Archaic England Part 55

Some accounts state that the bride of Oberon was known as Esclairmond, a name which seemingly is one with _eclair monde_ or "Light of the World".

We have seen that the surroundings of the Dane John at Canterbury are still known as Rodau's Town: the coins of the Rhodian Greeks were sometimes _rotae_ or wheel crosses in the form of a rose, and there is little doubt that our British rota coins were intended to represent various conceptions of the Rose Garden, or Avalon, or the Apple Orchard: using another simile the British poets preached the same Ideal under the guise of the Round Table.[790] Fig. 179, (_ante_, p. 339) represented a rose combined with four sprigs or sprouts, and in Fig. 423 (British) the intention of the rhoda is clearly indicated: on the carved column ill.u.s.trated on page 708 the rood is a _rhoda_, and my suggestion in an earlier chapter that "Radipole road," near London, may have marked the site of a rood pole is somewhat strengthened by the fact that Maypoles occasionally displayed St. George's red rood or the banner of England, and a white pennon or streamer emblazoned with a red cross terminating like the blade of a sword. Occasionally the poles were painted yellow and black in spiral lines, the original intention no doubt being representative of Night and Day.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 423 and 424.--British. From Akerman.]

Alas poore Maypoles what should be the cause That you were almost banished from the earth?

Who never were rebellious to the lawes, Your greatest crime was harmless honest mirth, What fell malignant spirit was there found To cast your tall Pyramids to ground?

The same poet[791] deplores the gone-for-ever time when--

All the parish did in one combine To mount the rod of peace, and none withstood When no capritious constables disturb them, Nor Justice of the peace did seek to curb them, Nor peevish puritan in rayling sort, Nor over-wise churchwarden spoyled the sport.

Overwise scholars have a.s.sumed that the Maypole was primarily and merely a phallic emblem; it was, however, more generally the simple symbol of justice and "the rod of peace": _rod_, _rood_, and _ruth_ are of course variants of one and the same root.

Among, if not the prime of the May Day dances was one known popularly as Sellingers Round: here probably the _r_ is an interpolation, and the immortal Sellinga was in all likelihood _sel inga_ or the innocent and happy Ange of Islington:--

To Islington and Hogsdon runnes the streame, Of giddie people to eate cakes and creame.

At the famous "Angel" of Islington manorial courts were held seemingly from a time immemorial: on a shop-front now facing it the curious surname Uglow may be seen to-day, and in view of the adjacent Agastone Road it is reasonable to a.s.sume that at Hogsdon, now spelt Hoxton, stood once an Hexe or Hag stone, perhaps also that the hill by the Angel was originally known as the _ug low_ or Ug hill. We have noted that fairy rings were occasionally termed hag tracks, and that the Angel district was once a.s.sociated with these evidences of the fairies is seemingly implied by a correspondent who wrote to _The Gentleman's Magazine_ in 1792 as follows: "Having noticed a query relating to fairy rings having once been numerous in the meadow between Islington and Canonbury, and whether there were any at this time, and having never seen those extraordinary productions whether of Nature or of animals, curiosity led me on a late fine day to visit the above spot in search of them, but I was disappointed. There are none there now; the meadow above mentioned is intersected by paths on every side and trodden by man and beast." Man and beast have since converted these intersections into mean streets among which, however, still stand Fairbank and Bookham Streets.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 425.--From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]

The Maypole was generally a sprout and was no doubt in this respect a proper representative of the "blossoming tree" referred to in a Gaelic Hymn in honour of St. Brighid--

Be extinguished in us The flesh's evil, affections By this blossoming tree This Mother of Christ.

The May Queen was invariably selected as the fairest and best dispositioned of the village maidens, and before being "set in an Arbour on a Holy Day" she was apparently carried on the shoulders of four men or "deacons":[792] a.s.suredly these parochial deacons were personages of local importance, and they may possibly account for the place-name Maydeacon House which occurs at Patrixbourne, Kent, in conjunction with Kingston, Heart's Delight, Broome Park, and Barham. The word _deacon_ is _Good King_ or _Divine King_: we have seen that four kings figured frequently in the wheel of Fortune, and the ceremonious carrying by four deacons was not merely an idle village sport for it formed part of the ecclesiastical functions at the Vatican. An English traveller of some centuries ago speaking of the Pope and his attendant ceremonial, states that the representative of Peter was carried on the back of four deacons "after the maner of carrying whytepot queenes in Western May games":[793] the "Whytepot Queen" was no doubt representative of Dame Jeanne, the demijohn or Virgin, and the counterpart to Ja.n.u.s or St.

Peter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 426.--Cretan. From Barthelemy.]

One of what Camden would have dubbed the sour kind of critics inquired in 1577: "What adoe make our young men at the time of May? Do they not use night-watchings to rob and steal yong trees out of other men's grounde, and bring them home into their parish with minstrels playing before? And when they have set it up they will deck it with floures and garlands and dance around, men and women together most unseemly and intolerable as I have proved before." The scenes around the Maypole ("this stinckyng idoll rather") were unquestionably sparkled by a generous provision of "ambrosia":--

From the golden cup they drink Nectar that the bees produce, Or the grapes ecstatic juice, Flushed with mirth and hope they burn.[794]

On that ever-memorable occasion at Stonehenge, when the Saxons ma.s.sacred their unsuspecting hosts, a Bard relates that--

The glad repository of the world was amply supplied.

Well did Eideol prepare at _the s.p.a.cious circle of the world_ Harmony and gold and great horses and intoxicating mead.

The word _mead_ implies that this celestial honey-brew was esteemed to be the drink of the Maid; _ale_ as we know was ceremoniously brewed within churches, and was thus probably once a _holy_ beverage drunk on _holy_-days: the words _beer_ and _brew_ will account for representations of the senior Selenus, as at times _inebriate_. The Fairy Queen, occasionally the "Sorceress of the ebon Throne," was esteemed to be the "Mother of wildly-working dreams"; Matthew Arnold happily describes the Celts as "drenched and intoxicated with fairy dew," and it seems to have a general tenet that the fairy people in their festal glee were sometimes inebriated by ambrosia:--

From golden flowers of each hue, Crystal white, or golden yellow, Purple, violet, red or blue, We drink the honey dew Until we all get mellow, Until we all get mellow.[795]

In the neighbourhood of Fair Head, Antrim, there is a whirlpool known as Brecan's Cauldron in connection with which one of St. Columba's miracles is recorded. That the Pure King or Paragon was also deemed to be "that brewer" or the Brew King of the mystic cauldron, is evident from the magic recipe of Taliesin, which includes among its alloy of ingredients "to be mixed when there is a calm dew falling," the liquor that bees have collected, and resin (amber?) and pleasant, precious silver, the ruddy gem and the grain from the ocean foam (the pearl or margaret?):--

And primroses and herbs And topmost sprigs of trees, Truly there shall be a puryfying tree, Fruitful in its increase.

Some of it let that brewer boil Who is over the _five_-woods cauldron.

We have noted the five acres allotted to each Bard, five springs at Avebury, five fields at Biddenden, "five wells" at Doddington, five banners at the magic fountain of Berenton, and five fruits growing on a holy tree: the mystic meaning attached to five rivers was in all probability that which is thus stated in Cormac's _Adventure in the Land of Promise_: "The fountain which thou sawest with the five streams out of it is the fountain of Knowledge, and the streams are the five senses through which Knowledge is obtained. And no one will have Knowledge who drinketh not a draught out of the fountain itself and out of the streams." That Queen Wisdom was the Lady of the Isles called Fortunate, is explicitly stated by the poet who tells us that there not Fantasy but Reason ruled: he adds:--

All this is held a fable: but who first Made and recited it, hath in this fable Shadowed a truth.[796]

From the group of so-called Sun and Fire Symbols here reproduced, it will be seen that the svastika or "Fare ye well" cross a.s.sumed multifarious forms: in Thrace, the emblem was evidently known as the _embria_, for there are in existence coins of the town of Mesembria, whereon the legend MESEMBRIA, meaning the (city of the) midday sun, is figured by the syllable MES, followed by the svastika as the equivalent of EMBRIA.[797]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 427.--Sun and Fire Symbols from Denmark of the later Bronze Age. From _Symbolism of the East and West_ (Murray-Aynsley).]

The whirling bird-headed wheel on page 709 is a peculiarly interesting example of the British rood, or rota of ruth; as also is No. 40 of Fig.

201 (_ante_, p. 364) where the peac.o.c.k is transformed into a svastika: the _pear_-shaped visage on the obverse of this coin may be connoted with the Scotch word _pearie_, meaning a pear-shaped spinning-top, and the seven _ains_ or b.a.l.l.s may be connoted with the statement of Maundeville, that he was shown seven springs which gushed out from a spot where once upon a time Jesus Christ had played with children.

No. 43 of the contemned sceattae (p. 364) evidently represents the legendary Bird of Fire, which, together with the peac.o.c.k and the eagle, I have discussed elsewhere: this splendid and mysterious bird--as those familiar with Russian ballet are aware--came nightly to an apple-tree, but there is no reason to a.s.sume that the apple was its only or peculiar nourishment. The Mystic Boughs ill.u.s.trated on page 627 (Figs. 379 to 384) may well have been the mistletoe or any other berried or fruit-bearing branch: in Fig. 397 (p. 635) the Maiden is holding what is seemingly a three-leaved lily, doubtless corresponding to the old English Judge's bough or wand, now discontinued, and only faintly remembered by a trifling nosegay.[798]

Symbolists are aware that in Christian and Pagan art, birds pecking at either fruit or flowers denote the souls of the blessed feeding upon the joys of Paradise: all winged things typified the Angels or celestial Intelligences who were deemed to flash like birds through the air, and the reader will not fail to note the angelic birds sitting in Queen Mary's tree (Fig. 425, p. 686).

There is a delicious story of a Little Bird in Irish folk-tale, and among the literature of the Trouveres or Troubadours, there is _A Lay of the Little Bird_ which it is painful to curtail: it runs as follows: "Once upon a time, more than a hundred years ago, there lived a rich villein whose name I cannot now tell, who owned meadows and woods and waters, and all things which go to the making of a rich man. His manor was so fair and so delightsome that all the world did not contain its peer. My true story would seem to you but idle fable if I set its beauty before you, for verily I believe that never yet was built so strong a keep and so gracious a tower. A river flowed around this fair domain, and enclosed an orchard planted with all manner of fruitful trees. This sweet fief was builded by a certain knight, whose heir sold it to a villein; for thus pa.s.s baronies from hand to hand, and town and manor change their master, always falling from bad to worse. The orchard was fair beyond content. Herbs grew there of every fashion, more than I am able to name. But at least I can tell you that so sweet was the savour of roses and other flowers and simples, that sick persons, borne within that garden in a litter, walked forth sound and well for having pa.s.sed the night in so lovely a place. Indeed, so smooth and level was the sward, so tall the trees, so various the fruit, that the cunning gardener must surely have been a magician, as appears by certain infallible proofs.

"Now in the middle of this great orchard sprang a fountain of clear, pure water. It boiled forth out of the ground, but was always colder than any marble. Tall trees stood about the well, and their leafy branches made a cool shadow there, even during the longest day of summer heat. Not a ray of the sun fell within that spot, though it were the month of May, so thick and close was the leaf.a.ge. Of all these trees the fairest and the most pleasant was a pine. To this pine came a singing bird twice every day for ease of heart. Early in the morning he came, when monks chant their matins, and again in the evening, a little after vespers. He was smaller than a sparrow, but larger than a wren, and he sang so sweetly that neither lark, nor nightingale, nor blackbird, nay, nor siren even, was so grateful to the ear. He sang lays and ballads, and the newest refrain of the minstrel and the spinner at her wheel.

Sweeter was his tune than harp or viol, and gayer than the country dance. No man had heard so marvellous a thing; for such was the virtue in his song that the saddest and the most dolent forgot to grieve whilst he listened to the tune, love flowered sweetly in his heart, and for a s.p.a.ce he was rich and happy as any emperor or king, though but a burgess of the city, or a villein of the field. Yea, if that ditty had lasted 100 years, yet would he have stayed the century through to listen to so lovely a song, for it gave to every man whilst he hearkened, love, and riches, and his heart's desire. But all the beauty of the pleasaunce drew its being from the song of the bird; for from his chant flowed love which gives its shadow to the tree, its healing to the simple, and its colour to the flower. Without that song the fountain would have ceased to spring, and the green garden become a little dry dust, for in its sweetness lay all their virtue. The villein, who was lord of this domain, walked every day within his garden to hearken to the bird. On a certain morning he came to the well to bathe his face in the cold spring, and the bird, hidden close within the pine branches, poured out his full heart in a delightful lay, from which rich profit might be drawn. 'Listen,' chanted the bird in his own tongue, 'listen to my voice, oh, knight, and clerk, and layman, ye who concern yourselves with love, and suffer with its dolours: listen, also, ye maidens, fair and coy and gracious, who seek first the gifts and beauty of the world. I speak truth and do not lie. Closer should you cleave to G.o.d than to any earthly lover, right willingly should you seek His altar, more firmly should you hold to His commandment than to any mortal's pleasure. So you serve G.o.d and Love in such fashion, no harm can come to any, for G.o.d and Love are one. G.o.d loves sense and chivalry; and Love holds them not in despite. G.o.d hates pride and false seeming; and Love loveth loyalty. G.o.d praiseth honour and courtesy; and fair Love disdaineth them not. G.o.d lendeth His ear to prayer; neither doth Love refuse it her heart. G.o.d granteth largesse to the generous, but the grudging man, and the envious, the felon and the wrathful, doth he abhor. But courtesy and honour, good sense and loyalty, are the leal va.s.sals of Love, and so you hold truly to them, G.o.d and the beauty of the world shall be added to you besides. Thus told the bird in his song'."[799]

It is not necessary to relate here the ill-treatment suffered by the bird which happily was full of guile, nor to describe its escape from the untoward fate destined for it by the villein.

In Figs. 428 to 430 are three remarkable British coins all of which seemingly represent a bird in song: it is not improbable that the idea underlying these mystic forms is the same as what the Magi termed the _Honover_ or Word, which is thus described: "The instrument employed by the Almighty, in giving an origin to these opposite principles, as well as in every subsequent creative act, was His Word. This sacred and mysterious agent, which in the Zendavesta is frequently mentioned under the appellations _Honover_ and _I am_, is compared to those celestial birds which constantly keep watch over, the welfare of nature. Its attributes are ineffable light, perfect activity, unerring prescience.

Its existence preceded the formation of all things--it proceeds from the first eternal princ.i.p.al--it is the gift of G.o.d."[800]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 428 to 430.--British. From Evans.]

The symbol of Hanover[801] was the White Horse and we have considered the same connection at Hiniver in Suss.e.x: it is also a widely accepted verity that the White Horse--East and West--was the emblem of pure Reason or Intelligence; the Persian word for _good thought_ was _humanah_, which is seemingly our _humane_, and if we read _Honover_ as _ancient ver_ the term may be equated in idea with _word_ or _verb.u.m_.

The Rev. Professor Skeat derives the words _human_ and _humane_ from _humus_ the ground, whence the Latin _h.o.m.o_, a man, literally, "a creature of earth," but this is a definition which the pagan would have contemptuously set aside, for notwithstanding his perversity in bowing down to wood and stone he believed himself to be a creature of the sun and claimed: "my high descent from Jove Himself I boast".

We have seen that Jove, Jupiter, or Jou was in all probability Father _Joy_, and have suggested that the Wandering Jew was a personification of the same idea: it has also been surmised that Elisha--one of the alternative names of the Wanderer--meant radically Holy Jou: it is not improbable that the Shah or Padishah of Persia was similarly the supposed incarnation of this phairy _pere_. The various well-authenticated apparitions of the Jew are quite possibly due to impersonations of the traditional figure, and two at least of these apparitions are mentioned as occurring in England: in one case the old man claiming to be the character wandered about e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. "Poor Joe alone"; in another "Poor John alone alone".[802] Both "Joe" and "John"

are supposed by Brand to be corruptions of "Jew": the greater probability is that they were genuine British t.i.tles of the traditional Wanderer.

The exclamation of "alone alone" may be connoted with the so-called Allan apples which used to figure so prominently in Cornish festivities: these Allan apples doubtless bore some relation to the Celtic St. Allan: _haleine_ means _breath_,[803] _elan_ means fire or energy, and it is in further keeping with St. Allan that his name is translated as having meant _cheerful_.

The festival of the Allan apple was essentially a cheery proceeding: two strips of wood were joined crosswise by a nail in the centre; at each of the four ends was stuck a lighted candle with large and rosy apples hung between. This construction was fastened to a beam or the ceiling of the kitchen, then made to revolve rapidly, and the players whose object was to catch the Allan apples in their mouths frequently instead had a taste of the candles.[804] Obviously this whirling firewheel was an emblem of Heol the Celtic Sun _wheel_, and as Newlyn is particularly mentioned as a site of the festival, we may equate St. Newlyna of Newlyn with the Noualen of Brittany, and further with the G.o.ddess Neh.e.l.lenia or New Helen of London. Neh.e.l.lenia has seemingly also been traced at Tadcaster in Yorkshire where the local name Helen's Ford is supposed to be a corruption of the word Neh.e.l.lenia:[805] Nelly, however, is no corruption but a variant of Ellen. The G.o.ddess Nehallenia is usually sculptured with a hound by her side, and in her lap is a basket of fruits "symbolising the fecundating power of the earth".[806] In old English _line_ meant to fecundate or fertilise, and in Britain Allan may be considered as almost a generic term for rivers--the all fertilisers--for it occurs in the varying forms Allen, Alan, Alne, Ellen, Elan, Ilen, etc.: sometimes emphasis on the second syllable wears off the preliminary vowel, whence the river-names Len, Lyn, Leen, Lone, Lune, etc., are apparently traceable to the same cause as leads us to use _lone_ as an alternative form of the word _alone_. The Extons Road, Jews Lane, and Paradise now found at King's Lynn point to the probability that King's Lynn (Domesday _Lena_, 1100 _Lun_, 1314 Lenne[807]) was once a London and an Exton. The great red letter day in Lynn used to be the festival of Candlemas, and on that occasion the Mayor and Corporation attended by twelve decrepit old men, and a band of music, formerly opened a so-called court of Piepowder: on reference to the Cornish St. Allen it is agreeable to find that this saint "was the founder of St. Allen's Church in Powder". This Powder, sometimes written Pydar, is not shown on modern maps, but it was the t.i.tle for a district or Hundred in Cornwall which contains the village of Par: it would appear to be almost a rule that the place-name Peter should be closely a.s.sociated with Allen, _e.g._, Peterhead in Scotland, near Ellon, and Petrockstowe or Padstowe in Cornwall is near h.e.l.land on the river Allan.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 431.--Sixteenth Century Printer's Ornament.]

In the emblem herewith the _alan_ or cheery old Pater is a.s.sociated like Nehelennia with the fruits of the earth, amongst which one may perhaps recognise _coddlins_ and other varieties of Allan apple.

The Cornish Allantide was celebrated on the night of Hallow'een, and as Sir George Birdwood rightly remarks the English Arbor Day--if it be ever resuscitated--should be fixed on the first of November or old "Apple Fruit Day," now All Hallows[808] or All Saint's Day, the Christian subst.i.tute for the Roman festival of Pomona; also of the first day of the Celtic Feast of Shaman or Shony the Lord of Death. Shaman may in all probability be equated with Joe alone, and Shony with poor John alone alone: Shony, as has been seen, was an Hebridean ocean-deity, and the omniscient Oannes or John of Sancaniathon, the Phoenician historian, lived half his time in ocean: the Eros or Amoretto here ill.u.s.trated from Kanauj may be connoted with Minnussinchen or the little Sinjohn of Tartary.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 432.--From Kanauj. From _Symbolism of the East and West_ (Aynsley, Mrs. Murray).]

With the apple orchard Pomona or of the Pierre, Pere, or Pater Alone, the monocle and monarch of the universe, may be connoted the far-famed paradise of Prester or Presbyter _John_: this mythical priest-king is rendered sometimes as Preste _Cuan_, sometimes as _Un Khan_ or John King-Priest, and sometimes as Ken Khan: he was clearly a personification of the King of Kings, and his marvellous Kingdom, which streamed with honey and was overflowing with milk, was evidently none other than Paradise or the Land of Heaven. "Mediaeval credulity" believed that this so-called "Asiatic phanton," in whose country stood the Fountain of Youth and many other marvels, was attended by seven kings, twelve archbishops, and 365 counts: the seventy-two kings and their kingdoms said to be the tributaries of Prester John may be connoted with the seventy-two dodecans of the Egyptian and a.s.syrian Zodiac: these seventy-two dodecans I have already connoted with the seventy-two stones const.i.tuting the circle of Long Meg. Facing the throne of Prester John--all of whose subjects were virtuous and happy--stood a wondrous mirror in which he saw everything that pa.s.sed in all his vast dominions.

The mirror or monocle of Prester John is obviously the speculum of Thoth, Taut, or Doddy, and I suspect that the seventy-two dodecans of the Egyptian and Chaldean Zodiac were the seventy-two Daddy Kings of Un Khan's Empire: none may take, nor touch, nor harm it--

For the round of Morian Zeus has been its watcher from of old He beholds it and Athene thy own sea-grey eyes behold.[809]