Archaic England Part 56

The first written record of Preste Cuan figures in the chronicles of the Bishop of Freisingen (1145): the name Freisingen is radically _singen_: and it is quite probable that the Bungen Stra.s.se at Hamelyn identified with the Pied Piper was actually the scene of a "Poor John, Alone, Alone," incident such as Brand thus describes: "I remember to have seen one of these impostors some years ago in the North of England, who made a very hermit-like appearance and went up and down the streets of Newcastle with a long train of boys at his heels muttering, 'Poor John alone, alone!' I thought he p.r.o.nounced his name in a manner singularly plaintive,"[810] we have seen that the Wandering Jew was first recorded at St. Albans: the ancient name for Newcastle-on-Tyne--where he seems to have made his last recorded appearance--was _Pan_don. With the _panshen_ or pope of Tartary may be connoted the probability that the rosy Allan apple of Newlyn was a _pippen_: the parish of "Lynn or St. Margaret,"

not only includes the wards of Paradise and Jews Lane, but we find there also an Albion Place, and the curious name Guanock; modern Kings Lynn draws its water supply from a neighbouring _Gay_ wood.

In the year 1165 a mysterious letter circulated in Europe emanating, it was claimed, from the great Preste Cuan, and setting forth the wonders and magnificence of his Kingdom: this epistle was turned into verse, sung all over Europe by the _trouveres_, and its claims to universal dominion taken so seriously by Pope Alexander that this _Pon_tiff or _Pon_tifex[811] published in 1177 a counter-blast in which he maintained that the Christian professions of the mysterious Priest King were worse than worthless, unless he submitted to the spiritual claims of the See of Rome. There is little doubt that the popular Epistle of Prester John was the wily concoction of the Gnostic Trouveres or Merry Andrews, and that the unimaginative Pope who was so successfully stung into a reply, was no wise inferior in perception to the scholars of recent date who have located to their own satisfaction the mysterious Kingdom of Prester John in Tartary, in Asia Minor, or in Abyssinia: by the same peremptory and supercilious school of thought the Garden of Eden has been confidently placed in Mesopotamia, and the Irish paradise of Hy Breasil, "not unsuccessfully," identified with Labrador.

The probability is that every community attributed the Kingdom of Un Khan to its own immediate locality, and that like the land of the Pied Piper it was popularly supposed to be joining the town and close at hand. In the fifteenth century a hard-headed French traveller who had evidently fallen into the hands of some whimsical mystic, recorded: "There was also at _Pera_ a Neapolitan, called Peter of Naples, with whom I was acquainted. He said he was married in the country of Prester John, and made many efforts to induce me to go thither with him. I questioned him much respecting this country, and he told me many things which I shall here insert, but I know not whether what he said be the truth, and shall not therefore warrant any part of it." Upon this honeymoon the archaeologist, Thomas Wright, comments: "The manner in which our traveller here announces the relation of the Neapolitan shows how little he believed it; and in this his usual good sense does not forsake him. This recital is, in fact, but a tissue of absurd fables and revolting marvels, undeserving to be quoted, although they may generally be found in authors of those times. They are, therefore, here omitted; most of them, however, will be found in the narrative of John de Maundeville."[812]

We have seen that the Wandering Jew was alternatively termed Magus, a fact already connoted with the seventy-two stones of Long Meg, or Maggie: it was said that Un Khan was sprung from the ancient race of the Magi,[813] and I think that the solar circle at Shanagolden by Canons Island Abbey, on the Shannon in the country of the Ganganoi, was an _abri_ of Ken Khan, Preste Cuan, or Un Khan.

The rath or dun of Shanid or Shenet, as ill.u.s.trated _ante_, p. 55, has a pit in its centre which, says Mr. Westropp, "I can only suppose to have been the base of some timber structure": whether this central structure was originally a well, a tower, or a pole, it no doubt stood as a symbol of either the Tower of Salvation, the Well of Life, or the Tree of Knowledge. There is little doubt that this solar wheel or wheel of Good Fortune--which as will be remembered was occasionally depicted with four deacons or divine kings, a variant of the seventy-two dodecans--was akin to what British Bardism alluded to as "the melodious quaternion of Peter," or "the quadrangular delight of Peter, the great choir of the dominion";[814] it was also akin to the design on the Trojan whorl which Burnouf has described as "the four epochs (quarters) of the month or year, and the holy sacrifice".[815]

The English earthwork ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 433 (A) is known by the name of Pixie's Garden, and its form is doubtless that of one among many varieties of "the quadrangular delight of Peter". A pixy is an elf or _ouphe_, and the Pixie's Garden of _Uff_culme Down (Devon) may be connoted in idea with "Johanna's Garden" at St. Levans: Johanna, as we have seen, was a.s.sociated with St. Levan (the home of Maggie Figgie), and in the words of Miss Courtney: "Not far from the parish of St. Levan is a small piece of ground--Johanna's Garden--which is fuller of weeds than of flowers".[816] I suspect that Johanna, like Pope Joan of Engelheim and Janicula, was the fabulous consort of Prester John or Un Khan.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 433.--From _Earthwork of England_ (A. Hadrian Allcroft).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 434.--From _Symbolism of the East and West_ (Aynsley, Mrs. Murray).]

Fig. 433 (B) represents two diminutive earthworks which once existed on Bray Down in _Dor_setshire: these little Troytowns or variants of the quadrangular delight of Peter may be connoted with the obverse design of the Thorgut talisman found near Appleby and ill.u.s.trated on page 675: the two crescent moons may be connoted with two sickles still remembered in Mona, and the twice-eight crescents surrounding Fig. 434 which is copied from a mosaic pavement found at Gubbio, Italy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 435.--From _The Word in the Pattern_ (Watts, Mrs.

G. F.).]

The Pixie's Garden ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 433 (A) obviously consists of four T's centred to one base and the elaborate svastika, ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 435, is similarly distinguished by four concentric T's. The Kymbri or Cynbro customarily introduced the figure of a T into the thatch of their huts, and it is supposed that _ty_, the Welsh for a house or home, originated from this custom. We have seen that the Druids trained their super sacred oak tree (Hebrew _allon_) into the form of the T or Tau, which they inscribed Thau (_ante_, p. 393), and as _ty_ in Celtic also meant _good_, the four T's surrounding the svastika of Fig. 435 would seem to be an implication of all surrounding beneficence, good luck, or _all bien_.

The Cynbro are believed to have made use of the T--Ezekiel's mark of election--as a magic preservative against fire and all other misfortunes, whence it is remarkable to find that even within living memory at _Camber_well by Peckham near London, the _chi_-shaped or ogee-shaped[817] angle irons, occasionally seen in old cottages, were believed to have been inserted "_in order to protect the house from_ fire as well as from falling down".[818]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 436.--Celtic Emblem. From _Myths of Crete_ (Mackenzie, D. A.).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 437 and 438.--Mediaeval Papermarks. From _Les Filigranes_ (Briquet, C. M.).]

Commenting upon Fig. 435, which is taken from a Celtic cross at Carew in Wales, Mrs. G. F. Watts observes: "This symbol was used by British Christians to signify the labyrinth or maze of life round which was sometimes written the words 'G.o.d leadeth'".[819] Among the Latin races the Intreccia or Solomon's Knot, which consists frequently of three strands, is regarded as an emblem of the divine Being existent without beginning and without end--an unbroken Unity: coiled often into the serpentine form of an S it decorates Celtic crosses and not infrequently into the centre of the maze is woven the _svastika_ or Hammer of Thor.

The word Svastika is described by oriental scholars as being composed of _svasti_ and _ka_: according to the Dictionaries _svasti_ means _welfare, health, prosperity, blessing, joy, happiness_, and _bliss_: in one sense _ka_ (probably the _chi_ [Greek: ch]) had the same meaning, but _ka_ also meant "The Who," "The Inexplicable," "The Unknown," "The Chief G.o.d," "The Object of Worship," "The Lord of Creatures," "Water,"

"The Mind or Soul of the Universe".

In southern France--the Land of the Troubadours--the Solomon's Knot, as ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 438, is alternatively known as _lacs d'amour_, or the knot of the Annunciation: this design consists, as will be noted, of a svastika extended into a rose or maze, and a precisely similar emblem is found in Albany. The t.i.tle _lacs d'amour_ or lakes of love, consociated with the synonymous knot of the Annunciation, is seemingly further confirmation of the equation _amour_ = Mary: another form of knot is ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 440, and this the reader will compare with Fig. 439, representing a terra-cotta tablet found by Schliemann at Troy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 439.--From _Troy_ (Schliemann).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 440 and 441.--Mediaeval Papermarks. From _Les Filigranes_ (Briquet, C. M.).]

It will be remembered that according to the Pierrot legend St. Peter looking out from the Walls of Heaven detected what he first took to be a rosebud in the snow: the name Piers, which like Pearce is a variant of Peter, is essentially _pieros_, either Father Rose or Father Eros. The rood or rhoda pierre here ill.u.s.trated is a Rose cross, and is conspicuously decorated with intreccias, or Solomon's Knots: whether the inscription--which looks curiously Arabic--has ever been deciphered I am unable to say; it would, however, seem that the Andrew or Chi cross, which figures upon it, permits the connection of this Chooyvan rood with Choo or Jou.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 442.--From _A New Description of England_ (Anon, 1724).]

Among the whorls from Troy, Burnouf has deciphered objects which he describes as a wheel in motion; others as the _Rosa mystica_; others as the three stations of the Sun, or the three mountains. The Temple of Solomon was situated on Mount Moriah, one of the three holy hills of Hierosolyma, and it is probable that Meru, the paradise peak of Buddhism, was like Mount Moriah, originally Amour. That the wheel coins of England were symbolic of the Apple Orchard, the Garden of the Rose, or of the Isles called Fortunate is further pointed by the variant here ill.u.s.trated, which is unmistakeably a _Rosa mystica_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 443.--From Evans.]

As has been pointed out by Sir George Birdwood it was the Apple Tree of the prehistoric Celtic immigrants that gave to the whole peninsular of the West of England--Gloucestershire, Somersetshire, Dorsetshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall, the mystic name of "Ancient Avalon," or Apple Island:--

Deep meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns, And bowery hollows, crowned with summer seas.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 443A.--British. From Evans.]

FOOTNOTES:

[766] Primary chief bard am I to Elphin, And my original country is the region of the summer stars; Idno and Heinin called me Merddin, At length every king will call me Taliesin.

I was with my Lord in the highest sphere, On the fall of Lucifer into the depth of h.e.l.l I have borne a banner before Alexander; I know the names of the stars from north to south; I have been on the galaxy at the throne of the Distributer; I was in Canaan when Absalom was slain; I conveyed the Divine Spirit to the level of the vale of Hebron; I was in the court of Don before the birth of Gwdion.

I was instructor to Eli and Enoc; I have been winged by the genius of the splendid crosier; I have been loquacious prior to being gifted with speech; I was at the place of the crucifixion of the merciful Son of G.o.d; I have been three periods in the prison of Arianrod; I have been the chief director of the work of the tower on Nimrod; I am a wonder whose origin is not known.

I have been in Asia with Noah in the ark, I have seen the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra; I have been in India when Roma was built, I am now come here to the remnant of Troia.

I have been with my Lord in the manger of the a.s.s: I strengthened Moses through the water of Jordan; I have been in the firmament with Mary Magdalene; I have obtained the muse from the cauldron of Caridwen; I have been bard of the harp to Lleon or Lochlin, I have been on the White Hill, in the court of Cynvelyn, For a day and a year in stocks and fetters, I have suffered hunger for the Son of the Virgin, I have been fostered in the land of the Deity, I have been teacher to all intelligences, I am able to instruct the whole universe.

I shall be until the day of doom on the face of the earth And it is not known whether my body is flesh or fish.

[767] _A New Description of England_ (1724), p. 57.

[768] _Brax_field Road at modern Brockley may mark the site of this meadow.

[769] Wilson, J., _Imperial Gazetteer_, i., 946.

[770] _Cf._ CUN, coin, _ante_, p. 666.

[771] P. 494.

[772] _Cf._ Pierrot's Family Tree. _T.P.'s Weekly_, 1st August, 1914.

[773] Wilson, J., _Imperial Gazetteer_, ii., 584.

[774] Toland, _History of Druids_, p. 356.

[775] _Cf_. Gomme, Sir L., _Folklore as an Historic Science_, pp.

43, 44.

[776] _Cf._ Gomme, Sir L., _Folklore as an Historic Science_, p.

44.

[777] _A New Description of England_, p. 65.

[778] _Morte D'Arthur_, Bk. xviii, ch. viii.

[779] Hazlitt, W. Carew, _Faiths and Folklore_, i., 12.

[780] "Lageniensis," p. 86.

[781] Taliesin or _Radiant Brow_ claims to have been Merlin.

[782] "All the old traditions which give an interest to the Forest continue to be current there. The Fairies, who are kind to children, are still reported to be seen in their white apparel upon the banks of the Fountain; and the Fountain itself (whose waters are now considered salubrious) is still said to be possessed of its marvellous rain-producing properties. In seasons of drought the inhabitants of the surrounding parishes go to it in procession, headed by their _five_ great banners, and their priests, ringing bells and chanting Psalms. On arriving at the Fountain, the Rector of the Canton dips the foot of the Cross into its waters, and it is sure to rain before a week elapses."