rhe druth, or “the swift-flowing stream of the Druids”. It is generally supposed that primitive coins were struck by priests within their sacred precincts,[412] and the extraordinary large collection found upon Carn Bre seems a strong implication that at some period coins were there minted. We find seemingly the Bre of Carn Bre, doubtless the Gaulish abri or sanctuary, recurrent in Ireland, where at Bri Leith it was believed that Angus Mac Oge, the ever-young and lovely son of Dagda Mor, had his brugh or bri, which meant fairy palace. The Cornish Cambourne, which the authorities suppose to have been Cam bron, and to have meant crooked hill, was more probably like Carn Bre the seat or abri of King Auberon, “Saint” Bron, or King Aubrey.

The generic term coin is imagined to be derived from cuneum, the Latin accusative of cuneus, a wedge, “perhaps,” adds Skeat, “allied to cone”. It is, however, almost an invariable rule to designate coins by the design found upon their face, whence “angel,” “florin,” “rose,” “crown,” “kreuzer” (cross), and so forth. The British penny is supposed to have derived its title from the head—Celtic pen—stamped upon it:[413] the Italian ducat was so denominated because it bore the image of a duke, whose coins were officially known as ducati, or “coins of the duchy”; and as not only the legend cuin, cuno, etc., appears upon early coinage, but also an image of an angel which we have endeavoured to show was regarded as the Cun or Queen, it seems likely that the word coin (Gaelic cuinn) is as old as the Cuin legend, and may have had no immediate relation either with cunneus or cone. Nevertheless, the Queen of Heaven was occasionally depicted on coins in the form of a cone, as on the token here illustrated: on the coins of Cyprus Venus was represented under the symbolism of a cone-shaped stone.[414] The ancient minters not only customarily portrayed the features of their pherepolis or Fairy of the City, but they occasionally rendered her identity fool-proof by inscribing her name at full length as in the Arethusa coin here illustrated: some of our seventh-century money bears the legend Lux—an allusion to the Light of the World; in the East coins were practically religious manifestos and bore inscriptions such as God is one; God is the Eternal; There is no God but God Alone; May the Most High Perpetuate His Kingdom; and among the coins of Byzantium is an impression of the Virgin bearing the legend O Lady do thou keep in safety.[415]

The early coinage of Genoa represented a gate or janua; the Roman coin of Janus was known as the As, an implication that Janus, the first and most venerable of the Roman pantheon, was radically genus or King As: in the same way it is customary among us to speak colloquially of “George,” or more ceremoniously of “King George,” and in all probability the full and formal title of the Roman As was the Janus. On these coins there figured the prow or forefront of a ship, and the same prow will be noticed on the tokens of Britannia (ante, p. 120). It is remarkable that even 500 years after the coins of Janus had been out of circulation the youth of Rome used to toss money to the exclamation “Heads or Ships”—a very early instance of the pari mutuel!

In connection with archaic coins it is curious that one cannot get away from John or Ion. The first people to strike coins are believed to have been either the Ionians or the Lydians, both of whom inhabited the locality of ancient Troy:[416] as early as the middle of the seventh century B.C., the Ægean island of Ægina, then a great centre of commerce, minted money, but the annalists of China go far further in their claim that as far back as 1091 B.C., a coinage was instituted by Cheng, the second King of Chou.[417] The generic term token is radically Ken, shekel is seemingly allied to Sheik, the Moorish or Berberian for a chief, and with daric, the Persian coin, one may connote not only Touriack but ultimately Troy or Droia. Our guinea was so named after gold from Guinea; Guinea presumably was under Touriack or Berber influences, and we shall consider in a subsequent chapter Ogane, a mighty potentate of northern Africa whose toe, like that of Janus, the visitor most reverently kissed.

The Hackney of our early coinage thus not only appears pre-eminently upon it, but the very terms coin, token, chink, and jingle,[418] are permeated with the same root, i.e., Ecna, Ægina, or Jeanne.

That the worship of the Hackney stretches backward into the remotest depths of antiquity is implied by the carvings of prehistoric horse-heads found notably in the trous or cave shelters of Derbyshire and Dordogne. The discoveries at Torquay in Kent’s Cavern, in Kent’s Copse, (or Kent’s Hole as it is named in ancient maps), included bone, or horn pins, awls, barbed harpoons, and a neatly formed needle precisely similar to analogous objects found in the rock shelters of Dordogne.[419] Many representations of horses and horse-heads have been found among the coloured inscriptions at Font de Gaune—the Fount of Gaune, and likewise at Combarelles: the Combar is here seemingly King Bar, and Bruniquel, another famous site of horse remains, is in all probability connected with the broncho. Perigord, the site of ancient Petrocorii, is radically peri, and Petrocorii, the Father or Rock Heart, may be connoted with Iuchar, the brother of Bryan and the father of Ecna, or philosophy.

In England horse-teeth in association with a flint celt have been found at Wiggonholt in Sussex: the term holt is applied in Cornwall to Pictish souterrains, and it is probable that Wiggonholt was once a holt or hole of eu Igon: Ægeon was an alternative title of Briareus of the Hundred Hands, and as already shown Briareus was localised by Greek writers upon a British islet (ante, p. 82).

The white horse constituted the arms of Brunswick or Burn’s Wick; horses were carved upon the ancient font at Burnsall in Yorkshire, and that the broncho was esteemed in Britain by the flint knappers is implied by the etching of a horse’s head found upon a polished horse rib in a cave at Cresswell Crags in Derbyshire. Ceres or Demeter was represented as a mare, cres is the root of cresco—I grow, and among the white horses carved upon the chalk downs of England, one at Bratton was marked by an exaggerated “crescentic tail”. Bratton, or Bra-ton? Hill, whereon this curious brute was carved, may be connoted with Bradon, and Bratton may also be compared with prad, a word which in horsey circles means a horse, whence prad cove, a dealer in horses: with the white horse at Bratton may be connoted the horse carved upon the downs at Preston near Weymouth. For a mass of miscellaneous and interesting horse-lore the curious reader may refer to Mr. Walter Johnson’s Byways in British ArchÆology: the opinion of this painstaking and reliable writer is that the famed white horse of Bratton, like its fellow at Uffington, although usually believed to commemorate victories over the Danes are more probably to be referred to the Late Bronze, or Early Iron Age.

It has already been noted that artificially white horses were inscribed at times on Scotch hills, but these earth-monuments are unrecorded either in Ireland or on the Continent. On the higher part of Dartmoor there is a bare patch on the granite plateau in form resembling a horse, but whether the clearing is artificial is uncertain: the probabilities are, however, in favour of design for the site is known as White Horse Hill.[420]

The White Horse of Berkshire—the shire of the horse, Al Borak, or the brok?—is situated at Uffington, a name which the authorities decode into town or village of Uffa: I do not think this imaginary “Uffa” was primarily a Saxon settler, and it is more probable that Uffa was hipha, the Tyrian title of the Great Mother whose name also meant mare, whence the Hellenic hippa. The authorities would like to read Avebury, a form of Abury or Avereberie, as burg of Aeffa, but near Avebury there is a white horse cut upon the slope of a down, and the adjacent place-name Uffcot suggests that here also was an hipha-cot, or cromlech. The ride of Lady Godiva nude upon a white horse was, as we shall see later, probably the survival of an ancient festival representative of Good Hipha, the St. Ive, or St. Eve, who figures here and there in Britain, otherwise Eve, the Mother of All Living.

There used to be traces at Stonehenge of a currus or horse-course, and all the evidence is strongly in favour of the supposition that the horse has been with us in these islands for an exceedingly long time.

When defending their shores against the Roman invaders the British cavalry drove their horses into the sea attacking their enemies while in the water, and one of the facts most impressive to CÆsar was the skill with which our ancestors handled their steeds. Speaking of the British charioteers he says: “First they advance through all parts of their Army, and throw their javelins, and having wound themselves in among the troops of horse, they alight and fight on foot; the charioteers retiring a little with their chariots, but posting themselves in such a manner, that if they see their masters pressed, they may be able to bring them off; by this means the Britons have the agility of horse, and the firmness of foot, and by daily exercise have attained to such skill and management, that in a declivity they can govern the horses, though at full speed, check and turn them short about, run forward upon the pole, stand firm upon the yoke, and then withdraw themselves nimbly into their chariots.”[421]

According to Mr. and Mrs. Hawes, two-wheeled chariots are delineated on Gnossian seals, among which is found a four-wheeled chariot having the front wheels armed with spikes:[422] the Britons are traditionally supposed to have attached scythes to their wheels, and Homer’s description of a chariot fight might well have expressed the sensations of the British Jehu:—

Biga, the Greek for chariot, is seemingly buggy, the name of a vehicle which was once very fashionable with us: the term, now practically extinct in this country, is still used largely in America, whither like much other supposedly American slang, it was no doubt carried by the pilgrim fathers.[424] To account satisfactorily for buggy one must assume that the earliest bigas were used ceremoniously in sacred festivals to Big Eye or the Sun: that this was a prevalent custom is proved by the Scandinavian model representing the Solar Chariot here illustrated. Among the cave-offerings of Crete the model biga was very frequent, and no doubt it had some such mental connection with the constellation King Charles’s Wain, as still exists in Breton folklore. In what was known as King’s barrow in Yorkshire, the skeleton of an old man was uncovered accompanied by chariot wheels, the skeletons of two small horses, and the skulls of two pigs: similar sepulchres have been found in great number in the Cambrai–Peronne–Bray district of France. Not only do we here find the term Santerre applied to an extensive plain, but the exquisite bronze plaques, discs, and flagons recovered from the tombs “appear to be of Greek workmanship”. In the words of Dr. Pycraft (written in August, 1918): “The Marne is rich in such relics—though, happily, they need no little skill in finding, for they date back to prehistoric times ranging from the days of the Stone Age to the dawn of history. The retreat of this foul-minded brood [the German Army] towards the Vesle will probably mean the doom of the celebrated Menhirs, or standing stones, of the Marne Valley. These date back to about 6000 B.C., and are remarkable for the fact that they bear curiously sculptured designs, of which the most striking is a conventionalised representation of the human face.[425] This, and the general character of the ornamentation, bears a close likeness to that found on early objects from Hissarlik and the Greek islands.... These megalithic monuments mark the appearance in Europe of a new race, bringing with them new customs—and, what is still more important, the use of metal.”[426]

Among the finds at Troy, Schliemann recovered some curious two-holed whorls or wheels, in the eyes of which are representations of a horse: he also discovered certain small carved horse-heads.[427] That the horse was of good omen among the Trojans is implied by the description of the building of Æneas’s new colony, for of this new-born tre we read—

Such was the auspiciousness of this find that the Trojans forthwith erected an altar to Juno, i.e., Cuno?

At the home of the Mother Goddess in Gnossus there has been discovered a seal impression which is described as a noble horse of enormous size being transported on a one-masted boat driven by Minoan oarsmen, seated beneath an awning:[429] it has been assumed by one authority after another that this seal-stone represented and commemorated the introduction into Crete of the thorough-bred horse, but more probably it was the same sacred horse as is traditionally associated with the fall of Troy. There is some reason to think that this supposedly fabulous episode may have had some historic basis: historians are aware that the Druids were accustomed to make vast wicker frames, sometimes in the form of a bull, and according to Roman writers these huge constructions filled either with criminals or with sacrificial victims were then burnt. Two enormous white horses constructed from wood and paper formed part of a recent procession in connection with the obsequies of the late Emperor of Korea, and it is quite possible that the wily Greeks strategically constructed a colossal horse by means of which they introduced a picked team of heroes in the Trojan sanctuary. According to Virgil—

That this elaborate form of the wicker-cage was introduced into Troy upon some religious pretext would appear almost certain from the inquiry of the aged Priam—

The Trojans were guileless enough to “through the gates the monstrous horse convey,” and even to lodge it in the citadel fatuously ignoring the recommendation of Capys

Unless there had been some highly superstitious feeling attaching to the votive horse, one cannot conceive why the sound advice of Capys was not immediately put into practice.

Although both Greeks and Trojans were accomplished charioteers, riding on horseback was, we are told, so rare and curious an exhibition in ancient Greece that only one single reference is found in the poems of Homer. According to Gladstone, equestrian exercise was “the half-foreign accomplishment of the Kentauroi,” who were fabulously half-man and half-horse: similarly, in most ancient Ireland there are no riders on horseback, and the warriors fight invariably from chariots.[432] On the other hand, in Etruria there are found representations of what might be a modern race meeting, and the effect of these pictures upon the early investigators of Etrurian tombs seems to have been most surprising. In the words of Mrs. Hamilton Gray: “The famous races of Britain seemed there to find their type. The racers, the race-stand, the riders with their various colours, the judges, the spectators, and the prizes were all before us. We were unbelieving like most of our countrymen.... Our understandings and imaginations were alike perplexed.”[433]

The verb to canter is supposed to be derived from the pace at which pilgrims proceeded to Canterbury. But pilgrims either footed it or else ambled leisurely along on their palfreys, and the connection between canter and Cantuar is seemingly much deeper than supposed. At Kintyre in Scotland the patron saint is St. Cheiran, who may be connoted with Chiron, the wise and good Kentaur chief; and this connection of Chiron-Kentaur, Cheiran-Kintyre is the more curious, inasmuch as both an Irish MS. and Ptolemy refer independently by different terms to the Mull of Kintyre, as “the height of the horse”.[434]

The illustration herewith is an early Victorian conception of Chiron, the wise and kindly Kentaur King, and Cantorix, an inscription found on the spectral steeds of Fig. 146, might seemingly without outrage be interpreted as Canto rex, or Song King: in Welsh canto, a song or chant, was gan, and the title tataguen meant “the father of the muse”;[435] according to mythology the walls of Troy were built by Oceanus to the music of Apollo’s lyre.

It would appear probable that Kent, the county of Invicta, the White Horse, was pre-eminently a horse-breeding county, as it remains to this day: part of Cantuarburig is known as Hackington, and in view of the Iceni hackney-coins there is little doubt that horse-breeding was extensively practised wherever the equine Eceni, Cantii, and Cenomagni were established. It is noteworthy that the Icknield Way was known alternatively as Hackington Way, Hackney Way, Acknil Way, and Hikenilde Street.[436]

It is a curious fact that practically the first scratchings of a horse represent the animal as bridled, whence the authorities assume that horses were kept semi-domesticated in a compound for purposes of food: immense collections of horse bones have been discovered, whence it seems probable that horses were either sacrificed in hecatombs or were eaten in large quantities; but the Tartars kept horses mainly for the mare’s milk.

Pliny mentions a horse-eating tribe, in Northern Spain, entitled the Concanni, with which Iberians may be connoted the Congangi of Cumberland, whose headquarters were supposedly Kendal: the western point of Carnarvonshire is named by Ptolemy Gangani, and the same geographer mentions another Gangani in the West of Hibernia. The Hibernian Ganganoi, situated in the neighbourhood of the Shannon, worshipped a Sengann whose name is supposed to mean Old Gann: we have illustrated the earthwork wheel cross of Shanid (ante p. 55), and have suggested the equation of Sen Gann with Sinjohn. In all probability the fairy known in Ireland as Gancanagh, who appears in lonesome valleys and makes love to milkmaids, is a survival of the Gangani’s All Father. The name Konken occurs among the kingly chronology of Archaic Britain; the most ancient inscribed stone in Wales is a sepulchral stone of a certain Cingen: the Saxon name Cunegonde is translated as having meant royal lady.

The French cancan, an exuberant dance which is associated with Paris, the city of the Parisii, may be a survival from the times of the Celtiberian Concanni: Paris was the Adonis of the Hellenes, or Children of Hellas, and it is not unlikely that the lament helas! or alas! was the cry wailed by the women on the annual waning of the Solar Power. At Helstone in Cornwall—supposed to be named from hellas, a marsh—there is still danced an annual Furry dance of which the feature is a long linked chain similar to that of the French farandole: if faran, like fern, be the plural of far, it follows that the furry and the farandole were alike festivals of the Great Fire, Phare, Fairy, Phairy, or Peri; the Parisii who settled in the Bridlington district are by some scholars assigned to Friesland.

Persia, the home of the peris, is still known locally as Farsistan, whence the name Farsees or Parsees is now used to mean fire worshippers: the Indian Parsees seem chiefly to be settled in the district of India, which originally formed part of the ancient Indian Konkan kingdom, and the probabilities are that the Konkani of the East, like the Cancanii of the West, were worshippers of the Khan Khan, or King of Kings.

In the most ancient literature of India entire hymns are addressed to the Solar Horse, and the estimation in which the White Horse was held in Persia may be judged from the annual salutation ceremony thus described by Williamson in The Great Law: “The procession to salute the God formed long before the rising of the sun. The High Priest was followed by a long train of Magi, in spotless white robes chanting hymns and carrying the sacred fire on silver censers. Then came 365 youths in scarlet, to represent the days of the year, and the colour of fire. These were followed by the chariot of the sun, empty, decorated with garlands, and drawn by superb white horses, harnessed with pure gold. Then came a white horse of magnificent size, his forehead blazing with gems, in honour of Mithras. Close behind him rode the king, in a chariot of ivory inlaid with gold, followed by his royal kindred, in embroidered garments and a long train of nobles, riding on camels richly caparisoned. This gorgeous retinue, facing the East, slowly ascended Mount Orontes. Arrived at the summit, the high priest assumed his tiara, wreathed with myrtle, and hailed the first rays of the rising sun with incense and with prayer. The other Magi gradually joined him in singing hymns to Ormuzd, the source of all blessings, by whom the radiant Mithra had been sent to gladden the earth, and preserve the principle of life. Finally, they all joined in the one universal chorus of praise, while king, princes, and nobles prostrated themselves before the orb of day.”

There is every likelihood that this festival was celebrated on a humbler scale at many a British “Hallicondane,” and as the glory of the horse or courser is its speed—“swift is the sun in its course”—we may also be sure that no pains were spared to secure a worthy representative of the Supreme Ecna, Ekeni, or Hackney.

In Egypt the whole land was ransacked in order to discover the precise and particular Bull, which by its special markings was qualified to play Apis, and when this precious beast was found there were national rejoicings. Reasoning by analogy it is probable that not only did each British horse-centre have its local races, but that there was in addition what might be called a Grand National either at Stonehenge or at one or another of the tribal centres. In such case the winners would become the sacred steeds, which, as we know, were maintained by the Druids in the sanctuaries, and from whose neighing or knowing auguries were drawn. Such was the value placed in Persia upon the augury of a horse’s neigh, that on one memorable occasion the rights of two claimants to the throne were decided by the fact that the horse of the favoured one neighed first.[437]

It is probable that the primitive horse-races of the Britons were elemental Joy-days, Hey-days, and Holy-days, similar to the time-honoured Scouring and Cleansing of the White Horse of Berkshire or Barrukshire. On the occasion of this festival in 1780, The Reading Mercury informed its readers that: “Besides the customary diversions of horse-racing, foot-races, etc., many uncommon rural diversions and feats of activity were exhibited to a greater number of spectators than ever assembled on any former occasion. Upwards of 30,000 persons were present, and amongst them most of the nobility and gentry of this and the neighbouring counties, and the whole was concluded without any material accident.”

Below the head of the White Horse, which at festival time was thoroughly scoured and restored to its pristine whiteness, is a huge scoop in the downs forming a natural amphitheatre, and at the base of this so-called “manger” are the clear traces of artificial banks or tiers. In 1825 the games were held at Seven Barrows, distant two miles in a south-easterly direction from the White Horse itself. These Seven Barrows are imagined to be the burial places of seven chieftains slain at the battle of Ashdown, and adjacent mounds supposedly contain the corpses of the rank and file. But the starting-post of Lewes race-course, which is also two miles in extent, is shown in the Ordnance map as being likewise situated at a group of seven tumuli, and as the winning-post at Lewes is at the base of Offham Hill the fact of starting at Seven Barrows, racing for two miles, and finishing respectively at Offham and Uffington is too conspicuous to be coincidence. Referring to the Stonehenge track Stukeley writes: “This course which is two miles long,” and he adds casually, “there is an obscure barrow or two round which they returned”.

At Uffington are the remains of a cromlech known as Wayland’s Smithy, Wayland, here as elsewhere, being an invisible, benevolent fairy blacksmith[438]: on Offham Hill, Lewes, stands an inn entitled the “Blacksmith’s Arms,” and below it Wallands Park.

The sub-district of Lewes, where the De Vere family seem to have been very prominent, contains the parishes of St. John, Southover, and Berwick: opposite the Castle Hill is Brack Mount, also a district called The Brooks; running past All Saints Church is Brooman’s Lane, and the “rape” of Lewes contains the hundreds of Barcomb and Preston. The principal church in Lewes is that of St. Michael, which is known curiously as St. Michaels in Foro, and it stands, in all probability like the Brutus Stone, in Fore Street, Totnes, in what was the centre or forum of the original settlement.

The name Lewes is thought to be lowes, which means barrows or toothills, and this derivation is no doubt correct, for within the precincts of Lewes Castle, which dominates the town, are still standing two artificial mounds nearly 800 feet apart from centre to centre.

These two barrows, known locally as the Twin Mounds of Lewes, may be connoted with the duas tumbas or two tumps, elsewhere associated with St. Michael: at their base lies Lansdowne Place, and at another Elan’s Town, or Wick, i.e., Alnwick on the river Aln or Alone, near Berwick, we find a remarkable custom closely associated with so-called Twinlaw or Tounlow cairns. This festival is thus described by Hope: “On St. Mark’s Day the houses of the new freemen are distinguished by a holly-tree planted before each door, as the signal for their friends to assemble and make merry with them. About eight o’clock the candidates for the franchise, being mounted on horseback and armed with swords, assemble in the market-place, where they are joined by the chamberlain and bailiff of the Duke of Northumberland, attended by two men armed with halberds. The young freemen arranged in order, with music playing before them and accompanied by a numerous cavalcade, march to the west-end of the town, where they deliver their swords. They then proceed under the guidance of the moorgrieves through a part of their extensive domain, till they reach the ceremonial well. The sons of the oldest freemen have the honour of taking the first leap. On the signal being given they pass through the bog, each being allowed to use the method and pace which to him shall seem best, some running, some going slow, and some attempting to jump over suspected places, but all in their turns tumbling and wallowing like porpoises at sea, to the great amusement of the populace, who usually assemble in vast numbers. After this aquatic excursion, they remount their horses and proceed to perambulate the remainder of their large common, of which they are to become free by their achievement. In passing the open part of the common the young freemen are obliged to alight at intervals, and place a stone on a cairn as a mark of their boundary, till they come near a high hill called the Twinlaw or Tounlaw Cairns, when they set off at full speed, and contest the honour of arriving first on the hill, where the names of the freemen of Alnwick are called over. When arrived about two miles from the town they generally arrange themselves in order, and, to prove their equestrian abilities, set off with great speed and spirit over bogs, ditches, rocks, and rugged declivities till they arrive at Rottenrow Tower on the confines of the town, the foremost claiming the honour of what is termed ‘winning the boundaries,’ and of being entitled to the temporary triumphs of the day.”[439]

The occurrence of this horsey festival on St. Mark’s Day may be connoted with the fact that in Welsh and Cornish march, in Gaelic marc, meant horse: obviously marc is allied to the modern mare.

There is a Rottenrow at Lewes, and Rottenrow Tower on the confines of Alnwick is suggestive of the more famous Rotten Row in London. It would seem that this site was also the bourne or goal of steeplechases similar to those at Alnwick, for upwards of a mile westward there was once a street called Michael’s Grove, of which the site is now occupied by Ovington Square. This “Ovington” may be connoted not only with Offham Hill and Uffington of the White Horse, but also with Oving in Bucks, where is an earthwork also a spring known as “the Horse Spring,” traditionally associated with Horsa.[440]

Ovington Square at Kensington seems also to have been designated Brompton Grove, and as Brondesbury, a few miles northward, was known alternatively as Bromesbury, and Bromfield, in Shropshire, as Brunefield, we may safely regard the Brom which appears here, and in numerous Bromptons, Bromsgroves, Bromsberrows, Bromleas, also Brimham Rocks, as being the same word as Bron. The Latin name for broom—planta genista—apart from other evidence in my notebooks is an implication that the golden broom was deemed a symbol of Genista, the Good Genus or Janus: and as Janus of January, and planta genista, was the first, the word prime may be connoted with broom. On 1st January, i.e., the first day of the first month, it was customary in England to make a globe of blackthorn, a plant which is the first to come into flower: we have already connoted the thorn or spica with the Prime Cause, and with the prime letter of the alphabet A, or Aleph, whence in all probability bramble may be equated also with broom and prime.

Mitton, in Kensington, observes that before being Brompton Grove this part of the district had been known as Flounders Field,[441] but why tradition does not say. Flounders Field is on the verge of, if not within, the district known as Kensington Gore, and those topographers who have assigned gore to the old English term meaning mud are probably correct. From Kensington Gore, or Flounders Field, we may assume that the freemen of Kensington once wallowed their way as at Alnwick to Rottenrow, and the plight of these sportsmen must have been the more pitiable inasmuch as, at any rate at Alnwick, the freemen were by custom compelled to wear white robes. In this connection it may be noted that at the triennial road-surveying ceremony known in Guernsey as the Chevauchee or Cavalcade of St. Michael (last held in 1837), a white wand was carried and the regimental band of the local militia was robed in long white smocks. “This very unmilitary costume,” says a writer in Folklore, “must, I think, have been traditionally associated with the Chevauchee as it is quite unlike all the uniforms of that date worn by our local militia; it may have been a survival of some ancient, perhaps rustic, possibly priestly band of minstrels and musicians.”[442]

Whether our Whit or White Monday parade of carthorses has any claim to antiquity I am unaware, but it is noteworthy that the Scouring of the Uffington White Horse was celebrated on Whit Monday with great joyous festivity. The Cavalcade of St. Michael, in which all the nobility and gentry took part, was ordained to be held on the Monday of Mid May and was evidently a most imposing ritual. It seems to have culminated at the Perron du Roy (illustrated on p. 315), which was once the boundary stone of the Royal Fief: at this spot stood once an upright stone known as La Rogue des Fees, and a repast to the revellers was here served in a circular grass hollow where according to tradition the fays used to dance. During the procession the lance-bearer carried a wand eleven and a quarter feet long, the number of Vavasseurs was eleven, and it is possible that the eleven pools in Kensington, which were subsequently merged into the present Serpentine,[443] were originally constructed or adapted to this Elphin number in order to make a ceremonial course for the freemen floundering from Flounders Field to Rottenrow.

Kensington in days gone by was pre-eminently a district of springs and wells; the whole of south-west London was more or less a swamp or “holland,” and the early Briton, whose prehistoric canoe was found some years ago at Kew, might if he had wished have wallowed the whole way from Turnham Green, via Brook Green, Parson’s Green, Baron’s Court, Walham and Fulham to Tyburn.

If it be true that Boudicca were able to put 4000 war chariots into the field there must at that time have been numerous stud farms, and the low-lying pastures of the larger Kent, which once contained London, were ideal for the purpose. The Haymarket is said to have derived its name from the huge amount of hay required by the mews of Charing Cross; a mile or so westward is Hay Hill; old maps indicate enormous mews in the Haymarket district, and there are indications that some of the present great mews and stables of south-western London are the relics of ancient parks or compounds. According to Homer—

Boreas, whom we may connote with Bress, the Consort of Brigit, or Bride, is here represented as wallowing, a term which Skeat derives from the Anglo-Saxon wealwian, to roll round: he adds, “see voluble,” but in view of the world-wide rites of immersion or baptism it is more seemly to connect wallow with hallow. Mr. Weller, Senr., preferred to spell his name with a “V”: there is no doubt that Weller and Veller were synonymous terms, and therefore that Fulham, in which is now Walham Green, was originally a home of Wal or Ful, perhaps the same as Wayland or Voland, the Blacksmith of Wayland’s Smithy and of Walland Park.[445] It is supposed that Fulham was the swampy home of fowlen, or water fowls, but it is an equally reasonable conjecture that it was likewise a tract of marshy meads whereon the foalen or foals were pastured. As already noted the Tartar version of the Pied Piper represents the Chanteur or Kentaur as a foal, coursing perpetually round the world. The coins of the Gaulish Volcae exhibit a wheel or veel with the inscription Vol, others in conjunction with a coursing horse are inscribed Vool, and we find the head of a remarkable maned horse on the coins of the Gaulish Felikovesi. As felix means happy, one may connote the hobby horse with happiness, or one’s hobby, and it is not improbable that both Felixstowe and Folkestone were settlements of the adjacent Felikovesi, whose coins portray the Hobby’s head or Foal.

At Land’s End, opposite the titanic headland known as Pardenick, or Pradenic, is Cairn Voel which is also known locally as “The Diamond Horse”:[446] there is likewise a headland called The Horse, near Kynance Cove, and a stupendous cliff-saddle at Zennor,[447] named the Horse’s Back. It would thus seem that the mythology of the Voel extended to the far West, and it is not improbable that Tegid Voel, the Consort of Keridwen the Mare, alias Cendwen, meant inter alia the Good Foal.

Prof. Macalister has recently hooked up from the deep waters of Irish mythology a deity whose name Fal he connotes with a Teutonic Phol. This Fal, a supposedly non-Aryan, neolithic (?) “pastoral horse-divinity,” belonging to an older stratum of belief than the divine beings among the Tuatha De Danann, Prof. Macalister associates with the famous stone of Fal at Tara, and he remarks: “He looks like a Centaur, but is in parentage and disposition totally different from the orthodox Centaurs. He is, in fact, just the sort of being that would develop out of an ancient hippanthropic deity who had originally no connection with Centaurs, but who found himself among a people that had evolved the conception of the normal type of those disagreeable creatures.”[448]

In Cornwall is a river Fal; a well is a spring, the whale or elephant of the sea was venerated because like the elephant it gushed out a fountain of water from its head. The Wilton crescent, opposite one of the ancient conduits by Rotten Row, Kensington, may well have meant Well town, for the whole of this district was notoriously a place of wells: not only do we find Wilton Crescent, but in the immediate neighbourhood of Ovington Square and Flounders Field is Walton Street and Hooper’s Court. Sennen Cove at Land’s End was associated with a mysterious sea-spirit known as the Hooper, and we shall meet again with Hooper, or Jupiter, the Hidden one in “Hooper’s Hide,” an alternative title for the game of Blind Man’s Buff.

The authorities derive avon, or aune, the Celtic for a gently flowing river, from ap, the Sanscrit for water, but it is more likely that there is a closer connection with Eve, or Eva—Welsh Efa—whose name is the Hebrew for life or enlivening, whence Avon would resolve most aptly into the enlivening one. Not only are rivers actually the enlivening ones, but the ancients philosophically assigned the origin of all life to water or ooze. According to Persian, or Parthian philosophy—and Parthia may be connoted in passing with Porthia, an old name for the Cornish St. Ives, for St. Ive was said to be a Persian bishop—the Prime appointed six pure and beneficent Archangels to supervise respectively Fire, Metals, Agriculture, Verdure, the Brutes, and Water. With respect to the last the injunction given was: “I confide to thee, O Zoroaster! the water that flows; that which is stagnant; the water of rivers; that which comes from afar and from the mountains; the water from rain and from springs. Instruct men that it is water which gives strength to all living things. It makes all verdant. Let it not be polluted with anything dead or impure, that your victuals, boiled in pure water, may be healthy. Execute thus the words of God.”[449]

Etymology points to the probability that water in every form, even the stagnant fen—the same word as Aven, font, and fount—was once similarly sacred in Britain, whence it may follow that even although Fulham and Walham were foul, vile, evil, and filthy,[450] the root fal still meant originally the enlivening all.

The word pollute (to be connoted with pool, Phol, or Fal) is traced by Skeat to polluere, which means not necessarily foul, but merely to flow over. The willow tree (Welsh helygen), which grows essentially by the water-side, may be connoted with wallow.

Of Candian or Cretan god-names only two are tentatively known, to wit—Velchanos and Apheia: Apheia may be connoted with Hephaestus, the Greek title of Vulcan or Vulcanus, and the connection between Hephaestus and Velchanos is clearly indicated by the inscribed figure of Velchanos which appears upon the coins of the Candian town of Phaestus. That the falcon was an emblem of the Volcae is obvious from the bird on Fig. 248, and the older forms of the English place-name Folkestone, i.e., Folcanstan, Folcstane, Fulchestan supposed to mean “stone of a man Folca,” more probably imply a Folk Stone, or Falcon Stone, or Vulcan Stone. The Saxon gentleman named Folca is in all probability pure imagination.

The more British title of Wayland or Voland, the Vulcan or Blacksmith of Uffington, and doubtless also of the Blacksmith of Walland’s Park, Offham, is Govannon. One may trace Govan, the British Hammersmith, from St. Govans at Fairfield near Glasgow, or from St. Govan’s Head in South Wales, to St. Govan’s Well, opposite De Vere Gardens in Kensington. In Welsh govan was a generic term for smith; one of the triune aspects of St. Bride was that of a metal worker, and it is reasonable to equate the Lady Godiva of Coventry, with Coventina or Coven of the Tyne, whose images from Coventina’s Well in Northumberland are here reproduced. As will be seen she figures as Una or the One holding an olive branch, and as Three holding a phial or vial, a fire, and a what-not too obscure for specification. “The founding of the Temple of Coventina,” says Clayton, “must be ascribed to the Roman officers of the Batavian Cohort, who had left a country where the sun shines every day and where in pagan times springs and running waters were objects of adoration.”[451] But is there really no other possible alternative? Mr. Hope describes the goddess represented in Fig. 256 as floating on the leaf of a water-lily; the legend of the patron saint of St. Ives in Cornwall is to the effect that this maiden came floating over the waves upon a leaf, and it thus seems likely that Coventry, the home of Lady Godiva, derived its name from being the tre, tree, or trou of Coven, or St. Govan.

In his account of a great and triumphant jousting held in London on May Day, 1540, on which occasion all the horses were trapped in white velvet, Stow several times alludes to an Ivy Bridge by St. Martin’s in the Fields, and this Ivy Bridge must have been closely adjacent to what is now Coventry Street and Cranbrook Street. Crene is Greek for brook,[452] the Hippocrene or the horse brook was the fountain struck by the hoof of the divine Pegasus: Cranbrook Street is a continuation of Coventry Street, and I rather suspect that the neighbouring Covent Garden is not, as popularly supposed, a corruption of Convent Garden, but was from time immemorial a grove or garden of Good Coven. The Maiden Lane here situated probably derived its title from a sign or tablet of the Maiden similar to the Coventina pictures, and it is not improbable that Coven or Goodiva once reigned from Covent Garden via Coventry Street to St. Govan’s Well in Kensington. Near Ripon is an earthwork abri known seemingly as Givendale,[453] and on Hambleton Hill in this neighbourhood used to be a White Horse carved on the down side.[454] The primal Coventrys were not improbably a tribal oak or other sacred tree, such as the Braintree in Essex near Bradwell,[455] and the Picktree previously noted.

At Coveney, in Cambridgeshire—query, Coven ea or Coven’s island?—bronze bucklers have been found which in design “bear a close resemblance to the ribbon pattern seen on several MycenÆan works of art, and the inference is that even as far north as Britain, the MycenÆan civilisation found its way, the intermediaries being possibly Phoenician traders”.[456] But the Phoenicians having now been evicted from the court it is manifestly needful to find some other explanation.

Coveney is not many miles from St. Ives, Huntingdon, named supposedly after Ivo, a Persian bishop, who wandered through Europe in the seventh century. Possibly this same episcopal Persian founded Effingham near Bookham and Boxhill, for at the foot of the Buckland Hills is Givon’s Grove, once forming part of a Manor named Pachevesham. On the downs above is Epsom, which certainly for some centuries has been Ep’s home,[457] and the Pacheve of Pachevesham was possibly the same Big Hipha: there is second Evesham in the same neighbourhood. Speaking of the British inscription Eppilos, Sir John Rhys observes that it is very probably a derivation from epo, a horse; and of the town of Epeiacon, now Ebchester, the same authority states: “The name seems to signify a place for horses or cavalry”.[458] Near Pachevesham, below Epsom, is an old inn named “The Running Mare”.

In connection with Givon, or Govan, or Coven, it is interesting to note that the word used by Tacitus to denote a British chariot is covinus. Local tradition claims that the scythes of Boudiccas coveni were made at Birmingham, and there may be truth in this for the bir of Birmingham is the radical of faber, feuber, or fire father, and likewise of Lefebre, the French equivalent of Smith. That Birmingham was an erstwhile home of the followers of the Fire Father, the Prime, or Forge of Life, is deducible not only from the popular “Brum” or “Brummagem,” but from the various forms recorded of the name.[459] The variant Brymecham may be modernised into Prime King; the neighbouring Bromsgrove is equivalent to Auberon’s Grove; Bromieham was no doubt a home of the Brownies, and the authorities are sufficiently right in deriving from this name “Home of the sons of Beorn”. Bragg is a common surname in Birmingham: Perkunas or Peroon, the Slav Pater or Jupiter, was always represented with a hammer. In Fig. 175 ante, p. 332, the British Fire Father, or Hammersmith, was labouring at what is assumed to be a helmet or a burnie, and Fig. 258 is evidently a variant of the same subject. In the Red Book of Hergest there occurs a line—“With Math the ancient, with Gofannon,” from which one might gather that Math and Gofannon were one. In any case the word smith is apparently se mith, se meath, or Se Math, and the Smeath’s Ridge at Avebury was probably named after the heavenly Smith or Gofan.

According to Rice Holmes the bronze image of a god with a hammer has been found in England, but where or when is not stated: it is, however, generally believed that this Celtic Hammer Smith was a representation of the Dis Pater,[460] to whom the Celts attributed their origin.

The London place-name Hammersmith appears in Domesday Book as Hermoderwode: in Old High German har or herr meant high, whence I suggest that Hermoderwode has not undergone any unaccountable phonetic change into Hammersmith, but was then surviving German for Her moder or High Mother Wood. From Broadway Hammersmith to Shepherd’s Bush runs “The Grove,” and that originally this grove had cells of the Selli in it is somewhat implied by the name Silgrave, still applied to a side-street leading into The Grove. “Brewster Gardens,” “Bradmore House,” “British Grove,” and Broadway all alike point similarly to Hammersmith being a pre-Saxon British settlement. Bradmore was the Manor house at Hammersmith, and the existence of lewes, leys, or barrows on this Brad moor is implied by the modern Leysfield Road. The lewes at Folkestone were in all probability situated on the commanding Leas, and as the local pronunciation of Lewis in the Hebrides is “the Lews” there likewise were probably two or more lowes or laws whence the laws were proclaimed and administered. Bradmore is suggestive of St. Bride, the heavenly Hammersmith who was popularly associated with a falcon, and the great Hammersmith or Vulcan may be connoted with the Golden Falcon, whose memory has seemingly been preserved in Hammersmith at Goldhawk Road.

When Giraldus Cambrensis visited the shrine of the glorious Brigit at Kildare he was told the tale of a marvellous lone hawk or falcon popularly known as “Brigit’s Bird”. This beauteous tame falcon is reported to have existed for many centuries, and customarily to have perched on the summit of the Round Tower of Kildare.[461] Doubtless this story was the parallel of a fairy-tale current at Pharsipee in Armenia. “There,” says Maundeville, “is found a sparrow-hawk upon a fair perch, and a fair lady of fairie, who keeps it; and whoever will watch that sparrow-hawk seven days and seven nights, and, as some men say, three days and three nights, without company and without sleep, that fair lady shall give him, when he hath done, the first wish that he will wish of earthly things; and that hath been proved oftentimes.”[462]

Goldhawk Road at Hammersmith is supposedly an ancient Roman Road, and in 1884 the remains of a causeway were uncovered. Both road and route are the same word as the British rhod, and Latin rota meaning a wheel, and it is likely that the term roadway meant primarily a route along which rotÆ or wheels might travel: as rotten would be the ancient plural of rot, Rottenrow may thus simply have meant a roadway for wheeled traffic. According to Borlase the British fighting chariot was a rhod, the rout of this traffic presumably caused ruts upon the route, whence it is quite likely that Rotten Row was a rutty and foul thoroughfare. The ordinary supposition that this title is a corruption of route du roi may possibly have some justification, for immediately opposite is Kingston House, and at one time Rotten Row was known as the King’s Road: originally the world of fashion used to canter round a circular drive or ring of trees, some of which are still carefully preserved on the high ground near the present Tea House, and thus it might reasonably follow that Rotten Row was a corrupted form of rotunda row.

Opposite to Rotten Row are Rutland Gate and Rutland House, where lived the Dukes of Rutland, anciently written Roteland. Rutlandshire neighbours Leicester, a town known to the Romans under the name of Ratae; Leicestershire is watered by the river Welland, and in Stukeley’s time there existed in a meadow near Ratae “two great banks called Rawdikes, which speculators look on as unaccountable”.[463] That Leicester or Ratae paid very high reverence to the horse may be inferred from the fact that here the annual Riding of the George was one of the principal solemnities of the town, and one which the inhabitants were bound legally to attend. In addition to the Rottenrows at Kensington and Lewes there is a Rottenrow in Bucks, and a Rottenrow near Reading, all of which, together with Rottenrow Tower near Alnwick, must be considered in combination.

Redon figures as a kingly name among the British chronologies, and as horses are associated so intimately with the various Rotten Rows, the name Redon may be connoted with Ruadan, a Celtic “saint” who is said to have presented King Dermot with thirty sea-green horses which rose from the sea at his bidding. Sea horses are a conspicuous feature on the coins of the Redones who dwelt in Gaul and commanded the mouth of the Loire.[464] The horse was certainly at home at Canterbury where Rodau’s Town is in immediate proximity to what is now called Riding Gate.

There is a river Roden at Wroxeter, a river Roding in Essex; Yorkshire is divided into three divisions called Ridings, and in East Riding, in the churchyard of the village of Rudstone, there stands a celebrated monolith which is peculiar inasmuch as its depth underground was said to equal its height above.[465] There is another Rudstone near Reading Street, Kent, and the Givon’s Grove near Epsom is either in or immediately adjacent to a district known as Wrydelands. To ride was once presumably to play the rÔle of the Kentaur Queen, whether equine as represented in the Coventry Festival or as riding in a triumphal biga, rhod, wain or wagon. That such riding was once a special privilege is obvious from the statement of Tacitus: “She claimed a right to be conveyed in her carriage to the Capitol; a right by ancient usage allowed only to the sacerdotal order, the vestal virgins, and the statues of the gods”.[466]

That the Lady of Coventry was the Coun or Queen is possibly implied by the Coundon within the borough of modern Coventry which also embraces a Foleshill,[467] and Radford.

The coins of the Gaulish Rotomagi, whose headquarters were the Rouen district, depict the horse not merely cantering but galloping apace, whence obviously the Rotomagi were an equine or Ecuina people. With their coins inscribed Ratumacos may be compared the coinage of the Batavian MagusÆ which depicts “a sea horse to the right,” and is inscribed Magus.[468] Magus, as we have seen, was a title of the Wandering Geho, Jehu, or Jew, and he may here be connoted with the “Splendid Mane” which figures under the name Magu, particularly in Slav fairy-tale:—

The French roue meaning a wheel, and rue, a roadway, are probably not decayed forms of the Latin rota but ruder, more rudimentary, and more radical: like the Candian Rhea, the Egyptian Ra or Re, and our ray, they are probably the Irish rhi, the Spanish rey, and the French roi.

There is a river Rea in Shropshire and a second river Rea upon which stands Birmingham: that this Rea was connected with the Candian Rhea is possible from the existence at Birmingham of a Canwell, or Canewell. Near Cambourne, or Cambre, is the rhe druth (Redruth) which the authorities decode into stream of the Druids. Running through the village of Berriew in Wales, is a rivulet named the Rhiw, and rising on Bardon Hill, Leicestershire, is “the bright and clear little river Sence”. As the word mens, or mind, is usually assigned to Minerva, Rhea was possibly the origin of reason, or St. Rhea, and to Rhi Vera may be assigned river and revere; a reverie is a brown study.

According to Persian philosophy the soul of man was fivefold in its essence, one-fifth being “the Roun, or Rouan, the principle of practical judgment, imagination, volition”:[470] another fifth, “the Okho or principle of conscience,” seemingly corresponds to what western philosophers termed the Ego or I myself.

In the neighbourhood of Brough in Westmorland is an ancient cross within an ancient camp, known as Rey Cross, and that Leicester or Ratae—which stands upon the antique Via Devana or Divine Way—was intimately related with the Holy Rood is obvious from the modern Red Cross Street and High Cross Street.

The ruddy Rood was no doubt radically the rolling four-spoked wheel, felloe, felly, periphery, or brim, and although perhaps Reading denoted as is officially supposed, “Town of the Children of Reada,” the name Read, Reid, Rea, Wray, Ray, etc., did not only mean ruddy or red-haired. I question whether Ripon really owes its title as supposed to ripa, the Latin for bank of a stream.

The town hall of Reading is situated at Valpy Street in Forbury Gardens on what is known as The Forbury, seemingly the Fire Barrow or prehistoric Forum, and doubtless a holy fire once burned ruddily at Rednal or Wredinhal near Bromsgrove. In Welsh rhedyn means fern, whence the authorities translate Reddanick in Cornwall into the ferny place: the connection, however, is probably as remote and imaginary as that between Redesdale and reeds.

The place-name Rothwell, anciently Rodewelle, is no doubt with reason assumed to be “well of the rood or cross”. Ruth means pity, and the ruddy cross of St. John, now (almost) universally sacrosanct to Pity, was, I think, probably the original Holy Rood. The knights of St. John possessed at Barrow in Leicester or Ratae a site now known as Rothley Temple, and as th, t, and d, are universally interchangeable it is likely that this Rothley was once Roth lea or Rood Lea. Similarly Redruth, in view of the neighbouring Carn Bre, was probably not “Stream of the Druids,” but an abri of the Red Rood. The sacred rod or pole known generally as the Maypole was almost invariably surmounted by one or more rotÆ, or wheels, and the name “Radipole rood” at Fulham (nearly opposite Epple St.) renders it likely that the Maypole was once known alternatively as the Rood Pole. From the Maypoles flew frequently the ruddy cross of Christopher or George.

In British mythology there figures a goddess of great loveliness named Arianrod, which means in Welsh the “Silver Wheel”: the Persians held that their Jupiter was the whole circuit of heaven, and Arianrhod, or “Silver Wheel,” was undoubtedly the starry welkin, the Wheel Queen, or the Vulcan of Good Law. With Wayland Smith may be connoted the river Welland of Rutland and Rataeland.

Silver, a white metal,[471] was probably named after Sil Vera, the Princess of the Silvery Moon and Silvery Stars. Silver Street is a common name for old roads in the south of England:[472] Aubrey Walk in Kensington, is at the summit of a Silver Street, and the prime Aubrey de Vere of this neighbourhood was, I suspect, the same ghost as originally walked Auber’s Ridge in Picardy, and the famous French Chemin des Dames. France is the land of the Franks,[473] and near Frankton in Shropshire at Ellesmere, i.e., the Elle, Fairy, or Holy mere, are the remains of a so-called Ladies Walk. This extraordinary Chemin des Dames, the relic evidently of some old-time ceremony, is described as a paved causeway running far into the mere, with which more than forty years ago old swimmers were well acquainted. It could be traced by bathers until they got out of their depth. How much farther it might run they of course knew not. Its existence seems to have been almost forgotten until, in 1879, some divers searching for the body of a drowned man came upon it on the bottom of the mere, and this led to old inhabitants mentioning their knowledge of it.[474]

England abounds in Silverhills, Silverhowes, Silverleys, Silvertowns, Silverdales, and Perryvales. By Silverdale at Sydenham is Jews Walk, and on Branch Hill at Hampstead is a fine prospect known as Judges Walk: here is Holly Bush Hill and Holly Mound, and opposite is Mount Vernon, to be connoted with Durovernon, the ancient name of Canterbury or Rodau’s Town.

Jews Walk, and the Grove at Upper Sydenham, are adjacent to Peak Hill, which, in all probability, was once upon a time Puck’s Hill, and the wooded heights of Sydenham were in all likelihood a caer sidi, or seat of fairyland.

Sir John Morris-Jones points out that sidi is the Welsh equivalent of the Irish sid, “fairyland”[475] and he connects the word with seat. In view of this it is possible that St. Sidwell at Exeter was like the River Sid at Sidmouth, a caer sidi, or seat of the shee.

Sydenham, like the Phoenician Sidon, is probably connected with Poseidon, or Father Sidon, and Rhode the son of Poseidon may be connoted with Rhadamanthus, the supposed twin brother of Minos. Near Canterbury is Rhodesminnis, or Rhode Common,[476] and on this common Justice was doubtless once administered by the representatives of Rhadamanthus, who was praised by all men for his wisdom, piety, and equity. It is said that Rhode was driven to Crete by Minos, and was banished to an Asiatic island where he made his memory immortal by the wisdom of his laws: Rhode, whose name is rhoda, the rose or Eros, is further said to have instructed Hercules in virtue and wisdom, and according to Homer he dwells not in the underworld but in the Elysian Fields.

A rose coin of Rhoda was reproduced ante, page 339; the rhoda or rose, like the rood, is a universal symbol of love, and with Rodau’s Town, Canterbury, or Durovernon, which is permeated with the rose of St. George, or Oros, i.e., rose, may be connoted the neighbouring Rutupiae, now Richborough. From the ground-plan of this impressive ruin it will be seen to be unlike anything else in Europe, inasmuch as it originally consisted of a quadrangle surrounding a massive rood or cross imposed upon a titanic foundation.[477]

With Rutupiae, of which the Rutu may be connoted with the rood within its precincts, Mr. Roach Smith, in his Antiquities of Richborough, connotes the Gaulish people known as the Ruteni. The same authority quotes Malebranche as writing “all that part of the coast which lies between Calais and Dunkirk our seamen now call Ruthen,” whence it is exceedingly likely that the Reading Street near Broadstairs, and the Rottingdean near Brighton were originally inhabited by children of Reada or Rota.

Apparently “Rotuna” was in some way identified in Italy with Britain, or natione Britto, for according to Thomas an inscription was discovered at Rome, near Santa Maria Rotuna, bearing in strange alphabetical characters Natione Britto, somewhat analogous at first sight to Hebrew, Greek, or Phoenician letters.[478]

From the plan it will be seen that the northern arm of the Rutupian rood points directly to the high road, and RutupiÆ itself constitutes the root or radical of the great main route leading directly through Rodau’s Town, and Rochester to London Stone. The arms of Rochester or Durobrivum—where, as will be remembered, is a Troy Town—are St. Andrew on his roue Or rota.

The name DurobrivÆ was also applied by the Romans to the Icenian town of Caistor, where it is locally proverbial that,

There is a second Caistor which the Romans termed Venta Icenorum: the neighbouring modern Ancaster, the Romans entitled Causeimei. It is always taken for granted that the numerous chesters, casters, cesters of this country are the survivors of some Roman castra or fort. Were this actually the case it is difficult to understand why the Romans called Chester Deva, Ancaster Causeimei, Caistor DurobrivÆ, and Rochester Durobrivum: in any case the word castra has to be accounted for, and I think it will be found to be traceable to some prehistoric Judgment Tree, Cause Tree, Case Tree, or Juge Tree. No one knows exactly how “Zeus” was pronounced, but in any case it cannot have been rigid, and in all probability the vocalisation varied from juice to sus, and from juge to jack and cock.[479]

The rider of a race-horse is called a jockey, and the child in the nursery is taught to

An English CAC horse is illustrated on page 453, and the White Lady of Banbury who careered to the music of her bells was very certainly the Fairy Queen whom Thomas the Rhymer describes as follows: “Her Steed was of the highest beauty and spirit, and at his mane hung thirty silver bells and nine, which made music to the wind as she paced along. Her saddle was of ivory, laid over with goldsmiths’ work: her stirrups, her dress, all corresponded with her extreme beauty and the magnificence of her array. The fair huntress had her bow in hand, and her arrows at her belt. She led three greyhounds in a leash, and three hounds of scent followed her closely.”

This description might have been written of Diana, in which connection it may be noted that at Doncaster (British Cair Daun), the hobby horse used to figure as “the Queen’s Pony”. Epona, the Celtic horse-goddess, may be equated with the Chanteur or Centaur illustrated on so many of our “degraded” British coins, and Banstead Downs, upon which Ep’s Home stands, may be associated with Epona, and with the shaggy little ponies[480] which ranged in Epping Forest. Banstead, by Epsom (in Domesday Benestede), is supposed to have meant “bean-place or store”: at Banwell in Somerset, supposed to have meant “pool of the bones,” there is an earthwork cross which seemingly associates this Banwell with Banbury Cross, and ultimately to the cross of Alban.

The bells on the fingers and bells on the White Lady’s toes may be connoted with the silver bell of the value of 3s. 4d., which in 1571 was the prize awarded at Chester—a town of the Cangians or Cangi—to the horse “which with speede of runninge then should run before all others”.[481]

With this Chester Meeting may be noted Goodwood near Chichester. Chichester is in Sussex, and was anciently the seat of the Regni, a people whose name implies they were followers of re gni or Regina, but the authorities imagine that Chichester, the county town of Sussex, owes its name to a Saxon Cissa, who also bestowed his patronymic on Cissbury Ring, the famous oval entrenchment near Broadwater. At Cissbury Ring, the largest and finest on the South Downs, great numbers of Neolithic relics have been found, and the name may be connoted with Chisbury Camp near Avebury.

Near Stockport is Geecross, supposedly so named from “an ancient cross erected here by the Gee family”. Presumably that Geecross was the chi cross or the Greek chi: the British name for Chichester was Caer Kei,[482] which means the fortress of Kei, but at more modern Chichester the famous Market Cross was probably a jack, for the four main streets of Chichester still stand in the form of the jack or red rood. The curious surname Juxon is intimately connected with Chichester; there is an inscription at Goodwood relating to a British ruler named Cogidumnus[483]—apparently Cogi dominus or Cogi Lord—whence it seems probable that Chichester or Chichestra (1297) was as it is to-day an assize or juges tree, or even possibly a jockey’s tre.

The adjacent Goodwood being equivalent to Jude wood, it is worthy of notice that Prof. Weekley connotes the name Judson with Juxon. His words are: “The administration of justice occupied a horde of officials from the Justice down to the Catchpole.[484] The official title Judge is rarely found, and this surname is usually from the female name Judge, which like Jug was used for Judith and later for Jane.

“Janette, Judge, Jennie; a woman’s name (Cotgrave). The names Judson and Juxon sometimes belong to these.”[485]

The word Chester is probably the same as the neighbouring place-name Goostrey-cum-Barnshaw in Cheshire, and the Barn shaw or Barn hill here connected with Goostrey may be connoted with Loch Goosey near Barhill in Ayrshire.

Chi or Jou, who may be equated with the mysterious but important St. Chei of Cornwall, was probably also once seated at Chee Dale in Derbyshire, at Chew Magna, and Chewton, as well as at the already mentioned Jews Walk and Judges Walk near London.

In Devonshire is a river Shobrook which is authoritatively explained as Old English for “brook of Sceocca, i.e., the devil, Satan! cf. Shuckburgh”: on referring we find Shuckburgh meant—“Nook and castle of the Devil, i.e., Scucca, Satan, a Demon, Evil Spirit; cf. Shugborough”. I have not pursued any inquiries at Shugborough, but it is quite likely that the Saxons regarded the British Shug or Shuck with disfavour: there is little doubt he was closely related to “Old Shock,” the phantom-dog, and the equally unpopular “Jack up the Orchard”. In some parts of England Royal Oak Day is known as Shick Shack Day,[486] and in Surrey children play a game of giant’s stride, known as Merritot or Shuggy Shaw.[487]

Merrie Tot was probably once Merrie Tod or Tad, and Shuggy Shaw may reasonably be modernised as Shaggy Jew or Shaggy Joy. It will be remembered that the Wandering Jew, alias Elijah, wore a shag gown (ante, p. 148): this shagginess no doubt typified the radiating beams of the Sun-god, and it may be connoted with the shaggy raiment and long hair of John the Baptist. As shaggy Pan, “the President of the Mountains,” almost certainly gave his name to pen, meaning a hill, it may be surmised that shaw, meaning a wooded hill, is allied to Shuggy Shaw. The surname Bagshaw implies a place-name which originated from Bog or Bogie Shaw: but Bagshawes Cavern at Bradwell, near Buxton,[488] is suggestive of a cave or Canhole[489] attributed to Big Shaw, and the neighbouring Tideswell is agreeably reminiscent of Merrie Tot or Shuggy Shaw.

In connection with jeu, a game, may be connoted gewgaw, in MediÆval English giuegoue: the pronunciation of this word, according to Skeat, is uncertain, and the origin unknown; he adds, “one sense of gewgaw is a Jew’s Harp; cf. Burgundian gawe, a Jew’s Harp”.

Virgil, in his description of a Trojan jeu or show, observes—

It will be noted that the juge or showman seats himself amid shaws, upon a toothill or barrow, and doubtless just such eager crowds as collected round Æneas gathered in the ancient hippodrome which once occupied the surroundings of St. John’s Church by Aubrey Walk, Kensington. “St John’s Church,” says Mitton, “stands on a hill, once a grassy mound within the hippodrome enclosure, which is marked in a contemporary map ‘Hill for pedestrians,’ apparently a sort of natural grand-stand.”[491] A large tract of this district was formerly covered by a race-course known as the hippodrome. “It stretched,” continues Mitton, “northward in a great ellipse, and then trended north-west and ended up roughly where is now the Triangle at the west-end of St. Quintin Avenue. It was used for both flat-racing and steeplechasing, and the steeplechase course was more than 2 miles in length. The place was very popular being within easy reach of London, but the ground was never very good for the purpose as it was marshy.”[492]

That the grassy mound or natural grand-stand of St. John was once sacred to the divine Ecne, Chinea, or Hackney, and that this King John or King Han was symbolised by an Invictus or prancing courser is implied from the lines of a Bardic poet: “Lo, he is brought from the firm enclosure with his light-coloured bounding steeds—even the sovereign On, the ancient, the generous Feeder”.[493] We have seen that in Ireland Sengann meant Old Gann, and that “Saint” John of Kensington was originally Sinjohn, Holy John, or Elgin, seems to be somewhat further implied from the neighbouring Elgin Crescent, Elgin Avenue, and Howley Street.

The Fulham place almost immediately adjacent, considered in conjunction with Fowell Street, suggests that here, as at the more western Fulham, was a home of Foals or wild Fowl, or perhaps of Fal, the Irish Centaur-god.

The sovereign On, the ancient Courser “of the blushing purple and the potent number,” was mighty Hu, whose name New, or Ancient Yew, is, I think, perpetuated at Newbury—where Hewson is still a family name—at Newington Padox (said to be for paddocks) in Warsickshire, at Newington near Wye, in Kent, and possibly at other Newmarkets or tons, which are intimately associated with horse-racing. With the river Noe in Derbyshire may be connoted Noe, the British form of Noah: The Newburns in Scotland and Northumberland can hardly have been so named because they were novel or new rivers, and in view of the fact that British mythology combined Noah’s ark (Welsh arch) with a mare, it may be questioned whether the place-name Newark (originally Newarcha), really meant as at present supposed New Work.[494] It may be that the Trojan horse story was purely mythological, and had originally relation to the supposition that mankind all emerged from the body of the Solar Horse.

The Kensington Hippodrome was eventually closed down on account of the noise and disorders which arose there, and one may safely assume there was always a certain amount of rudeness and rowdiness among the rout at all hippodromes. Had Herr Cissa, the imaginary Saxon to whom the authorities so generously ascribe Cissbury Ring, Chichester, and many other places, been present on some prehistoric Whit Monday, doubtless like any other personage of importance he would have arrived at Kensington seated in a reidi—the equivalent of the British rhod. And if further, in accordance with Teutonic wont, Cissa had sneered at the shaggy little keffils[495] of the British, certainly some keen Icenian[496] would have pointed out that not only was the keffil or cafall a horse of very distinguished antiquity, but that the word cafall reminded him agreeably of the Gaulish cheval and the Iberian cabal, both very chivalrous or cavalryous old words suggestive of valiant, valid, and strong Che or Jou.

Hereupon some young Cockney would inevitably have uttered the current British byword—

Unless human nature is very changeable Herr Cissa would then have delivered himself somewhat as follows: “It is really coming to this, that we Germans, the people to whose exquisite Kultur the nations of Europe and of America, too, owe the fact that they no longer consist of hordes of ape-like savages roaming their primordial forests, are about to allow ourselves to be dictated to.”[498]

Irritated by the allusion to ape-like savages one may surmise that a jockey of Chichestra inquired whether Herr Cissa claimed the river Cuckmere and also Cuckoo- or Houndean-Bottom, the field in which Lewes racecourse stands? He might also have insinuated that the White Horse cut in the downs below Hinover[499] in the Cuckmere valley was there long before the inhabitants of Hanover adopted it as a totem, and that the Juxons were just as much entitled to the sign of the Horse as the Saxons of Saxony, or Sachsen. To this Herr Cissa would have replied that the White Horse at Uffington was a “deplorable abortion,” and that its barbaric design was “a slander on the Saxon standard”. Hereupon a yokel from Cuckhamsley Hill, near Zizeter, sometimes known as Cirencester, probably inquired with a chuckle whether Herr Cissa claimed every Jugestree, Tree of Justice, Esus Tree, Assize or Assembly Tree in the British Islands? He pertinently added that in Cirencester, or Churncester, they were in the habit of celebrating at Harvest Home the festival of the Kernababy, or Maiden, which he always understood represented the Corn baby, elsewhere known as the Ivy Girl, or “Sweet Sis”. This youth had a notion that Sweet Sis, or the Lady of the Corn[500] was somehow connected with his native Cirencester, or Zizeter, and he produced a token or coin upon which the well coiffured head of a chic little maiden or fairy queen was portrayed.[501]

An Icenian charioteer, who explained that his people alternatively termed themselves the Jugantes,[502] also produced a medal which he said had been awarded him at Caistor, pointing out that the spike of Corn was the sign of the Kernababy, that the legend under the hackney read Cac, and that he rather thought the white horse of the Cuckmere valley and also the one by Cuckhamsley were representations of the same Cock Horse.[503] He added that he had driven straight from Goggeshall in his gig—a kind of coach similar to that in which the living image of his All Highest used of old time to be ceremoniously paraded.

Herr Cissa hereupon maintained that it was impossible for anyone to drive straight anywhere in a gig, for it was an accepted axiom of the science of language that the word gig, “probably of imitative origin,” meant “to take a wrong direction, to rove at random”.[504] At this juncture a venerable columba from St. Columbs, Nottinghill, intervened and produced an authentic Life of the Great St. Columba, wherein is recorded an incident concerning the holy man’s journey in a gig without its linch pins. “On that day,” he quoted, “there was a great strain on it over long stretches of road,” nevertheless “the car in which he was comfortably seated moved forward without mishap on a straight course.”[505]

In view of this feat, and of an illustration of the type of vehicle in which the journey was supposedly accomplished, it was generally accepted that Herr Cissa’s definition of gig was fantastic, whereupon the Saxon, protesting, “You do not care one iota for our gigantic works of Kultur and Science, for our social organisation, for our Genius!” asserted the dignity of his gig definition by whipping up his horses, taking a wrong direction, and roving at random from the enclosure.