Archaic England Part 16

This magic change is not only suggestive of the two-faced Ja.n.u.s, but also of Aeon, one of the British t.i.tles for the Sun:--

Aeon hath seen age after age in long succession roll, But like a serpent which has cast its skin, Rose to new life in youthful vigour strong.

Commenting on this pa.s.sage Owen Morgan observes: "The expression 'cast his skin' alluded to the idea that the Sun of the old year had his body destroyed in the heavens at noon on each 20th December, by the Power of Darkness".[213] The Gnostics considered there were thirty divine Powers or Rulers, corresponding obviously to the days of the month, and these Powers they termed Aeons: among the Greeks _aeon_ meant an enormously vast tract of time; in Welsh _Ion_ means Leader or Lord.

The story of Vidforull or Magus gains in interest in view of his mystic age of 330, or ten times 33, and the emerging-ex-post incident may have some connection with the nomenclature of the flame-flowered staff or post now termed a Hollyhock, or _Holy Hock_. One of the miracles attributed to St. Kit--a miracle which we are told was the means of converting _eight_ thousand men to Christianity--was the budding of his staff. "Christopher set his staff in the earth, and when he arose on the morn he found his staff like a palmier bearing flowers, leaves, and dates." Kit or Kate is the same word as "Kaad," and there is a serpent represented on the post or staff at St. Alban's Kaadman, figured on p.

110. The serpent was universally the symbol of subtlety and deep wisdom, and among the Celts it was, because it periodically sloughed its skin, regarded as the emblem of regeneration and rejuvenescence.[214]

The _Hawk_, which is the remaining symbol of the Kaadman (Fig. 16), was the _uch_ or high-flying bird, which soared sun-wise and hovered overworld eyeing or ogling the below with penetrating and all-seeing vision. It is difficult to see any rational connection between _hawk_ and _heave_--a connection which for some mysterious reason the authorities connote--but the hawk was unquestionably an emblem of the Most High. A hawker is a harokel, Hercules, or merchant, and with _Maga_ may be connoted _magazine_, which means storehouse. In Celtic _mako_ or _maga_ means "I feed"; in Welsh _magu_ means _breed_, and to _nurse_; in Welsh _magad_ is _brood_. It is to this root that obviously may be a.s.signed the Gaelic Mac or Mc, which means "breed of" or "children of".

In the Isle of Man, the inhabitants claimed to be descended from the fairies, whence perhaps the MacAuliffes of Albany originally claimed to be children of the Elf. Among the Berbers of Africa _Mac_ has precisely the same meaning as among the Gaels, and among the Tudas of India _mag_ also means _children of_. "Surely after this," says a commentator, "the McPhersons and McGregors of our Highland glens need not hesitate to claim as Scotch cousins the inhabitants of the Indian peninsula."[215]

There are many tales current in Cornwall of a famous witch known as "Maggie Figgie," and a particular rock on one of the most impressive headlands of the Duchy is ent.i.tled "Maggy Figgie's Chair". Here, it is said, Maggie was wont to seat herself when calling to her aid the spirits of the storm, and upon this dizzy height she swung to and fro as the storms far below rolled in from the Atlantic. Just as _Maggie_ is radically _make_, so is _figgy_ related to _fake_. The many-seeded _fica_ or _fig_ was the symbol of the Mother of Millions, and the same root is responsible for _fecund_, and probably for _phooka_, which is the Irish for Fairy or Elf. _f.e.c.kless_ means without resource, shiftless, incompetent, and incapable; _vague_ means wandering, and the word vagabond is probably due to the beneficent _phooka_ or Wanderer.

That Pan was not only a hill and wood deity, but also a sea-vagabond is implied by the invocation:--

Io! Io! Pan! Pan!

Oh Pan thou _ocean Wanderer_.[216]

In Northumberland among the Fern Islands is a rock known as the Megstone, and in Westmorland is the famous megalithic monument, known as Long Meg and her Daughters. The daughters were here represented by seventy-two stones placed in a circle (there are now only sixty-seven), and Long Meg herself, who is said to have been the last of the t.i.tans, is identified with an outstanding rock, which is recorded as measuring 18 feet in height, and 15 feet in circ.u.mference. The monument is situated on what is called The Maiden Way, and the measurement 15 is therefore significant, for the number 15 was peculiarly the Maiden's number, and "when she was fifteen years of age" is almost a standard formula in the lives of the Saints. We shall meet with fifteen in connection with the Virgin Mary, who, we shall note, was reputed to have lived to the age of seventy-two. The circle of "the Merry Maidens" near St. Just is 72 feet in diameter, and the Nine Maidens near Penzance is also 72 feet in diameter.[217] Christ the Corner Stone is said to have had seventy-two disciples, and the seventy-two stones of Long Meg's circle have probably some relation to the seventy-two dodecans into which the Chaldean and Egyptian Zodiac was divided. In connection with _magu_, the Welsh for nurse, it is worth noting that St. Margaret, or St. Meg, is said to have been delivered to a nurse to be kept, but on a certain day, when she was fifteen years of age and kept the sheep of her nurse, her circ.u.mstances took a sudden change for the worse.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 48.--Long Meg and her Daughters. From _Our Ancient Monuments_ (Kains-Jackson).]

The Parthenon, or Maiden's House, at Athens was supported by fifteen pairs of columns; the number eighteen is twice nine, and in all probability stood for the divine twain, Meg and Mike, Michal and St.

Michael. The duality of St. Michael which is portrayed in Fig. 200, page 363, was no doubt also symbolised by the two rocks, which, according to _The Golden Legend_, Michael removed and replaced by a single piece of stone of marble. A second apparition recorded of St. Michael states that the saint stood on a stone of marble, and anon, because the people had great penury and need of water, there flowed out so much water that unto this day they be sustained by the benefit thereof.[218] This is evidently the same miracle as that ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 21, on page 130, and in this connection it is noticeable that in the neighbourhood of Mickleham (Surrey) are Margery Hall, Mogadur, and Mug's well.

Meg is a primitive form of Margaret, and in Art St. Margaret is always represented as the counterpart of St. Michael with a vanquished dragon at her feet. To account for this emblem the hagiographers relate that St. Margaret was swallowed by a dragon, but that the cross which she happened to be holding caused the creature to burst, whereupon St.

Margaret emerged from its stomach unscathed.

There is a counterpart to Maggie Figgie's chair at St. Michael's Mount, but in the latter case "Kader Migell" was a hallowed site. "Who knows not Migh.e.l.l's Mount and chair, the pilgrims Holy vaunt?" According to Carew this original "chair," outside the castle, was a bad seat in a craggy place, somewhat dangerous of access.

St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall used to be known as Dinsul, which the authorities suggest was _dun sol_, or the Sun Hill. Very probably this was so, and there is an equal probability that it meant also _din seul_, _i.e._, the hill of _Le Seul_ or _La Seule_, the Solitary or Alone.[219]

In the Old Testament Michal figures as the daughter of King _Saul_, which is curious in view of St. Michael's Mount being named Din_seul_.

St. Michael's in Brittany and St. Michael's elsewhere are dedicated _ad duas tumbas_, which means the two tumuli or tumps.[220] At St. Albans, the sacred processions started from two tumps or _toot_ hills, and it may be suggested these symbolised the two _teats_ of the primeval parent. In Ireland at Killarney are two mounts now termed The Paps, but originally known as The Paps of Anu, _i.e._, the Irish _Magna Mater_.

Similar "Paps" are common in other parts of Britain, and there is little doubt that _mam_, the Welsh for a gently rising hill, has an intimate relation to mammal or teat. The Toothills were where _tout_ or _all_ congregated together in convocation, and in all probability every toot hill originally represented the teat of Tad, or Dad, the Celtic _tata_, or daddy. Toot hills are alternatively known as moot hills, and this latter term may be connoted with _maeth_, the Welsh for _nourishment_: near Sunderland are two round-topped rocks named Maiden Paps.

Mickleham in Surrey is situated at the base of Tot Hill: Tothill Street at Westminster marks the locality of an historic toot hill standing in Tothill Fields, and at Westminster the memory of St. Margaret has seemingly survived in dual form--as the ecclesiastical St. Margaret whose church nestles up against the Abbey of St. Peter, and as the popular giantess Long Meg. This celebrated heroine "did not only pa.s.s all the rest of her country in the length of her proportion, but every limbe was so fit to her talnesse that she seemed the picture and shape of some tall man cast in a woman mould". In times gone by a "huge" stone in the cloisters of Westminster used to be pointed out to visitors as the very gravestone of Long Meg,[221] and this "long, large, and entire"

piece of rock may be connoted with the Megstone of the Fern Islands and the Long Meg of c.u.mberland. In 1635 there was published _The Life of Long Meg of Westminster_, containing the mad merry pranks she played in her lifetime, not only in performing sundry quarrels with divers ruffians about London, but also how valiantly she behaved herself in the "Warres of Bolloinge".

This allusion to Bolloinge suggests that the chivalrous and intrepid Long Meg was famous at Bulloigne, and that the name of that place is cognate with Bellona, the G.o.ddess of War. That the valiant St. Margaret was as unconquerable as Micah was _invictus_, may be judged from the sacred legend that the devil once appeared before her in the likeness of a man, whereupon, after a short parley, "she caught him by the head and threw him to the ground, and set her right foot on his neck saying: 'Lie still, thou fiend, under the feet of a woman'. The devil then cried: 'O Blessed Margaret, I am overcome'".

As St. Michael was the Leader of All Angels, so St. Margaret was the Mother of All Children, and the circle of Long Meg was evidently a mighty delineation of the Marguerite, Marigold, or Daisy. The Celts, with their exquisite imagination, figured the daisy or marguerite as the symbol of innocence and the newly-born. There is a Celtic legend to the effect that every unborn babe taken from earth becomes a spirit which scatters down upon the earth some new and lovely flower to cheer its parents. "We have seen," runs an Irish tale, "the infant you regret reclining on a light mist; it approached us, and shed on our fields a harvest of new flowers. Look, oh, Malvina! among these flowers we distinguish one with a golden disc surrounded by silver leaves: a sweet tinge of crimson adorns its delicate rays; waved by a gentle wind we might call it a little infant playing in a green meadow, and the flower of thy bosom has given a new flower to the hills of Cromla. Since that day the daughters of Morven have consecrated the Daisy to infancy. It is called the flower of innocence; the flower of the new-born."[222]

The Scotch form of Margaret is Maisie, and from the word _muggy_, meaning a warm, light mist, it would seem that Maisie or Maggy was the divinity of mists and moisture. It was widely supposed that the mists of Mother Earth, commingling with the beams of the Father Sun, were together the source of all juvenescence and life. According to Owen Morgan, "Ked's influence from below was supposed to be exercised by exhalations, the breathings as it were of the Great Mother,"[223] and it is still a British belief that--

Mist in spring is the source of wine, Mist in summer is the source of heat, Mist in autumn is the source of rain, Mist in winter is the source of snow.

Maggie or Maisie being thus probably the Maid of the Mist, or Mistress of the Moisture, and there being no known etymology for _fog_, the unpopular Maggie Figgie who sat in her chair charming the spirits of the ocean, was perhaps the ill-omened Maggie _Foggy_.

It is a world-wide characteristic of the Earth Mother to appear anon as a baleful hag, anon as a lovely maid, and in all probability to "Maid Margaret that was so meeke and milde," may be attributed the adjective _meek_. In London an a.s.s, in c.o.c.kney parlance, is a _moke_; Christ was said to ride upon an a.s.s as symbolic of his meekness, and as already noted Christ by the Gnostics was represented as a.s.s-headed. The worship of the Golden a.s.s persisted in Europe until a comparatively late period; a _jenny_ is a female moke, a jacka.s.s is the masculine of Jenny.

At St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall is a Jack the Giant-Killer's Well.

The French name Michelet means "little Michael," and that Great Michael was Cain the Wandering One is implied by the tradition that St. Kayne visited St. Michael's Mount, and conferred certain powers upon the stone seat or Kader Mighel situated so dizzily amid the crags. The orthodoxy of this St. Kayne--who appears again at Keynsham--was evidently more than suspect, and according to Norden "this Kayne is said to be a woman-saynte, but it better resembleth _kayne_, the devil who had the shape of a man". At Keynsham St. Kayne is popularly supposed to have turned serpents into stone, and there is no doubt that his or her name was intimately a.s.sociated with the serpent. The Celtic names Kean and Kenny are translated to mean _vast_, but in Cornish _ken_ meant pity, and _ken_, _cunning_, and _canny_ all imply knowledge and deep wisdom.

In Welsh, _cain_ means _sun_ and also _fair_; _candere_, to glow, is, of course, connected with _candescent_, _candid_, and _candour_.

The seat on St. Michael's Tower is the counterpart to Maggie Figgie's Chair, which is near the village of St. Levan, and in the previous chapter it was seen that _Levan_ or _Elvan_ was a synonym for _elban_ or _Alban_. The family name at St. Michael's Mount is St. Levan, and the usual abode of Maggie Figgie is a.s.signed to the adjacent village of St.

Levan. The chief fact recorded of St. Levan is his cell shown at Bodellen, near which is his seat--a rock split _in two_. He is also a.s.sociated with a chad fish, ent.i.tled "chuck child," to account for which a ridiculous story has been concocted to the effect that St.

Levan once caught a chad, which _choked_ a child. Like the cod the chad was perhaps so named because of its amazing fecundity, and the term _chuck child_ was probably once Jack, the child Michael, or the giant-killing Jack, whose well stands on St. Michael's Mount. It is not improbable that "chuck," like Jack, is an inflexion of Gog, and that it is an almost pure survival of the British _uch uch_ or _high high_. The great festival of Gog and Magog in c.o.c.kaigne was unquestionably on Lord Mayor's Show Day, and this used originally to fall--or rather the Lord Mayor was usually chosen--on Michaelmas Day.[224]

In addition to a.s.sociating St. Levan with the chad or "chuck child,"

legend also connects St. Levan with a woman named Johanna. W. C. Borlase observes that Carew calls him St. Siluan, and that this form is still retained in the euphonious name of an estate Selena. Selena was a t.i.tle under which the Mother of Night, the consort of Cain, the Man in the Moon, was worshipped by the Greeks. With regard to the _Sel_ of Selena or Silenus it will be seen as we proceed that _silly_, _Seeley_, etc., did not imply idiocy, but that _silly_, as in Scotland where it meant _holy_, and as in the German _selig_, primarily meant _innocent_. We speak to-day of "silly sheep"; in the Middle Ages Christ was termed the silly Babe, and the county of Suffolk still vaunts itself as Silly Suffolk. Silene or Selina would thus imply the Innocent or Holy Una: her counterpart Silenus was usually represented as a jovial, genial, and merry patriarch. Selenus, like Ja.n.u.s, was apparently the Old Father Christmas, and Selena or _Cyn_thia seemingly the maiden Cain, Kayne, St.

Kenna, or Jana.

At Treleven, the _tre_ or the Home of Leven, there is a Lady's Well said to possess exceptional healing properties, and the power of conferring great vigour and might to the const.i.tution. _Levin_ in Old English meant the lightning flash, _Levant_ was the uprising, the Orient, or the East, and _levante_ is Italian for the wind. According to Etruscan mythology, there were _eleven_ thunderbolts or _levins_ wielded by Nine Great G.o.ds,[225] and that the number eleven was a.s.sociated with Long Meg of Westmorland, would appear from the fact that her circle measured "about 1100 feet in circ.u.mference". With this measurement may be connoted the British camp on Herefordshire Beacon, "which takes the form of an irregular oval 1100 yards in length,"[226] and that 1100 implied some special sanct.i.ty may be gathered from the bardic lines--

The age of Jesus, the fair and energetic Hu In G.o.d's Truth was eleven hundred.[227]

The more usually a.s.sumed age of Jesus, _i.e._, thirty-three, may be connoted with the persistent thirty-threes elsewhere considered. The diameter of the circle of Long Meg and her Daughters is stated as 330 feet,[228] a measurement which seemingly has some relation to the 330 years of age a.s.signed to Magus when he accomplished his magic change.

Christianity has retained the memory of a St. Ursula and 11,000 virgins, but it has been a puzzle to hagiographers to account for the "11" or 11,000 so persistently a.s.sociated with her. In his essay on the legend, Baring-Gould refers to it as being "generated out of worse than nothing," lamenting this and kindred stories. "Alas! too often they are but apples of Sodom, fair-cheeked, but containing the dust and ashes of heathenism". But the story of St. Ursula is essentially beautiful; moreover, it is essentially British. _The Golden Legend_ tells us that Ursula was a British princess, and Cornwall claims, with a probability of right, that she was Cornish. Her mother was named Daria, her cousin Adrian, and there is a clear memory of the Darian, Adrian, Droian, or Trojan games perpetrated in the incident which _The Golden Legend_ thus records: "By the counsel of the Queen the Virgins were gathered together from diverse realms, and she was leader of them, and at the last she suffered martyrdom with them. And then the condition made, all things were made ready. Then the Queen shewed her counsel to the Knights of her Company, and made them all to swear this new chivalry, and then began they to make diverse plays and games of battle as to run here and there, and feigned many manners of plays. And for all that they left not their purpose, and sometimes they returned from this play at midday, and sometimes unnethe at evensong time. And the barons and great lords a.s.sembled them to see the fair games and disports, and all had joy and pleasure in beholding them, and also marvel."[229]

From this account it would appear that twice a day the followers of St.

Ursula joyed themselves and the onlookers by a sacred ballet, which no doubt symbolised in its convolutions the ethereal Harmony and the ordered movements of the Stars. Her consort's name is given as Ethereus, whence Ursula herself must have been Etherea, the Ethereal maid, conceived in all likelihood at the idyllic island Doliche, Idea, Aeria, Candia, or Crete. The name Ursula means _bear_, and it was supposed that around the seven stars of Arcturus, the immovable Great Bear, all the lesser stars wheeled in an everlasting procession. Of this giant's wheel or marguerite, Margaret, or Peggie, was seemingly deemed to be the axle, _peg_, or Golden Eye, and this idea apparently underlies Homer:--

... the axle of the Sky, The Bear revolving points his _Golden Eye_.

Having quitted Britain, St. Ursula and her train of 11,000 maidens underwent various vicissitudes. Eventually circ.u.mstances took them to Cologne, whereupon, to quote _The Golden Legend_, "When the Huns saw them they began to run upon them with a great cry and araged like wolves on sheep, and slew all this great mult.i.tude".[230] From time to time the monks of Cologne have unearthed large deposits of children's bones which have piously been claimed to be authentic relics of the 11,000 martyrs.

In China and j.a.pan the Great Mother is represented pouring forth the bubbling waters of creation from a vase, and in every bubble is depicted a small babe. This G.o.ddess Kwanyon, known as the _eleven faced_ and _thousand handed_, is represented at the temple of San-ju-San-gen-do by 33,333 images, and her name resolves, as will be seen, into Queen Yon.

The name China, French Chine, is John, and j.a.pon or Yapon, the land of the Rising Sun, whose cognisance is the Marguerite or Golden Daisy, whose priests are termed _bonzes_, and whose national cry is _banzai_, is radically the same as the British _Eubonia_ or Hobany, La Dame Abonde, the Giver of _Abundance_.

Among the megalithic remains in Brittany there have been found ornaments of jade, a material which, until recently, was supposed not to exist except in China or j.a.pan. At Carnac, near the town of Elven, is the world-famed megalithic ruin now consisting of eleven rows of rocks, said to number "somewhere between nine and ten thousand". As for many years these relics have been habitually broken up and used for building and road-making purposes, it is not unlikely that originally there were 1000 rocks in each of the eleven rows, totalling in all to the mystic 11,000.

We shall see in a later chapter that _Elphin_ stones were frequently _eleven_ feet high: our word _eleven_ is _elf_ in Dutch, _ellifir_ in Icelandic, _ainlif_ or _einlif_ in Gothic; but why this number should thus have been a.s.sociated with the elves I am unable to decide, nor can I surmise why the authorities connote the word _eleven_ with _lika_, which means "remaining," or with _linguere_, which means "to leave". In modern Etruria it is believed by the descendants of the Etruscans that the old Etruscan deities of the woods and fields still live in the world as spirits, and among the ancient Etrurians it was held that in the spiritual world the rich man and the poor man, the master and the servant, were all upon one level or all _even_.[231] Our word _heaven_ is radically _even_ and _ange_, the French for _angel_ is the same word as _onze_ meaning _eleven_.

_The Golden Legend_ a.s.sociates St. Maur with the Church of St. Maurice, where a blind man named Lieven is said to have sat for eleven years.[232] This marked connection between Maurice and eleven renders it probable that St. Maurice was the same King Maurus of Britain as was reputed to be the father of St. Ursula. The precise site of the monarch's domain is not mentioned, but as Cornwall claims him the probabilities are that his seat was St. Levan. St. Maurus of the Church Calendar is reputed to have walked on the waters, and he is represented in Art as holding the weights and measures with which he is said to have made the correct allotment of bread and wine to his monks. These supposed "measures" are tantamount to St. Michael's scales, which were sometimes a.s.signed by Christianity to G.o.d the Father.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 49.--The Trinity in One Single G.o.d, holding the Balances and the Compa.s.ses. From an Italian Miniature of the XIII. Cent.

From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]

Ursula, as the daughter of Maurus, would have been Maura, and in face of the walking-on-the-sea story she was, no doubt, the Mairymaid, Merrowmaid, or Mermaid. Of St. Margaret we read that after her body had been broiled with burning brands, the blessed Virgin, without any hurt, issued out of the water. That St. Michael was a.s.sociated in Art with a similar incident is evident from his miraculous preservation of a woman "wrapped in the floods of the sea". St. Michael "kept this wife all whole, and she was delivered and childed among the waves in the middle of the sea".[233] The Latin word _mergere_, _i.e._, Margery, means to sink into the sea, and _emerge_ means to rise out of the sea. In Cornwall Margery Daw is elevated into _Saint_ Margery Daw, and we may a.s.sume that her celebrated see-saw was the eternal merging and emerging of the Sun and Moon.

The Cornish pinnacle a.s.sociated with Maggie Figgy of St. Levan may be connoted with a monolith overlooking Loch Leven and ent.i.tled, "Carlin Maggie" or "Witch Maggie". This precipitous rock is precisely the same granite formation as is Maggie Figgy's Chair, and legend says that it originated from Maggie "flyting" the devil who turned her into stone.[234] The Scotch Loch Leven is known locally as Loch Eleven, "because it is eleven miles round, is surrounded by eleven hills, is fed or drained by eleven streams, has eleven islands, is tenanted by eleven kinds of fish".[235] It was also said to have been surrounded by the estates of eleven lairds.

At Dunfermline is St. Margaret's Stone, "probably the last remnant of a Druid circle or a cromlech".[236]

The megalithic Long Meg in Westmorland, standing by what is termed the "Maiden Way," is in close proximity to Hunsonby. The Dutch for _sun_ is _zon_, the German is _sonne_, whence Hunsonby in all probability was once deemed a _by_ or _abode_ of _Hunson_ the _ancient sun_ or _zone_.

The circle of Long Meg is an _enceinte_, _i.e._, an _incinctus_, circuit or enclosure; that St. Margaret of Christendom was the patroness of all _enceinte_ women is obvious from Brand's reference to St. Margaret's Day, as a time "when all come to church that are, or hope to be, with child that year". _Sein_ is the French for bosom, and that Ursula of the 11,000 virgins was a personification of the Good Mother of the Universe or Bosom of the World may be further implied by the fact that she corresponds, according to Baring-Gould, with the Teutonic Holda. Holda or Holle (the Holy), is a gentle Lady, ever accompanied by the souls of maidens and children who are under her care. Surrounded by these bright-eyed followers she sits in a mountain of crystal, and comes forth at times to scatter the winter snow, vivify the spring earth, or bless the fruits of autumn.

The kindly Mother Holle was sometimes ent.i.tled G.o.de,[237] whence we may connote Margot, Marghet, or Marget with Big Good, or Big G.o.d. In Cornwall the Holly tree is termed Aunt Mary's tree, which, I think, is equal to Aunt Maura's tree, St. Maur being tantamount to St. Fairy or St. Big.