Archaic England Part 68

Anthropologists patronisingly describe the creed of primitive man as being animism by which they mean that an anima or soul was attributed to everything on earth: this may be a credulous and degraded faith, or it may be sublimated into the conception of the Egyptian philosophers of whom it has been said: "In their view the earth was a mirror of the heavens, and celestial intelligences were represented by beasts, birds, fishes, gems, and even by rocks, metals, and plants. The harmony of the spheres was answered by the music of the temples, and the world beheld nothing that was not a type of something divine."

Speaking of the fairy tales of Ireland W. B. Yeats characterises them as full of simplicity and musical occurrences: "They are," he adds, "the literature of a cla.s.s for whom every incident in the old rut of birth, love, pain, and death, has cropped up unchanged for centuries; who have steeped everything in the heart _to whom everything is a symbol_". It is generally supposed that fairy tales are of a higher antiquity than cromlechs and stone avenues, and anthropologists have not hesitated to extract from them incidents of crude character as evidence of the barbarous and objectionable period in which they originated. With a curious perversity Anthropology has, however, ignored the fair humanities of phairie, while eagerly seizing upon its crudities: in view of the prophet Micah's environment there seems to me to be no justification for such prejudice, and if fairy-tale is really archaic its beauties may quite well be coeval with its horrors.

In his booklet on _Folklore_ Mr. Sydney Hartland observes: "Turning from savage nations to the peasantry of civilised Europe, you will be still more astonished to learn that up to the present time the very same conditions of thought are discernible wherever they are untouched by modern education and the industrial and commercial revolution of the last hundred years. There can only be one interpretation of this. The human mind, alike in Europe and in America, in Africa and in the South Seas, works in the same way, according to the same laws." This one and only permissible theory of independent evolution is daily losing ground, and in any case it can hardly be pushed to such extremes as ident.i.ty of words and place-names.

But while I am convinced that Crete was a culture-centre of immense importance, this bright and particular star, was, one must think, too small a place to account for the vast influence apparently traceable to it. Schliemann, whom n.o.body now ridicules, claimed to have discovered at Troy a bronze vase inscribed in Phoenicean characters with the words: "From King Chronos of Atlantis," and in a paper opened after his death he expressed his belief: "I have come to the conclusion that Atlantis was not only a great territory between America and the West Coast of Africa, but the cradle of all our civilisation as well". The anonymous suggestion which appeared a few years ago in the columns of _The Times_, that Crete was the reality of the wonderful island "fabled" by Plato, seems to me to have nothing to support it, and I would commend to the attention of those interested the facts collected by Ignatius Donnelly in _Atlantis_, and by others elsewhere. Personally I incline to the opinion that Plato's story was well founded, and that the ident.i.ties found in Peru and Mexico, Britain, the Iberian Peninsula, and Northern Africa are due to these countries, like the Isles of the Mediterranean, being situated in the full sweep of Atlantean influence.

According to Plato, the inhabitants of Atlantis ("an island situated in front of the straits which you call the columns of Hercules: the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together and was the way to other islands") were not only highly civilised, but they "despised everything but virtue not caring for their present state of life and thinking lightly on the possession of gold and other property". It is thus quite possible that the Atlanteans and not the pious Trojans were the enthusiastic and altruistic missionaries who carried the spiral ornament to Mykenae as to New Grange. Prof. Macalister finds it difficult to believe in the existence of such a frame of mind, but it seems to accord very closely to that of the hypothetical peace-loving Aryans or "n.o.ble nations" which etymologists have already been compelled to postulate, and which my own findings both herein and elsewhere endorse: the semi-supernaturalness of the Idaens has already been noted, as likewise has that of the ancient Britons and of the modern Bretons.

In the year 1508 a French vessel met with a boat full of American Indians not far from the English coast,[1026] and there is thus one historic warrant for the possibility of very ancient maritime contact between Europe and America. The Maoris of New Zealand emigrated from Polynesia in frail canoes during the historic period, and I have little doubt that the Maoris of to-day, who tattoo themselves with spirals similar to those found upon the prehistoric monuments of Britain, were cognate with the woad-tattoed Britons, who opposed their naked bodies to the invincible legends of Caesar. One can best account for the many and close connections between the South Sea islands and elsewhere by the supposition that some of these islands were colonised by Atlantis, Lyonesse, or whatever the traditional lost island was ent.i.tled: and as many of the maritime Atlanteans must have been at sea when the alleged catastrophe occurred, these survivors would have carried the dire news to many distant lands: whence perhaps the almost universal tradition of a Flood, and the salvation of only one boat load of people.

It has been said that the chief thing which makes j.a.pan so fascinating a land to dwell in is the consciousness that you are there living in an atmosphere of universal kindliness and courtesy. There are still to-day races in Polynesia who display the same kindly and almost angelic dispositions,[1027] whence there is nothing ridiculous in the supposition that Peru, whose natives claimed to be children of the Sun, was a.s.sociated with peyrou, the Iberian for phairy, or that the original Angles were deemed to be angels, and England or Inghilterra their country.

One of the most noted beliefs of all races, whether civilised or savage, is the erstwhile existence of a Golden Age when all men were well happified, and if existence to primitive man was merely the hideous and protracted nightmare which anthropologists a.s.sume, it is difficult to see at what period of his upward climb this curiously idyllic story came into existence: it would be simpler to a.s.sume that the tradition had some foundation in fact, and was not merely the frenzied invention of a dreamer. No race possesses more beautiful traditions of the Adamic Age than the British, and I have little doubt that the four quarters of the Holy Rood or Wheel are connected with the four fabulous Cities of Enchantment which figure in Keltic imagination. According to Irish MSS.

the Tuatha de Danaan, or Tribe of the Children of Don, after suffering a terrible defeat at the hands of the Fomorians, quitted Ireland, returned to Thebes, and gave themselves up to the study of Magic: leaving Greece they next went to Denmark (named after them) where they founded four great schools of diabolical learning--the Four Cities of Keltic imagination. It would thus seem possible that the Children of Don were the fabricators of the Eden, or Adam, tradition, and that they may be connoted with the Danoi under which name Homer habitually refers to the Greeks: with these Danoi or Danaia, Dr. Latham connotes the Hebrew tribe of Dan, supposing that both these peoples traced their origin to the same culture-hero.[1028] That Gardens of Eden were frequent in these islands has been evidenced in a preceding chapter, and in Asia the custom of constructing Edens or Terrestrial Paradises was equally prevalent: Maundeville and other travellers have left detailed accounts of these _abris_, all of which seem to have been constructed more or less to the standard design of the Garden of Eden, watered by four rivers, with a Tree or Fountain in the midst.

It is supposed that the celebrated Epistle of Prester John was a malicious antepapal concoction of the Gnostic Troubadours, or Servants of Love: these were certainly the shuttles that disseminated it over Europe. I have elsewhere endeavoured to show the role played in mediaeval Europe by the Troubadours and Minnesingers (_Love Singers_), and the subject might be infinitely extended. The derivation of _trouvere_, or _troubadour_, from _trouver_ to find, is probably too superficial, and if the matter were more fully investigated it is probable that, like the Merry Andrew, these mystic singers and philanderers originated from some Troy or Ancient Troy. Whether the _drui_ or _druids_ are similarly traceable to the same root is debatable, but that the bards of Britain were depositaries and disseminators of the Gnosis I do not doubt: the evidence on that point is not only the testimony of outsiders, but it is inherent in the literature itself, and whether this literature was committed to writing in the sixth, twelfth, or eighteenth century is immaterial. There are in existence many unquestionably prehistoric tales and ideas which have been handed down verbally, and committed to writing for the first time only within the past few years: many more are living _viva voce_, and are not yet registered. The Welsh bards, like the bards of other races, were a recognised cla.s.s, graduates in a particular Art, and were strictly and definitely trained in the traditional lore of their profession. This hereditary order which was known to the Romans certainly as early as 200 B.C., like the bards of other countries, almost unquestionably transmitted an enormous literature solely by word of mouth.[1029] If the feats of even the modern human memory were not well vouched for they would not be credited: in the past, the Zend Avesta, the Kalevala, the Popul Vuh, Homer, much of the Old Testament, and in fact all very ancient literature has come down to us simply by memory alone.

To an inquirer such as myself, incompetent to criticise Welsh literature, yet hesitating to accept the once current theories of fabrication, forgery, and deception, it is peculiarly gratifying to find so distinguished a scholar as Sir John Morris-Jones vindicating at any rate some portion of the suspect literature. In his study _Taliesin_, Sir John grinds detractors past and present into as fine and small a powder as that to which Spedding imperturbably reduced the flashy superficialities of Macaulay,[1030] and I confess it has caused me most agreeable emotions to find Sir John alluding to a certain truculent D.Litt. as "that nave type of mind which naturally a.s.sumes that what it does not understand is mere silliness":[1031] it is even more stimulating to witness the iconoclastic and dogmatic Nash rolled in the dust for his "unparalleled impudence" in laying down the law of antiquity in language.

Among the fragments of Welsh poetry occurs the claim "Bardism or Druidism originated in Britain--pure Bardism was never well understood in other countries--of whatever country they might be, they are ent.i.tled Bards according to the rights and inst.i.tutes of the Bards of the Island of Britain."[1032] Before superciliously dismissing the high claims of British Bardism it would be well to consider not only the recent findings of Prof. Sir John Morris-Jones, but to bear steadily in mind the following points: (1) The cultured shape of the extraordinarily ancient British skull: (2) Avebury, the strangest megalithic monument in the world: (3) Stonehenge, a unique and most developed form of stone circle: (4) that England was the princ.i.p.al home of stone circles: (5) that England not only possessed the greatest earth-pyramid in the world, but that Britain was peculiarly the home of the barrow, and that there is no word _barrow_ in either Greek or Latin, thus seeming to have been essentially British: (6) that in Caesar's time the youth of the Continent were sent to Britain to study the Druidic philosophy which was believed to have originated there: (7) the remarkable character of the English coinage which dates back admittedly to 200 B.C., and for aught one knows much earlier: (8) that the art of enamelling on bronze probably originated in Britain, and the craft of spear-making evolved there.

In _Earthwork of England_ Mr. Allcroft observes: "Of all the many thousands of earth-works of various kinds to be found in England, those about which anything is known are very few, those of which there remains nothing more to be known scarcely exist. Each individual example is in itself a new problem in history, chronology, ethnology, and anthropology; within every one lie the hidden possibilities of a revolution in knowledge. We are proud of a history of nearly twenty centuries: we have the materials for a history which goes back beyond that time to centuries as yet undated. The testimony of records carries the tale back to a certain point: beyond that point is only the testimony of archaeology, and of all the manifold branches of archaeology none is so practicable, so promising, yet so little explored, as that which is concerned with earthworks. Within them lie hidden all the secrets of time before history begins, and by their means only can that history be put into writing: they are the back numbers of the island's story, as yet unread, much less indexed."

The prehistoric building here ill.u.s.trated might be any age: it is standing to-day in a remote corner of Britain, and, so far as I am able to trace, has been hitherto uncharted and unrecognised. Whether it were a temple or the compound of a chieftain, the authorities to whom it has been referred are unable to say: my brother, to whom its discovery was due, is of the opinion that it was a temple, and on a subsequent occasion we hope--after digging--to publish a more detailed account of it, merely now noting it as an example of the innumerable objects of interest which exist in this country at present unrecognised, unconsidered, and unvalued.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 507.--Ground plan of a hitherto Uncharted English Edifice.]

Evidence has been forthcoming that a cave in Oban was occupied by human beings, at an epoch when the sea was 30 feet higher than its present level, and it is now generally admitted that humanity existed in these islands prior to the Glacial Period. Archaeology of the future will provide strong wine of astonishment to her followers: she will prove beyond question that mythology is not merely fossil philosophy, but is likewise to a large extent fossil history, and that the records may be pieced together from the traditionary blissful Tertiary Period to that time and onwards when a perilous torrent-fire struck the earth, resulting in sequent horrors, and the slow replenishment of the world.[1033] She will prove, I think, further that the land now called England possesses a doc.u.mentary record, and an intellectual ancestry which is practically beyond computation, and if History shies at her findings she will instance Brandon as a typical example of continuous occupation and unbroken sequence from the Stone Age to to-day. Further, she will in all probability prove that in either Crete or England the main doctrines of Christianity were practically indigenous. The version of Christianity which returned to us about 1500 years ago is now generally attributed to the mystic Therapeuts of Egypt: from the time it was officially adopted by the temporal powers the materialising process seems almost steadily to have progressed, notwithstanding the allegorising teaching of the Troubadours and kindred Gnostics who claimed really to know.[1034] Happily petrifaction is a preservative, and it may be doubted whether when Comparative Archaeology has finished her researches any of the prehistoric Christianity preached by the Celtic Christies will prove actually lost, and whether the supposedly impa.s.sable gulf of ages which separates the earliest literature from the testimony of the Stones may not practically be bridged. That our popular customs were the detrita of dramatised mythology, and that many of these customs evidence an astonishing beauty of imagination and depth of thought, will not be questioned except by those unfamiliar with English folklore. In many cases the quaint customs which still linger in the countryside, and the cults which underlie them are, as Dr. Rendel Harris has recently observed, those of misunderstood rituals and lost divinities, and thus embalmed like flies in the amber of unchanging habit turn out to be the very earliest beliefs and the most primitive religious acts of the human race: "Every surviving fragment of such a ritual is as valuable to us as a page of an early Gospel which time has blurred or whose first hand has been overwritten".[1035]

Few nowadays have any sympathy with the theories which a generation ago autocratically ascribed Myth to a Disease of Language; still less is it possible to accept the more modern supposition that Mythology is merely the gross growth of disgusting savagery! There is more truth in Bacon's dictum that in the first ages when such inventions and conclusions of the human reason as are now trite and common were new, and little known, all things abounded with fables, parables, similes, comparisons, and illusions which were not intended to conceal, but to inform and teach.

Research tends more and more to justify Bacon in his penetrating judgment: "And this princ.i.p.ally raises my esteem of these fables, which I receive not as the product of the age or invention of the poets, but as sacred relics, gentle whispers, and the breath of better times, that from the traditions of more ancient nations came at length into the flutes and trumpets of the Greeks". Whence these sacred relics came, whether from Atlantis, Crete, or Britain,[1036] we are not yet in a position to a.s.sert, but eventually the Comparative Method will decide this point. Dr. Rendel Harris who has, to quote his own words, "audaciously affirmed that Apollo was only our _apple_ in disguise,"[1037] further concludes: "It is tolerably certain that Apollo in the Greek religion is a migration from the more northerly regions and his mythical home is somewhere at the back of the north wind".[1038]

While I am in sympathy with many of Dr. Harris' findings, it is, however, difficult to accept his conclusions that the Olympian divinities were merely "personifications of, or projections from the vegetable word": the greater probability seems to me that the Apple was named after Apollo rather than Apollo from the Apple: similarly the mandrake was in greater likelihood an emblem of Venus rather than Aphrodite a projection from the Mandrake. The Venus of the Gael was Bride or Brigit, "The Presiding Care," who was represented with a brat in her arms: there is an old Spanish proverb to the effect that "An ounce of Mother is worth a ton of Priest"; nowhere was Woman more devoutly idealised than among the Celts, and it is more probable that the conception of an immaculate Great Mother originated somewhere in Europe rather than in the sensuous and woman-degrading East. Of the legends of Ireland Mr. Westropp has recently observed: "When we have removed the strata of euhemerist fiction and rubbish from the ruin, the foundations and beautiful fragments of the once n.o.ble fane of Irish mythology will stand clear to the sun":[1039] "Whether," said Squire, "the great edifice of Celtic mythology will ever be wholly restored one can at present only speculate. Its colossal fragments are perhaps too deeply buried and too widely scattered. But even as it stands ruined it is a mighty quarry from which poets yet unborn will hew spiritual marble for houses not made with hands."

FINIS

[Ill.u.s.tration: British. From Akerman.]

FOOTNOTES:

[996] _Mythology of the Celtic Races,_ p. 68.

[997] _The Mistletoe_, p. 30.

[998] Budge, W., _Legends of the G.o.ds_, lxxii.

[999] P. 234.

[1000] Smith, Prof. Elliot, _The Evolution of the Dragon_, p. 157.

[1001] _Ibid._, p. 176.

[1002] Notably at Solutre--_the Sol uter_?

[1003] Wright, Miss E. M., _Rustic Speech and Folklore_, p. 303.

[1004] Odin was essentially a _Wind_ G.o.d: in Rutlandshire gales are termed _Ash_ winds. _N. and Q._, 1876, p. 363.

[1005] _The Age of the Saints_, p. xxvii.

[1006] _Cf._ Christmas, H. C., _Universal Mythology_, p. 43.

[1007] In _Wambeh_ we again seem to detect _womb_.

[1008] Quoted from Donnelly, I., _Atlantis_.

[1009] Henry Kilgour, Notes and Queries, 8th January and 19th February, 1876.

[1010] _The Prehistoric Remains of Caithness_, pp. 70, 71.

[1011] Macnamara, N. C., _Origin and Character of the British People_, p. 179.

[1012] Read, Sir H., _A Guide to Antiquities of Bronze Age_, p. 17.

[1013] _Races of Britain_, p. 46.

[1014] _Strabo_, III., lv., 5.

[1015] Smith, L. P., _The English Language_, p. 1.

[1016] Triad, 4.

[1017] _Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy_, x.x.xiv., C. 10, 11, p.

387.

[1018] _Ibid._

[1019] _Myths of Crete and Pre-h.e.l.lenic Europe_, p. 235.

[1020] _Myths of Crete and Pre-h.e.l.lenic Europe_, p. 232.

[1021] _Ilios_, p. xii.

[1022] There were peoples in the Caucasus known as the Britani or Burtani.

[1023] _Celtic Britain_, p. 268.

[1024] In a subsequent volume I shall trace the Iberian _perro_ or dog to _Peru_, where the perro or dog was the supreme object of devotion.