Harold Bayley

“It is our duty to begin research even if we have to penetrate many a labyrinth leading to nowhere and to lament the loss of many a plausible system. A false theory negatived is a positive result.”—Thos. J. Westropp.

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

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

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

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

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

Fig. 462.—Ground plan of a section of the Chislehurst caves, from an article by Mr. W. J. Nichols, published in The Journal of the British ArchÆological Association, 1903.

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

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

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

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

In connection with the troglodite town of Troo, and with the French word trou meaning a hole, it is worthy of note that a subterranean chamber or “Giant’s Holt,” exists at Trew in Cornwall, and a similar one at the village of Trewoofe: the name Trewoofe suggests the word trough, a generic term for a scooped or hollowed-out receptacle: we have already noted that in the west of England a small ship is still called a trow; the Anglo-Saxon for a trough was troh, the German is trog, the Danish is trug, and the Swedish trag.

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

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

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

Fig. 463.

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

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

In view of the fact that either chalk or flints could have been had conveniently in unlimited quantities for shipment, either from the coast cliffs of Albion, or if inland from the commonsense everyday form of chalk quarry, it is difficult to suppose otherwise than that the Deneholes—which do not branch out indiscriminately like ordinary mine-veins—were dug under superstitious or ecclesiastical control. Of this system perhaps a parallel instance may be found in the remarkable turquoise mines recently explored at Maghara near Sinai: “These mines,” says a writer in Ancient Egypt,[916] “lie in the vicinity of two adjacent caves facing an extensive site of burning, which has the peculiarities of the high-places of which we hear so much in the Bible. These caves formed a sanctuary which, judging from what is known of ancient sanctuaries in Arabia generally, was at once a shrine and a store house, presumably in the possession of a priesthood or clan, who, in return for offerings brought to the shrine, gave either turquoise itself, or the permission to mine it in the surrounding district. The sanctuary, like other sanctuaries in Arabia, was under the patronage of a female divinity, the representative of nature-worship, and one of the numerous forms of Ishthar.”

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

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

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

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

In addition to dene holes on the coast of Durham and at Dunstable there are dene holes in the dun, down, or hill overlooking Kit’s Coty: it may reasonably be surmised that the latter were inhabited by the drui or wise men who constructed not only Kit’s Coty but also the other extensive megalithic remains which exist in the neighbourhood. The well-known cave at St. Andrews contains many curious Pictish sculptures, and the connection between antrou (or Andrew), a cave, and trou, a hole, extends to the words entrails, intricate, and under. Practically all the “Mighty Childs” of mythology are represented as having sprung from caves or underground: Jupiter or Chi (the chi or [Greek: ch] is the cross of Andrew[917]) was cave-born and worshipped in a cave; Dionysos was said to have been nurtured in a cave; Hermes was born at the mouth of a cave, and it is remarkable that, whereas a cave is still shown as the birthplace of Jesus Christ at Bethlehem, St. Jerome complained that in his day the pagans celebrated the worship of Thammuz, or Adonis, i.e., Adon, at that very cave.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On page 558 was reproduced a coin representing the Maiden in connection with a right angle, and there may be some connection between this emblem and the form of Patrick’s Purgatory: “Its shape,” says Faber, “resembles that of an L, excepting only that the angle is more obtuse, and it is formed by two parallel walls covered with large stones and sods, its floor being the natural rock. Its length is 16½ feet, and its width 2 feet, but the building is so low that a tall man cannot stand erect in it. It holds nine persons, and a tenth could not remain in it without considerable inconvenience.”[933] This Irish chapel to hold nine may be connoted with Bishop Arculf’s description in a.d. 700 of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. He describes this church as very large and round, encompassed with three walls, with a broad space between each, and containing three altars of wonderful workmanship, in the middle wall, at three different points; on the south, the north, and the west. “It is supported by twelve stone columns of extraordinary magnitude; and it has eight doors or entrances through the three opposite walls, four fronting the north-east, and four to the south-east. In the middle space of the inner circle is a round grotto cut in the solid rock, the interior of which is large enough to allow nine men to pray standing, and the roof of which is about a foot and a half higher than a man of ordinary stature.”[934] To the above particulars Arculf adds the interesting information that: “On the side of Mount Olivet there is a cave not far from the church of St. Mary,[935] on an eminence looking towards the valley of Jehoshaphat, in which are two very deep pits. One of these extends under the mountain to a vast depth; the other is sunk straight down from the pavement of the cavern, and is said to be of great extent. These pits are always closed above. In this cavern are four stone tables; one, near the entrance, is that of our Lord Jesus, whose seat is attached to it, and who, doubtless, rested Himself here while His twelve apostles sat at the other tables.”[936]

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

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

Similarly the author of The Incantation of Cunvelyn maintained:—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reigate now consists of a pair of ancient Manors, of which one was Howleigh; the adjacent Agland Moor, as also Oxted, suggests the troglodyte King Og of Edrei. Among the Reigate caves is one denominated “The Dungeon”: Tintagel was known alternatively not only as Dundagel, but also as Dunechein, evidently the same word as the great Dane John tumulus at Canterbury. The meaning of this term depends like every other word upon its context; a dungeon is a down-under or dene hole, the keep or donjon of a castle is its main tower or summit: similarly the word dunhill is identical with dene hole; abyss now means a yawning depth, but on page 224 Abyss was represented as a dunhill.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fig. 474. PLAN OF THE GROTTO AT MARGATE.